Living with all of our capacities

I have realised that this blog has, at times, taken a markedly spiritual bent. I have realised that in my efforts to try to tread more lightly on this planet, in my conversations with people about environmentalism and being, it is not that only the planet is being transformed, but ourselves. Not in any superficial way, not in a consumerist "Oh, I will buy this instead of that" way, but rather a deeper, more durable way. This durability, this inner reflection, I believe can allow us to live more consciously no matter where we are, to be more open to experience, to be more open to the present, to a be a more satisfied people.

As an engineer, I am taught the ways of western scientific traditions. Data are obtained, and they can be reproduced, given the same conditions, elsewhere on Earth. Of course, these data are reproduceable given the right conditions, given an understanding of the methodologies of "science," given the so-called "laws" of nature. But then again, we are stuck with a culture that is destroying this Earth's capacity for life. There is no doubt about that. And in this secularisation of our worldly experience, we seem to lose track of what makes us human. I am in no way differentiating humans from non-humans, but rather speaking to what makes us human regardless of what the rest of the natural world is like. 

From an evolutionary standpoint, yes, we are "animals," we compete, we fight, we try to pass on our genes. One may think of everything that we partake in, culture, capitalism, industrialisation, education, as just a manifestation of evolution. We want to dominate so that we can survive. But, as linguistics pioneer Jean Berko Gleason says, we also have consciousness. We contemplate, we have an understanding of presence, and it is this consciousness that allows us to reflect on our experiences. I believe then that we temper the evolutionary forces at play, our biological urges, with this consciousness.

So then what is it about this secularised culture and worldview that allows such destruction? Physicist Arthur Zajonc, a contemplative of the Western tradition influenced by Rudolf Steiner, believes that we are not fully engaging ourselves when we try to face the challenges before us. Indeed he says, there are various levels of experience. And these various levels affect what we bring to the table. The only level we deem fit right now is that of secularism and science, devoid of emotion, emotion that is brought up through observing the world in different ways. How do we get to different levels of experience, then? Well, we must calm ourselves, direct attention, sustain that attention, and open up to what is normally invisible. Things then show themselves to you, deepening our human experience. Zajonc says profoundly, that

"[i]f we are committed to knowledge, then we ought to be committed also to exploring the world with these lenses, with this method in mind and heart. And otherwise, we are kind of doing it half way...when we go to solve the problems of our world, whether they are educational or environmental we are bringing only half of our intelligence to bear...we have left the other half idle, or relegated it to religious philosophers. But if we are going to be integral ourselves, from a perspective that is whole, then we need to bring all of our capacities to the issues that we confront."

My mum has always talked to me about such spirituality. A few years ago, I didn't really think twice about it. I had a full faith in science and its secularism when conducting myself. But I have now realised, through this journey, that in any action that takes a stand for something other than oneself, that tries to make a durable change in the world, more must be brought to the table. that our consciousness, our capacities for compassion and empathy play as much, if not a bigger role than science, data, and numbers.

Keep at it

I have written a few times about motivation (here) and individual action from various perspectives. In the end, it is up to us to change our lives, and be guided by a new morality. Personal efforts guided by a motivation to to open, honest, accepting, and in the end radically paradigm shifting is essential, but personal action without the goal of broader social implications can be selfish. And  The goal is social change, and it will not come easy. 

Trying to consider the impacts of your individual choices, and of the collective choices of society does not make for leisure time. When living, we can't let our brains go into standby mode. We can't be awake and process only some things. In that case, we aren't fully aware, conscious, and present. And while it takes at least some effort to pay attention to trends, to fashion, to what a materialistic world, this is not the consciousness I am talking about. Rather, this is the state of being that the moneymakers would want you to have - not fully asleep so as it miss their cues, but not fully conscious so as to question their motives.

Being observant and conscious can be consuming, and I mean that in the least materialistic way possible. What I mean is that as soon as you start questioning something, you start questioning another thing, and another thing, and soon enough, you realise that this culture, this society is one that is founded upon "out of sight, out of mind." We shun people, we cut them off, and this allows us to degrade their localities, which means we degrade all of our localities. It doesn't take long to realise that these systems are so ingrained, that as an individual, we think that our efforts are not worth it, that "human nature" is human nature, that greed is fundamentally human. It's a reason why many people just give up.

Over dinner the other night, Crystal asked Professor Larimore, "How do you deal with things not changing? How do you stay motivated?" Professor Larimore replied, "You just never know when something will happen. It's like an earthquake. Over time, the pressure builds, slowly but surely, and then one day, there is the release."

You just never know when something big will happen. Sometimes, it takes a split second. The world can change, or at least, parts of it can. Who knew lasting dictatorships in the Middle East, eras that lasted half a century, would crumble in a matter of weeks? Movements can go from being dormant, to all of a sudden being catalytic and inspiring. But it is important to realise that such massive changes are few and far between. What about our daily lives then? How do we spend time in between these moments? Constantly working toward a change is essential. So her, a woman of seventy years, message is, keep at it. While this may sound cliche, I don't think it is said often enough.

Feature: Waste Land, Vik Muniz, and consciousness

(Potential spoiler alert!) There has been much written about trash and waste, and it seems like there are several documentaries and books about this issue. I have been almost saturated with thinking about trash, with my creativity being challenged day by day in trying to write about trash from different perspectives. I am not the most creative person out there. But other people are much more creative, and have different backgrounds that lends them different ways of viewing the exact thing I have been thinking about now for ten months (ten months today!). It is always wonderful to come across these thoughts, visions and projects, and I came across one just a couple weekends ago.

Matt and I made it to The Detroit Institute of Arts for the Detroit Film Theatre, where they show beautiful movies, documentaries, and shorts, on the 16th of January. What caught my eye was a screening of the documentary Waste Land, which is about an art project (turned out to be way more than art) by Vik Muniz on the people how pick through trash at one of the world's largest landfills to collect recyclables that can be sold. Here's a synopsis from the website:

"Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage..."

Vik's intentions are clear - he wants to change people's lives with the objects they are surrounded with on a daily basis. There is no better group of people to work with than those that work at a landfill. As I've mentioned previously (here, here and here), trash is visceral and tangible, so much so that we don't want to be around it, although some people are around it continuously. Some people are around it so much so that they are desensitised to it, just like people that work at one of the world's largest landfills, where objects and discards of humanity flow in like an unabated wave. Vik initially went into the project thinking it was just going to be just that, an art project - as a photographer, he was going to make multimedia photographs of the workers, with recyclables in the trash defining the human features of his subjects. He formed connections with some of the workers there (extremely thoughtful people), and had them work on their own photographs. Please click here and go to "Pictures of Garbage (2009)" to see their incredible work.

What ended up happening changed both Vik and the workers:

"However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Director Lucy Walker (DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, BLINDSIGHT, COUNTDOWN TO ZERO) has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit." 

I am not going to talk much about the movie, because you should really just watch it (and you can read about it here), but what Vik essentially did was raising into consciousness, at a level higher than visibility, the objects and problems that surround us. This is indeed what the message of this blog so far has been: raise into consciousness and awareness the knowledge and problems that our world is facing, and think about how this problem is just another manifestation of deeper issues - disrespect for Earth and disrespect for people, present and future.

We have everything we need

One of my messages so far has been the following - (related to physical objects) let us appreciate of all what we have before we think about investing ourselves in more. I believe that when this thought is adequately applied to our lives, we may move from being a forward-looking society to one that observes and learns from the present, and hopefully, learns from the past. We will start noticing the vast amounts of human effort that have gone into building what we have today, as well as the vast tolls that this effort has inflicted on other humans, our environment, our Earth. What this may also mean is that instead of trying to "answer" questions, through research, of complicated systems, let us take a step back and fully internalise and understand what we've learned so far. Many arguments can be made for the continued investment of vast sums of money for more research, but I truly believe that we know all that we need to know to make huge strides towards "treading lightly" on this planet (thank you Jackie for that phrase), and leading less impactful, yet completely meaningful and happy lives. Not only can we be happy, but we can also reduce the huge stresses that we put on our ecosystems. For example, we've known about climate change since the 1960s, and developed a very mature understanding of it since the 1980s. In fact, Arrhenius, in the late 19th century, calculated the rise in global temperatures from a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions, and his estimate falls squarely within the bounds of what sophisticated climate models today predict.

I went to a talk today from a prominent scientist. She has been all over the world, and spent her life immersed in the learning of oceans. She gave a very thoughtful and eloquent talk about our impact on water systems of the world, but one message of hers bugged me - she said that humans need to further explore the depths of oceans and find new forms of life, so that we can know fully what our impacts on them are. She said, "How can we know what the solution is if we don't know what the problem is?" This thought gave me a strange feeling. To a certain extent, I understand why she would make a statement like that. Maybe knowing the plight of a species allows us to develop sympathy towards it, and maybe that will help us come together and stop what we are doing. But there are very few examples, if any, of humans doing something like this. On the other hand, as Wendell Berry points out in Life is a Miracle, learning about a new form of life will only drive us to find ways to use it, and therefore it will consequently lose its freedom. Interrogating it, rather than allowing us to be more mindful, in fact leads to its degradation and decimation. I struggle with this, being a "graduate student" myself, doing "research." How much more do we really need to know? How much will we continue to invest in things we may never know?

Rather than continuously looking for a new answer, why don't we raise what we know into consciousness, and actually let that act affect our decisions and choices?

Defining ourselves, ourselves

(Disclaimer: I am just using high fructose corn syrup as an example in this post.)

Did you know that the corn industry is trying to rebrand high-fructose corn syrup as corn sugar? Nutritionally, HFCS may not be too different from sugar, but environmentally, it may be.

It is easy to find comfort in the branding and marketing ploys of today. We don't necessarily have to think for ourselves. Someone else can define what is good for me, my family, and my community. Someone else can make the tough decisions of what ingredients to include in our foods, soaps, toothpastes and lives. These outsiders make it seem that if I don't own what it is they want me to own, I am just not a cool person. I mean, going for a jog without an iPod? Lame.

It is much more difficult to be vigilant and aware and conscious and present. If we are not, we can be fooled into thinking that corn sugar is something completely different than what it is, or used to be called. We can be fooled into buying a product that caused significant environmental harm in its production, and trash that will not go away. We cannot be fooled by companies, like Coca Cola, that use this product to tell us to be conscious of our environment. It is important to realise that outsiders and people in boardrooms cannot understand the issues around Midland, MI, and they shouldn't be allowed to define the outcomes of our lives.