Stepping into nature with Syndallas Baughman and Rowena Conahan

I have written about the complexities of fear a few times. Fear is something we have become culturally accustomed to. We are fearful that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon and nuke our allies in the Middle East, and so, the timing of the "end" of the Iraq invasion couldn't be more perfect. We are fearful that we will be called "anti-American" if we say things we aren't "supposed" to, and we bite our tongues. We are fearful of what a changed humanscape would look like if ecologically degrading capitalism were to end, and so, we build a bigger and bigger house of cards. There is probably also the fear of retribution on the part of those that have committed ecological and social atrocities, making it impossible for those people to come forward in catharsis.

The primal and paralysing nature of fear makes it the perfect human emotion to cater to to maintain the status quo. How might we overcome fear? Is there a way that we can, by ourselves, liberate ourselves from it? Reconnecting with the outdoors, with nature, seems like a powerful way towards this liberation. The opposite of fear is a melange of positivity, hope, courage, and engagement. These are things we need to make meaningful strides towards treading more lightly on this Earth, and moving towards a more cherishing relationships with those we do not agree with.

Syndallas Baughman and Rowena Conahan, founders of the Ann Arbor Nature School, are two of the calmest people I have ever met (listen to their voices below), and they make very compelling cases of how a reconnection with the outdoors and an understanding of ourselves as children of the Earth can lead to more peaceful, healing, and empowering lives. I shared a few words with them at the Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival a few days ago.

A few words with Syndallas

A few words with Rowena

Some thoughts on fear and forgiveness

What is needed is a sort of catharsis. We must wash ourselves of all the ecologically and humanistically debasing things that pervade our culture. What we must seek instead is, as Tim DeChristopher has said,

...a humane world...[a] world that values humanity...a world where we meet our emotional needs not through the consumption of material goods, but through human relationships...[a] world where we measure our progress not through how much stuff we produce, but through our quality of life—whether or not we’re actually promoting a higher quality of life for human beings.

And such a world can only come from a deeply changed ethic that values (not monetarily) Earth and everything that resides in and on it. But how do we overcome the fear that can be paralysing when taking new, bold steps? I don't claim to know about this in any great depth or detail, but it is apparent to me that any meaningful, positive steps that will lead to a more holistic future must be hopeful, be courageous, and come with an acceptance of newness and the unchartered.

Fear is a powerful controlling force. (But hope and courage are liberating.) Fear is primal, and is the fear that is tapped into to convince us that the "enemies" are "planning to attack our way of life," allowing those with power to use our "consent" to act violently. At the same time, fear prevents us from presenting ourselves as whole before the world because it prevents us from admitting defeat or apologising for our mistakes; we are fearful of vengeance and retaliation. I wonder, do those that engage in ecologically degrading activities, and know that they are, not come clean because they are scared of the consequences of doing so? Possibly, for many companies and people try to hide their mistakes and disasters by not confessing or owning up to them. How has the way we've structured adjudication and law made people scared? If we are able to forgive, will we live in a less fearful world? I think so. How might fear look in an ecologically holistic world? For now, I'll leave you with these words from Conversations on Forgiveness)

Forgiveness is an opportunity for transformation, both individually and collectively. It not only helps relieve mental and emotional anguish, but it offers the possibility for change, for redemption, for restoration—for hope and even love to blossom from pain and suffering. It can stop a cycle of hurt and create opportunity where there seemed to be none. Most of all, it has the potential to heal and open our hearts to love again and more fully, strengthening and building our capacity for compassion and understanding.

What we lose through "efficiency"

As an engineer that works in a combustion laboratory, I am constantly surrounded by the miracles of modern machinery. Let me tell you about some of the things around my lab. There exists a vacuum pump that can pull a large volume to near vacuum, to a pressure lower than exists at the higher reaches of the atmosphere. There exist fast-acting solenoid valves that have an open-shut cycle time of 2 milliseconds to capture with high accuracy and precision small volumes of gas to understand how fuels break down. There exist computers that can solve systems of very stiff differential equations to understand chemical kinetics. There exists lasers that emit photons with high spatial and temporal coherence. All of these gadgets, gizmos and machinery are made to operate as "efficiently" as possible - use the least amount of energy to get a certain amount of work out. This seems wonderful - planes now fly on 40% less fuel per kilometre than they did 40 years ago. Efficiency can work marvels with engineering, and in some sense, "save" the environment. But it can also wreak havoc on the environment and more primal attributes of our world.

My thoughts are flowing at this moment primarily through food, but one may apply this thought process to other forms of human behaviour. In our attempt to increase output of food, we have turned to fossil fuels and chemicals and genetically modified seeds to allow increased yields (although this is completely debatable, and more likely than not false) given the size of a plot. Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan eloquently speak to the degradation of land, the waste of farming operations, and the lives of ecosystems that are ruined because of industrial agriculture. But Chef Dan Barber lends another perspective to the voices speaking out against industrial agriculture. On Being, he speaks to something food has lost over time due to excessive chemical and biological modification - flavour. Indeed, flavour, an essential quality of food, is nowhere talked about amongst large scale agribusinesses and farmers. As I have written about previously, food, when cooked with love and thought, using the right ingredients, can open up minds and hearts, and remind people of days gone by. In our quest to produce large amounts of food for increasingly lower costs to the customer (although the true costs are not billed, nor are calculable), the social aspect of food surrounding thought, smell, taste and emotion has been systematically neglected and carelessly snipped out of the DNA, both of the food and of our culture. With the loss of native species of crops, plants and animals, these things no longer survive in our collective memories. In the end, bland tasting tomatoes are shipped thousands of miles to be served as poor substitutes to the miraculous tastes of nature...generating trash along the way.