Community objects

Homo sapiens sapiens has now come to mean homo faber--man that makes. We have for millennia made objects that have given us advantage over other people, that have asserted our power, that have asserted our "humanity." But as time has progressed, as we have decided that natural rights of freedom and liberty apply to (most) all of us (except those who we exploit so that the privileged can be "free"), we have grown more and more individualistic; libertarianism, while not explicitly stated, is rampant. But freedom has been conflated with doing whatever we want, and "owning" whatever we want. Indeed, we feel it a god-given right for each one of us to have access to all of the material possibilities that have been opened up because of technology. We feel that we must assert our individuality by owning as much as possible, by showing these objects off as symbols of status, by thinking that these objects mean we are "sticking it to the man."--that we do not need to rely on anyone for anything, that all of us can go to Home Depot, and do things ourselves. This individualism has resulted in the loss of human interaction--much of what we do now is mediated through object, rather than through physical contact with other humans. In our quest to own things for ourselves, in our assumption that each one of us is entitled to each one of the possessions we have, we have created an economy based on the collective rape of the Earth to satisfy our individual wants and purported needs.

But this is not the whole story. We have asserted our individuality in some ways, and given it away in another--in ecologically and socially degrading ways. While we assert our independence through materialism, we are watched by Big Brother, we are under constant surveillance, and we live in the fear of speaking our critically against our government and corporations that have constantly exploited this land and this earth to keep themselves alive. Liberty and justice for all are words spoken, but not internalised and acted upon. I wonder then, are there ways in which we can be human, without destroying the planet? How can we build communities and relationships with the Earth that are spatially close-knit, rather than destroy them? May one way be through community objects?

When I say community, I mean community among people, close-knit, within contexts of our local environments. Just like community spaces, like churches, markets, and parks, are there ways in which we can redefine objects such that they are owned by us as a collective, rather than us as individuals? What would that mean for the preservation of objects, and our compulsion to buy more and more? I do not know, but what I do know is that those things and spaces that are common to us all, we generally wish never to be degraded. Scale is important, and objects are for the most part on the human scale. Although we continually trash national parks and landmarks, no one would want a trashed church or a trashed local park. Rather, when the scale of our spaces, and our objects becomes more tractable, we seek to cherish them more and more. The Earth may be too big for each one of us to wrap our minds around. Another plastic bag in the ocean, another computer bought, another flight taken, we think is a drop in the ocean. But a plastic bag seen flailing in our neighbourhood park, an oil spill in our local river, a blighted home we are repulsed by.

I remember while growing up in India, the textbooks that I used, the uniforms I wore, were those that were handed down to me from my elder cousins and friends. Objects were saved and treated kindly, because they could then be bequeathed to the next generation. The textbooks were already marked up and written in, but that was okay, because I still learned from them. The clothes were worn, but that's okay, because it didn't matter how crisply new my shirt was, I still went to school. I feel as if community objects built community. So much of what we do now as individuals is because of a constantly temporary urge for the new. If you were to look back on your life, did it really matter whether you bought that new deck of cards or that new toaster? Or do you think your euchre night would have still been fun with an old deck of cards, your stomach still full and satisfied with a used toaster? And how much better off would the health of our Earth be because of such behaviour? Wendell Berry, in his essay A Statement Against the War in Vietnam writes,

In spite of our constant lip service to the cause of conservation, we continue to live by an economy of destruction and waste, based on extravagance and ostentation rather than need; we can see no reason to be saving, because we cannot imagine the future of the earth or the lives and the needs of those who will inherit the earth after us.

More thoughts on ownership and "development"

I have been hearing the word "development" more and more recently, not only because I have been reading how the concept of "sustainable development" has co-opted more deeper understandings of sustainability, but also in class and in various discussions I've been having. When I say "development," I mean the human undertaking of modifying the environment, building buildings, constructing colonies, and producing products, necessarily involving the violent use of nature. I feel that many people my age also think about sustainability and environmentalism in terms of "development" - how might we be able to continue along trends historically dictated, but more efficiently? This of course is a natural tendency of our society, and does nothing to stem the environmental onslaught we've been undertaking for centuries now. I want to focus this post on human modifications of the environment, particularly by people who "own" that environment.

It seems to me that notions of ownership stem from notions of freedom, which allow us to do potentially ecologically degrading things, in general for personal, i.e. monetary benefit. While getting dressed yesterday morning, I heard a little story about Aubrey McClendon, the Chairman and CEO of Chesapeake Energy. A billionaire, McClendon owns several hundred acres of fragile dunes on Lake Michigan, in the postcard town of Saugatuck. (This is where the Kalamazoo River feeds Lake Michigan.) As I heard on the Environment Report, McClendon is planning a "development" of a marina, condos, houses, and a golf course. I don't know about the politics of this ordeal; there are people better equipped to understand the environment around Lake Michigan than I. But in all of the news stories I've read, McClendon is called a "developer," and Singapore Dunes is called a "development." 


As I have written about previously, it is fascinating how we feel like we can "own" things that have existed long before we walked the surface of the Earth. The political boundaries we have drawn for our communities and states and nations follow no particular boundaries of nature, except in the cases of mountains and rivers. Maybe more thoughtful boundaries may be watersheds. Regardless, the boundaries we define also bind us to place such that we can "own." But ownership is one thing, and doesn't necessarily imply ecological degradation. Ownership can in fact be leveraged to protect tracts of land and water from human influence. But when ownership is coupled with "development," the coupling necessarily involves modifications to the environment, which imply monetary gain. Very few people are interested in "developing" anything if it doesn't make them money. "Development" itself is a very anthropocentric concept. It implies that everything the "development" takes place on is useless and worthless, and bears no mark of complexity and time. It also presumes that humans know what is better than an undisturbed dune formation, or old growth forests. Yet, Lake Michigan existed long before Michigan was colonised, and the forces that have resulted in each grain of sand on those dunes of the Lake have been acting for much longer than we can comprehend, in ways we will never be able to know fully. Notions of ownership have in fact produced just the opposite of what we would want - what we would want is for our nature to sustain us for as long as possible, but in our quest to own, we have degraded. Just the reverse of how we think is what might be more logical - we are owned by this land, this air and this water, and our fate is tied to our respect to those forces.

On ownership

One of the defining concepts of our society is the notion of ownership. This goes far beyond the territorialism that animals may display to mark and guard their places of habitat. Human notions of ownership stretch beyond the bounds of their habitat. We have a system in place which monetarily values places other than habitat in a way that drives humans to "own" or "buy the rights" to those places. For example, much of the land in the US is actually leased to oil and gas companies for drilling (and this has not stopped those companies from trying to drill offshore, in virgin waters). But we also want to stretch our influence to the habitats of other humans, too. Fracking for natural gas is a great example - people from elsewhere are trying to buy off people from elsewhere because those people are unfortunate enough to have natural gas bound up in geologic structures under their land. In fact, our knowledge revolves around how we can own what nature hides - physical laws, chemical reactions and photosynthesis. In this sense, ownership leads to another sort of exploitation - how might we use nature and modify how it works such that we can derive the most monetary gain? Our need for ownership stretches far beyond land on Earth. Here is a woman that claims to have bought the rights to the Sun (thanks for this, Sherri!), and she fully intends to charge all users of the Sun.

It is fascinating how humans, that live individually on time scales of decades, can "own" something that has existed long before they did, and will continue to exist long after they are gone. Notions of ownership have in fact produced just the opposite of what we would want - what we would want is for our nature to sustain us for as long as possible, but in our quest to own, we have degraded. Just the reverse of how we think is what might be more logical- we are owned by this land, this air and this water, and our fate is tied to our respect to those forces.

Ownership also plays a significant part in our daily lives, and its influence also leads to much waste and trash. My laptop computer is now seven years old; it hobbles along, and at times sounds like a jet aircraft at full throttle trying to take off. I have not yet bought a new computer. In fact, I have used the computer just a couple of times in the past four or five months. Many of you might say, "How have you been living so long without a computer?" My answer is simple - there are computers in my lab, and all around campus, and so I don't need one of my own. I guess it would be more "convenient" to have one of my own, so I would not  have to bug my housemates to look something up every now and then (although I think I may have asked them just a few times in the past few months). Had I felt the need to own a computer of my own, I would have had to acquiesce to all of the trash and violence associated with such a purchase. (I know there are tons of people who hoard used computers and sell them - that may be an option.) But in general, there are things that all of us don't need to have, and maybe we can make due with just one lawnmower for a row of five homes, or and older family may be able to hand toys down to a younger family. A refusal to have one's own may in fact lead to stronger, more resilient social bonds.