What makes us so special?

You know that feeling when things just really come together in your mind? When you've been trying to learn and comprehend for a long time, but some words and statements are read or heard that just act as the glue that binds the facts you know, your interpretation of them, and your consequent emotions? I am feeling a little bit of that right now, as I am part way through reading Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. (I am, of course, waiting for my mind to be completely blown by the end of the book. I will keep you posted :))

There is a righteous entitlement that humans feel about their lives, their rights, their wants. This is so, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of ecological degradation and human health degradation because of human activities. (Read for example, Mind Games, an essay by Sandra Steingraber in Orion, which talks about neuro-developmental disorders because of chemical loading in the environment.) There are of course many characteristics that make us different or special from other species on this planet, be it language, the way we modify the environment, the way we develop technologies, the way we think about the past, and so on. But, Ishmael's point is (to the point that I've read the book), these differences do not exempt us from the fundamental processes and laws that guide all life forms and communities. In thinking we are are god's gift to Earth, thinking that this Earth was meant for human domination, for our lives, we rape it unabated to the extent that we feel we are benefiting from it.

This is something we really need to think about. I see themes of this "special" thinking in the reactions of the elite to the Occupy Wall Street movement, in the responses of the investment bankers and financiers to reform, in the responses of oil and gas executives to stricter environmental regulations, and so on. These people think that they are entitled to the profits they reap, that they are being righteous in their efforts, to the point of benevolence. (See, for example, an eye-opening essay by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, about Art Pope...a really rich man with a lot of influence in North Carolina.) I think that a major movement in environmentalism and sustainability must be founded on the acceptance and understanding that we are decidedly not special, that we cannot hold nature at bay, that we are subject to the ebbs and flows of it.

What do you think makes us special? How can we move away from it?

Against the tide

As you may have come to realise, one of the main reasons why we face such dire ecological crises is because contemporary societies have designed themselves to be "outside of nature" with the desire to control our experiences. Our interactions with it have been minimised, and our bubble has been built around extracting energy and material from nature and the environment around us, and depositing degraded materials and energy back outside of our bubble, into nature. Our ethic is defined by doing what we want "in here," and not worrying about what happens "out there," as long as the flow of materials and energy in continues, and as long we can continue dumping what we want out there. We have created this disconnect in order to shirk responsibility in dealing with shortcomings of our philosophies and mental capacities, and in our humility.


I am reading this fascinating book by Alan Weisman, called The World Without Us, in which he envisions how nature might take over human structures and landscapes such as houses and cities. We have many times fought against nature in creating spaces for us to live, eat, and sleep. In having done so, we constantly struggle to maintain what it is we've invested in. For example, in having "reclaimed" land, like in The Netherlands, we are compelled to keep the forces of water at bay by constructing something like Maeslantkering.

Weisman describes the fascinating case of what it takes to keep the New York subway system running smoothly. Everyday, those running the subway must keep 13 million gallons of water from overpowering the tunnels. Because there is little soil and vegetation to absorb rainwater and groundwater, subway tunnels funnel the water into themselves. There are 753 pumps, maintained by crews, that have to pump water uphill constantly, because of the depth of the subway tunnels, and natural groundwater that gushes up from bedrock. Weisman writes, "Following the World Trade Center attack, an emergency pump train bearing a jumbo portable diesel generator pumped out 27 times the volume of Shea Stadium. Had the Hudson River actually burst through the PATH train tunnels that connect New York's subways to New Jersey, as was greatly feared, the pump train-and possibly much of the city-would simple have been overwhelmed." Pat Schuber, superintendent of Hydraulics for New York City Transit continues, "When this pump facility shuts down [because of no electricity], in half an hour water reaches a level where trains can't pass anymore."

There seems to be an ethic, prevalent throughout our interactions amongst ourselves, and with nature, of domination and competition. We want to dominate other people and their principles (leading to armed conflict), and we want to dominate the forces of nature by creating structures that nature wants to topple, and by demolishing violently natural areas for things of monetary "value." What if we were to live our lives not forcefully against the tide of nature, but rather with it?

Limits, of another kind

I have mentioned in a few posts that there are limits to the human mind. There are limits on cognition, understanding, complexity, interconnectedness, scale and intricacy. Nature is truly complex, truly interconnected, truly intricate and of a magnitude of scales. We cannot comprehend everything, and we will never understand everything. At some level, it isn't worth trying to. We want to know things so we can control them. We want to know various laws of physics and chemistry such that when we want to make a computer or atomic weapon, we'll know how to do it. But there is also a loss of freedom, as Wendell Berry states, of the living species we try to know and understand. Knowing more species of plants and animals, although will give us a clearer understanding of our negative impacts on the planet, can lead to exploitation of their skins and bones, blood and enzymes.

But there is a limit of another kind I'd like to talk about. I started thinking about this after my friend Lydia sent me this picture:

Lydia is a Geology PhD student, and her work takes her to Tibet and Western China. This photo was taken in town of Xidatan in the Qinghai Province of China. She said to me, "This, I would say, is probably one of the cleaner towns we saw. I'm not sure if that truck actually dumped a pile of trash in the middle of the town, but that's kind of what it looks like." Well, Lydia, I think you're right. That looks like a pile of trash to me, in the middle of pristine Earth.

Clearly, our ethic for living on this Earth has been dominion, domination and anthropocentrism. This has left us with no where on Earth that is untouched, unscathed, unchanged or unmodified. Wherever we go, we must leave our mark - our mark through trash. Is there a way to define our limits to dominion? Is there a way to say we will leave a pristine patch of creation (for the religious readers out there), Earth, soil, water and air to itself and the forces of nature? The problem with our communities and societies is that we don't live in a place anymore. We are on the move, always looking for something new, something different, something to change, something to extract. Indeed, if we defined our boundaries, we would have to have greater moral, ethical, social and cultural imagination to make sure our Earth in a particular place can sustain us, the frogs, the fish, the birds and the trees of that place.