Hi Jason. Reading your Eighteen Ways of Looking at the Anthropocene reminds me of one of my favorite poems, "Carmel Point", by Robinson Jeffers. I think he would be joining you in this endeavor.
The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
Hi John: I'm sorry, somehow I missed this nearly a year ago. I'm reviewing the year's work and just stumbled across it. Thank you so much for bringing poetry into the discussion, first of all, and also for finding a perfect accompaniment. Linking Jeffers to this project is a first-rate compliment, so thank you for that as well. Take care.
A thoughtful read Jason. I was drawn to point 17 and the question of why, since we all know this is happening, we just continue to participate. I have never forgotten my light bulb moment that our brains evolved into human brains in a hunter gatherer society. The ability to think about worldwide population, pollution, habitat loss and the rest is a cultural layer on top of a hunter gatherer brain. We are wired to think abut what is going on around us, to pay attention to our family or our tribe (however we define that). So yes, most of us are aware of what is happening on a global scale but at the end of the day, where is my buddy and what's for dinner seem the more pressing questions. If things seem sustainable within our immediate universe, the grocery store is well stocked, my car isn't broken down, and the kids are doing well on school that goes a long way towards satisfying us that we're on the right track. Maybe this means that highlighting local consequences rather than global consequences of the Anthropocene is the better strategy.
Earlier you wrote about our early hunter gatherers practicing "intentional restraint". I'll bet that restraint was all about their understanding of their own environment and how it impacted their own people. Would a hunter gatherer of central Europe have welcomed a better tool or warmer garment even if they knew it impoverished people and degraded the environment in some far off place. I would not bet against it.
Thanks, Tom. Well said. It's clear that the Anthropocene has happened so quickly that neither we (for the most part) nor other species (for the most part) have been able to adapt. Thus the extraordinarily high extinction rate, and thus (as you say) the widening gap between the world our brains are creating and the world our brains evolved to deal with.
Our consciousness (as I see it) is made up of stories, and while we can process stories about global problems linked to our actions, we are much more apt to engage with stories that we can see unfolding around us. I like what you're saying about highlighting local consequences but I wonder if that means waiting too long for us to respond. I think we have to link local to global in order to reinforce the feeling most of us have that what we see locally can't be sustained globally.
I'll confess my point about intentional restraint is a bit of a stretch for me, b/c I'm not well read in anthropology. To answer your hypothetical, I can imagine a hunter gatherer
going either way on that decision. It may come down to the culture of his/her people and what rules, based on experience, they have for themselves. There's a lot more to say about this, but at the moment it brings me to my point about the problem being culture rather than human nature. The line really isn't that clear; if human nature can be tweaked by whatever tribal rules are in place, then maybe human nature is the problem...
Hi Jason. Reading your Eighteen Ways of Looking at the Anthropocene reminds me of one of my favorite poems, "Carmel Point", by Robinson Jeffers. I think he would be joining you in this endeavor.
The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
Hi John: I'm sorry, somehow I missed this nearly a year ago. I'm reviewing the year's work and just stumbled across it. Thank you so much for bringing poetry into the discussion, first of all, and also for finding a perfect accompaniment. Linking Jeffers to this project is a first-rate compliment, so thank you for that as well. Take care.
A thoughtful read Jason. I was drawn to point 17 and the question of why, since we all know this is happening, we just continue to participate. I have never forgotten my light bulb moment that our brains evolved into human brains in a hunter gatherer society. The ability to think about worldwide population, pollution, habitat loss and the rest is a cultural layer on top of a hunter gatherer brain. We are wired to think abut what is going on around us, to pay attention to our family or our tribe (however we define that). So yes, most of us are aware of what is happening on a global scale but at the end of the day, where is my buddy and what's for dinner seem the more pressing questions. If things seem sustainable within our immediate universe, the grocery store is well stocked, my car isn't broken down, and the kids are doing well on school that goes a long way towards satisfying us that we're on the right track. Maybe this means that highlighting local consequences rather than global consequences of the Anthropocene is the better strategy.
Earlier you wrote about our early hunter gatherers practicing "intentional restraint". I'll bet that restraint was all about their understanding of their own environment and how it impacted their own people. Would a hunter gatherer of central Europe have welcomed a better tool or warmer garment even if they knew it impoverished people and degraded the environment in some far off place. I would not bet against it.
Thanks, Tom. Well said. It's clear that the Anthropocene has happened so quickly that neither we (for the most part) nor other species (for the most part) have been able to adapt. Thus the extraordinarily high extinction rate, and thus (as you say) the widening gap between the world our brains are creating and the world our brains evolved to deal with.
Our consciousness (as I see it) is made up of stories, and while we can process stories about global problems linked to our actions, we are much more apt to engage with stories that we can see unfolding around us. I like what you're saying about highlighting local consequences but I wonder if that means waiting too long for us to respond. I think we have to link local to global in order to reinforce the feeling most of us have that what we see locally can't be sustained globally.
I'll confess my point about intentional restraint is a bit of a stretch for me, b/c I'm not well read in anthropology. To answer your hypothetical, I can imagine a hunter gatherer
going either way on that decision. It may come down to the culture of his/her people and what rules, based on experience, they have for themselves. There's a lot more to say about this, but at the moment it brings me to my point about the problem being culture rather than human nature. The line really isn't that clear; if human nature can be tweaked by whatever tribal rules are in place, then maybe human nature is the problem...