Perceiving

You can see your life through your own lens.

You can see without thinking, understand with the words that you’re given. I try to avoid that, and rather to see in such a way that things appear beautiful, because I live with a conviction that they are.

You can see without hewing to the lines that limit and quantize unthinking sight. In place of bothersome dirt I see beautiful entropy and intricate decay. Instead of objects I see shapes in a fabric of visual nuance that transcends division – everywhere is the same shadow, the same dust.

In this perception of “realness” I find fulfillment that I needn’t then seek in complexity. I find feelings more dear to me than I do in luxury or prestige.

Love people for being faulty and pure. Love relationships not for being what you wish they were but for what they are. Look out from a tall building and see the chaotic muted city, and the drab and wintry brown horizon, divorced by dim light from the fiction of the present. And imagine yourself everywhere.

Find places with your feet, see them through your eyes, think, and understand, and bring yourself into them with the creations of a hand. Perception may be limited, but if I can find out what is basic to my life, I am as free as I could ever hope to be.

I am sometimes cursed but more often blessed to desire nothing so much as truth. It has led me to love reality and the universal and simplicity. And these lead me back to mostly normal things, but with love and moderation.

Before I step into the shower every morning I have a little tussle with myself. I can either take a long and comfortable one, or seek my comforts elsewhere and save water. Being groggy, I tend to find the first prospect persuasive. But when I have some mastery of my will I look around at the tiles and the window and find a warmth in their textures that makes the need for water heaters less pressing.

It is enough to see beauty in reality and smile and chat and go to the post office to mail a letter and to sleep when your work is done. It is enough to go to the window before you lie down and see the buildings’ lights in the murky darkness and give yourself a word or two to let the reality find your heart. It is enough to explode at the view from a mountaintop, and be moved by sunset silhouettes and hues. I hope to go through life with little more.

Perception

In The End of Nature, Bill McKibben relates the gravity of humanity’s environmental problems to the limitations of our perception. We cannot directly see slow and subtle changes in the earth’s climate, or easily imagine the effects of our ecological behavior years in the future. Scientific study brings the world’s subtler properties to our awareness – graphs of historical temperature and carbon dioxide data are an effective illustration of the changes we have wrought. But they do not have the psychological power that a disruption of the seasons would to tell us things are out of joint.

Perception laid the foundation for the human phenomenon, and it may also define its limits. People can perceive complex abstract relationships in the world around them that other animals cannot, and so we can solve problems that were once fundamentally limiting. This perceptive ability is the basis of progress – the sciences, art, and philosophy all explore new ways of understanding, while technological innovation applies our perceptive ability to practical betterment. Sixty years ago it seemed to enjoy unbounded success.

But perception constrains just as much as it expands. It is the basis of market failure, where economies fail to optimally allocate resources because some costs are difficult to perceive. There had been no cost associated with the emission of greenhouse gases until very recently, because no-one could possibly know without extensive study of the climate system that such emissions were costly. The nonlinearity of climate and ecosystems is beyond our intuitive perception.

When I must write a paper for class, I don’t often begin but a night or two before it’s due. It gets written, and I have a relaxing time before I start, but the writing is stressful and the product of questionable quality. Climate negotiators in Copenhagen look a lot like me four days before a deadline. One weighs the benefits and costs of starting against the merits of the status quo, which sometimes looks deceptively good.

Inaccurate perceptions lead to incorrect judgements – when I underestimate the difficulty of an assignment, I wait until it makes sense to begin, and then it is too late. When people, due to the lack of immediacy in our perception of ecological and climatic change, underestimate the problem’s size, we wait until the perceived urgency justifies the economic cost. If our perceptions are skewed, that could be the other side of the Rubicon.

Just as my procrastination leads to unpleasant sunday nights, the evidence currently discussed suggests a painful adjustment to new environments, perception aligned only by physical and social immediacy. To improve my academic life, I am trying to temper my perfectionism, and essentially lessen the difficulty of each task. I wish I could make such a prescription for the international community, short of arguing for the unimportance of economic well-being.

But instead of shrinking the problem, there are ways to address the constraints on our perception. To correct for market externalities, we can see commodities in holistic rather than economic terms. Steak is not entertainment-on-a-plate for twenty dollars – it is food with a history that is not captured in the number. Bovine flatulence and labor relations should give us pause, even if we eat it anyway. In all our interactions with the world, we might recognize that more is at work than we can see, and try to see it when we can.

A looser way of improving perception is to consider the simplicity of actions. Simple things are closer to what we would call nature, and more complex ones are more deeply constructed, and generally more costly. Simple things leave room for the rest of the world, while the complicated tread heavily, and squeeze it out. To see things in this dimension, along with some knowledge of environmental issues, allows one a more basic insight into the extra costs of complexity. To enjoy simple things is to perceive more basic and often obscured reasons for living. And to live simply is to set just the example that the world needs.

Progress

I am inclined to reduce environmental problems to their simplest conceptualizations. Humans are an element in the earth’s dynamic ecological system, and we have evolved a difference from the other parts that grows broader and deeper as time goes on. The difference is based in our structuring and manipulation of mental representations of our surrounding world. From this basis comes intelligence, creative problem solving, complex social organization, and the constructed forms that surround me for miles on every side. Human history is characterized by divergence from the “natural” – the less conscious world – in material, cultural, and philosophical dimensions.

I have no love for progress as an intensification of present society. But this is not progress as I would define it, only stagnation. Here we find a more basic definition – the pursuit of ideals that constitute a break with the simpler past. Understanding, truth, and power all draw us to greater representational nuance, and conspire to define our un-natural appearance. In them we progress, for better and for worse.

Environmental considerations suggest that we should conform in certain ways to the principles of our ecological system. This means reining in our values that have grown out of anthropocentric worldviews. But this is not regression; rather, the capacity to refigure our imperatives would be a triumph of human reason over instinct. I see truer progress in changing ourselves than in continuing to carelessly change the world.

This possibility is largely what drives me to study the environment – imagining a post-growth society gives one an outlet for critiques of the present. I love to think about a people freed from imperatives of material accumulation and advancement, awakened to what is meaningful in human existence. I believe that a simple consideration of life leads to different values than we currently espouse, and I see serious environmental disruption as a potential catalyst for cultural change.

The risk of thinking simply about society, though, is that it tempts one to personify something bearing little resemblance to a person. Rather than millions of individual epiphanies, change occurs through political action, economic shifts, and media venues. To describe the first, environmental sociologists use the concept of the “treadmill of production,” the demand for continuous economic growth. Politicians must balance this demand against calls for environmental protection, and economic accumulation is often privileged, despite the rhetoric employed.

The theory of ecological modernization, related to the idea of sustainable development, states that new technologies and corporate responsibility will allow industrial society to reduce its ecological impact while continuing to grow. But this theory represents a best-case scenario, and is based on the economy’s exemplars, not the average firm. The fundamental stratification of society is important to any discussion of its response to environmental change.

Just as many people do not reap the benefits of the progress pushed by economic elites, no form of progress penetrates easily into mass culture. Scientific understanding, artistic forms, and philosophical perspectives are enjoyed in full only by those within certain subcultures. Thus, progressive responses to the environment are made by those close to environmental philosophies, aware of environmental science, and economically able to change their lifestyle, while a majority of citizens practice a faintly modified business-as-usual.

Climate change will likely prove disastrous for some segments of society and bearable for others, but the range of possibilities within that statement makes prediction difficult. What we may confidently say, though, is that adaptation will not be smooth, and progress – technological, scientific, and cultural – will not be profound. But on the other hand, progress will occur, whether by anticipating our problems, or learning from our mistakes.

Lines

Lines are the units of conceptualization, which in creating representations mark “things” off from their surroundings, create object and environment. I enjoy thinking about a lineless world, where all things are indescribable, too specific and chaotic in form, too universal in specificity and texture, to be meaningfully separated. But this denies the fundamentality of construction to human existence and experience, and in attempting representation fails to truly comprehend nature.

There is a line separating humanity and its environment, for the observer in the park overlooking downtown, on one side of which is the rectangularity of buildings, and on the other, the knots and rough curves of a tree. Here lies design, and there unknowing growth. Here is control, there freedom. On this side is symbol, and on the other lives reality. Nature, by and large, is in balance, but here there is no-one to tell us when to stop.

The “built environment” is a curious analog to natural systems. A city sprouts from the ground looking vaguely like a forest, but its underpinnings are very different. Cities function as an open circuit, where inputs enter and waste leaves, with little synthetic material recycled. In nature, however, the attractor of ecological efficiency has caused closed circuits of nutrients to evolve, so that all biological matter is reused. Cities profoundly and consciously manipulate their environment to meet their needs, while ecological communities are limited by environmental constraints.

People were made and reside in a natural world, and nothing defines us quite like the line between us and the Rest. We conceive of ourselves on the basis of belief and social experience, but we can also shed a bit of subjectivity and see Man as he stands out from the rest of the world. In this perspective, ecological identity overshadows our less detached understandings to describe what is at base not the cultural idea “humanity” but a simple species.

The more humanity diverges from its environment, the more important this self-consciousness becomes, because to distance ourselves philosophically from our sustaining system can lead to a disregard for its health. We see this dynamic in the shift in human culture towards growth and manipulation, which has been accompanied by increasing environmental disturbance. Because we cannot live unsustainably for long, we must recreate the line between human and natural worlds.

This means closing the destructive gap between human ideals and natural process. The spirit, and the physical function, of our civilization must follow nature’s example. Buildings must be ecologically engaged, and release waste products useful to the environment, rather than siphoning energy and resources while giving off ecologically foreign substances. Our culture as a whole must better align with nature’s sensibilities.

On a large scale, this implies a qualification of economic imperatives, which lead to unmeasured growth and antagonism to the environment. Our policies should not consider material progress unquestionably good, and should encourage businesses and citizens to work closely with nature in their lives and designs. Our values will in time lose their fixation on society, and hold the balance, freedom, and durability of nature as a necessary ideal.

I am interested in the ways in which individuals value nature, because that is the substance of change. Many see a spiritual power to it, and here I find the main hope for a new course. Perceiving nature as an absolute, and seeking its many everyday beauties, gives a viable alternative to fulfillment found in success and accumulation. Failing this radical transformation, though, we can accept the practical necessity of valuing nature that comes with sustainable existence.

Sunlight

It begins with sunlight, which jiggles chlorophyll and moves electrons in a cell which hop down a chain and store their energy in the bond of a phosphate. This introduces energy to the system constituting life, and eventually we eat it, and use its gifts and the ancient mineral stocks of the earth to make the objects and movements that surround us.

A man gets better when he gets bigger; finer tools replace old fingers and enrich his life. Finer tools take more from the world and allow him to expand. Diving headlong into expansion he loses sight of his hands that hold the tools that do the dirty work of taking things from the world, and it goes faster, unchecked.

Bigger is better, but there is only all the space in the world, and when you’re big enough the rest is squeezed against the margins. One can’t take any more from the world when they get too big; it becomes an impotent periphery to the drama of growth, runs dry (ironic that those who do not care for sunlight and rain are the ones who would take it all). But where the world is limited, the capability of man is not. Bigger is the certain end, and technology the means, and with our controlling faculties augmented by siliconic consciousness, the “rest” is but a problem in design and engineering.

A man can’t stay on the ground forever; the sun only puts out so much light. His potential lies at the extreme of existence, the evolutionary summit. Farm the photons of the universe, mine its elements, and synthesize what you need. Depend on nothing but the inescapable physics, and answer to no living peer. Live on a space ship, like they would in a movie, with the outside a little blanker than it was, but the inside all the richer.

Space is cold and I don’t find unfettered existence appealing. Mass culture is for many reasons an unsatisfactory definition of life; outside, one can find greater beauty, variety, and simplicity in the natural world. I have looked outside, and I have been impressed with the partiality and smallness of the human endeavor; even should we overrun this place, still it encompasses and transcends us. I don’t think we should be satisfied with overrunning it, then, even if we could. Stability represents a far better mode of partial existence with the world.

There is a poetry in being ruled by sunlight, in loosening fruitless competition, and growing not oneself, but one’s conception of the other. And many of us do not care for poetry, so there is also history, and indeed utility. Plenty has its limits in promoting well-being. Culture and spirituality have their bases in a world outside human creation. To accept temporal equilibrium could bring out more meaning-filled uses of our time here.

Social inertia slows change to a snail’s multifaceted waltz, but it would be a stride just to accept in principle our place as denizens of the earth, and put to rest a simplistic ideal. Preserving the essential diversity of life requires fashioning our interactions with sun and rain as humanly and not just economically meaningful, as they once were. More human than escape, I think, is to let sunlight find a green earth, a system we have kept whole and vibrant, and to let culture and environment sustain one another.

Water

I am at the river, and at my feet the water comes in from the ocean to the south, and some of it splits off to go north-east, and some takes the western road downtown, and some makes its life in the stillness of the fork, and now and again splashes upon the little rock by which I sit, in little waves.

I enjoy hearing the sound of the waves, background, baseline, uniform but unpredictable. And I enjoy watching the water toss itself about the shoreline, for its movement and its shape that are beyond precise expression, because it shows the physical infinitude of existence and reminds that language is only a painter thereof. This water is like the pigment and canvas from which representations are made – nature in its full relief, unchanged by the strokes of a brush, sitting below a more discrete symbolic effort at reality. The world seems to eclipse our own creativity, its shapes arising universally and in endless variety. But in being effortless, ever-present, it is wholly different from the problematic beauty of expression.

What is time for the water? Seconds leave it in novel attitudes, but profoundly unchanged. Its simplicity renders the thought of “action,” of subject differentiated from verb, senseless. What does water “do” if it is timeless?

The fantastically layered and complex mind of a person is, seen from the inside, a great contrast to simpler realities. A linear experience of time is basic to consciousness, and we see ourselves change as it passes, perceive thoughts as the cause of our actions, and require more verbs than just “to be.” The height of consciousness is also the depth of partiality; practical awareness limits us to a view of the system’s inner parts, whereas water is nothing and whole. So we draw a line separating willful man and beautifully thoughtless nature.

I think of realness and representation, creativity and being, smokestacks, birdnests, and trees. Nature is unsymbolic, and sparkles in the afternoon sun. We, I am led to say, are mistaken, inventive, fooled by what we are. I think that so saying is useful when we must think about time and action. But in the water things come together and even mountains lead down to the ocean.

Dear world

You’re a pretty one

despite the shadows that grow

below eyes and under wrinkles

And though your bones begin to show

though beauty lives in our

Imagination of the past romance -

there remains

Something which is beautiful

.

it remains, something,

In your eyes, your window panes

Still clear into

The inner room

That glint of sun I see,

Receding,

Walking from the world, I light

Upon my inner room

The light is love

I love your eyes

And shadows that from here appear

A pattern, never more