Wabi Sabi, the aesthetic of decay

Globalisation and industrialisation can be understood to unfold in two diametrically opposite ways (as with any politic)--their proponents view them as ways to produce things more "efficiently" and bridge cultures, while opponents view them as mechanisms of ecological and cultural homogenisation, mechanisms of disregard for people and place. What cannot be denied, though, is that mass production of anything leads to a uniformity of outcome. Assembly lines strive to make the same exact car, and forks and spoons and jeans and computers are all made to be the same. On the other hand, you have the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi Sabi, so wonderfully described by John Flowers, a philosophy graduate student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, at the Building Bridges conference on philosophy and waste. Just as I did yesterday, I would like to quote some passages from John's paper first.

Whereas the western potter would see the cracked, imperfect pot as a wasted effort, a Japanese potter, enmeshed in the aesthetic of wabi would have little qualms with the display of this vase as an epitome of his aesthetic craft. That is, wabi, as an aesthetic, seeks to find and represent the beautiful in those things that are imperfect, withered, or even damaged by the passing of time. Wabi then seeks the beautiful not in the perfect symmetry prized by western ideals of beauty, but in the asymmetry and irregular structure evidenced in the natural world that surrounds us: it is an ideal that elevates imperfection, as representative of impermanence, or mujou in the Zen Buddhist lexicon, to the highest levels of beauty and thus finds the beauty in those things whose form has long since deteriorated.

Thus, wabi, as an aesthetic, takes objects ravaged by time or imperfect in their creation, and finds within them a conspicuous beauty that surpasses the material. More than that, wabi takes objects which, under other aesthetics, would be discarded for their worn or irreparably damaged appearance and elevates them to a position of high art: it re-values decay and forces the connoisseur of art to re-evaluate their perspective on beauty itself...In the modern sense, wabi is often paired with sabi, which is a qualitative principle of feeling that refers to the specific quality of the emotions of the artist or the perceiver that arise in response to imagery.

...in the Shinto conception, those things which most accurately reflect the natural order, that is constant flux, are the most valued. In this sense, a cracked and faded porcelain vase, an iron kettle rusted from use or a sword whose chipped edge shows its age are considered the highest forms of art. It is through the contemplation of these objects, that the appreciator of sabi art begins to sense the ebb and flow of nature...

...under wabi, beauty can never fade: it only grow deeper with the passing of time and the accretion of subtle qualities of impermanence that serve to deepen the beauty of the object by reminding us, through the feeling of sabi, of the evanescence of all life, that we should savor each moment as it comes, rather than longing for it to last forever.

Therefore the "imperfect" tea cup, the changing landscape of a garden, and the sculptures constantly affected by weather are all wabi art. Their beauty is in their ever-changing uniqueness. (Images taken from Kevin Taylor's commentary on John Flower's paper.)

I find these thoughts to be extremely fascinating, for several reasons. I have written many times about the appreciation of place and time that is so essential if we are to make any meaningful attempts at sustainability and combating ecological degradation. I believe that the arguments for an such an appreciation of art and object can easily be translated to our surroundings, our most mundane possessions. If we appreciate what we have, we will not want more. If we do not want more, we refuse to tolerate harm being done to the Earth and its people in the name of production, industrialisation, and materialism.

 

(Nick, Farid, Cara, David and I made our own wabi sabi art. =))

Eating trash: putting the thingness back into food

Today, I want to share with you the beautiful writing of Farid Rener, an electrical engineer, musician, and bike mechanic from Montreal, Canada. Farid's paper at the Building Bridges conference, titled The apple has expired: The poetry is in the trash, is one of the most thoughtful and wonderful papers I have come across. Influenced by the philosophers Martin Heidegger and Bruce Foltz, Farid talks about how a trash receptacle can instantaneously take away all of the appleness in an apple, and how dumpster diving actually serves as a restoration of the appleness into the apple, giving the apple a fuller appreciation of its thingness. Farid writes (with a little bit of restructuring and editing for the purposes of this post),

The apple is only an apple if its essence is revealed, which can only be done if the apple is used in a proper manner: “only proper use brings the thing to its essence and keeps it there.” (Foltz, p.161) The apple, through use, is no longer simply an object, nor simply a resource–it is a thing. Allowing the apple to thing is a conserving act...: "Conserving is a looking after and a caring for that frees a thing into its essence and safeguards it there, precisely through a use that is in accord with its essence." (Foltz, p.162).

Our waste receptacles are given more power than most other things in our homes – somehow everything that we place in them is transformed from thing to waste no matter what it is. Treating the apple as garbage, challenges the apple out of its thingness, and draws out its very essence, its "whatness" (Foltz, p.128), removing from it any appleness, and instilling in it a complete uselessness [beautiful]. Through our action of discarding, we do not allow the apple to thing, and since "Thinging is the nearing of the world," (Heidegger, p.179) we put the apple at a distance, removing it from our world, contributing to the “worldlessness of [our] technological epoch.” (Foltz, p.118)

Dumpster-divers, however, bring the apple near again. Freeing the apple from the destiny of the landfill spares the apple and returns it to its own being: “To free really means to spare. The sparing itself consists not only in the fact that we do not harm the one whom we spare. Real sparing is something positive and takes place when we leave something beforehand in its own nature, when we return it specifically to its being, when we “free” it in the real sense of the word into a preserve of peace” (Heidegger, p.147). The reclaiming of the apple is thus poetic since, “to be a human being… means to dwell,” (Foltz, p.157) and “poetically man dwells upon the earth.” The fact that it was seen, and respected, for what it was, an apple, brings the apple back into appleness.

Divers are the resuscitators of these things that have not yet perished. Seeing past the veil that the technology of the trashcan places on these things, the freegan reveals the underlying nature of the thing, recognizing the life that still permeates many of those items that others deem waste. Reviving waste is a direct denial that the earth is a “stockpile or inventory that is constantly available”–gleaning resources from those things that no longer fit within our technological frameworks allows the nourishing character of the earth to reveal itself. This is in contrast to those things which technologically characterize nourishment: expiry dates, intactness and cleanliness—a bruised and dirty apple is still delicious.

Farid further writes about how consigning the apple to a landfill also prevents the apple from revealing itself, for an apple is not only an apple to us. Rather, it also serves as nourishment for the soil it decays into, which is not possible in landfills. In essence, Farid talks about how mindlessly we tend to discard things, objects, food, because of socially-constructed norms of what things "should be." In these acts of discarding we signify that the thing is not fit to exist in the intimacy of places dear to us, and that some other space, assigned a zero value in our minds, is where the object is fit for non-existence.

In conclusion, Farid writes, go eat trash.

References
Foltz, Bruce V. Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental Ethics, and the Metaphysics of Nature.
Atlantic Highlands, N.J: Humanities Press, 1995.

Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Perennical Classics, 2001.

Building bridges: philosophy and waste

“It is almost as if philosophy — and most of all the great, deep, constructive philosophy — obeyed a single impulse: to get away from the place of carrion, stench, putrefaction. And just because of this distance, which gains its depth from that most wretched place, philosophy is no doubt in perennial danger of itself becoming just as thin, untrue, and wretched.” (Adorno, “Metaphysics and Materialism”)

I have been out of town for the past few days, attending the most wonderful conference I have been to: Building Bridges - philosophy and waste. Originally scheduled to be held on the campus of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, it ended up being (for the better) at a small art space in downtown Carbondale. Over the next few days, I will talk about what I learned from this conference, one replete with intimate discussions about aesthetics, privacy, activism, human cognition, communities, metaphysics, and anarchy...Adorno would have been proud. As I have come to appreciate, the role of any critical thought, such as in philosophy, must be to stimulate action, both of the self, and in the other. We cannot expound on discussions about being and ethics without changing ourselves and our presence in the world.

I will discuss the papers presented (including mine), the discussions had, and how my imagination has been opened to consider far more than what I have so far in my discussions about trash, waste, materialism, ethics, and environmental justice. I am hopeful that your imagination will be piqued and provoked, and that you, too, will be driven to act after you have pondered. For today, I leave with the motivation of the conference, written by the most brilliant Nick Smaligo, a philosopher who is more a spirit, an energy, a force, than a human.

Today, we “know” that “there is no away.” Reflecting on the concept of the “away,” and tracing its impossibility, leads to what Timothy Morton calls “the ecological thought”: that all beings (and not just living ones) exist in a mesh, where no divisions can be strictly upheld.  The thought is a moment of enlightenment, of consciousness raising, that corrodes the phenomenal boundaries and holes that shape our world.

Nevertheless, we still act as if there is an “away” —  a place where thought need not go, where things lose their thingness and blend together into quiet, motionless nothing; a black hole from which no effects can escape, and thus no thoughts need enter.

This is likely a major form of repression today: we must subdue our knowledge of the interconnectedness of all beings in order to participate in a lifeworld which is built on the idea that we can “get away from the place of carrion,” etc. And, clearly, this repressed is returning in the material forms of ecological crises, an Anthropocene age where our activity returns to shake the ground on which we act. The psychic forms in which this repressed is returning are perhaps even harder to detect.

Conference flyer

Nick Smaligo

Language

This post is about words, meaning and language. Yesterday, I received an email from someone whose thoughts I value. He raised a couple of issues about my article in The Michigan Daily from the 10th of November, 2010. This post is in no way intended to be an attack on him or anyone who feels the same way he does, absolutely not; the points he raises are legitimate, and I want to address them and provide clarification and context to the article. Hopefully we can have conversations about this.

First, he raises the issue of my usage of words. If you've read the blog, you might have noticed that I have a tendency to use quotation marks around some words, for example words like "developing country." I would like to explain why. In talking to many professors, students and others about concepts and issues "sustainability," people's perceptions about what that word means, or even at a lower level, what the word "environmentalism" means, changes from person to person. Many of the words used do not have set  meanings, leaving them ripe for, for lack of a better word, kidnapping to mean whatever people want the word to mean. It really bugs me how people use the word "sustainable" or "green" in whatever way they choose to use it. But what this means is that definitions are fuzzy, and are constantly evolving. In fact, many of the conversations I've had with various people, from urban planning to natural resources, have revolved around developing a common language that we all can relate to and understand.

On the other hand, you have words that the world has for some reason come to accept, which I have not. In the article from yesterday, in the third to last paragraph, I used quotation marks around "modernization." This may give off the impression that other people use the word incorrectly, that the word doesn't or shouldn't mean what it is generally accepted to mean. Other examples, again, are words and concepts like "developed country," and "developing country." These words are loaded with value judgements, and have been defined by people who wish to place their values on others not like them, particularly in the context of imperialism of all sorts - cultural, economic, etc. I used quotation marks because I don't like how "modernization" is used. I want to point out that if you use "modernization," the average person will say that this means increase in income, owning a TV, car, and computer (necessarily involving trash in the case of the article in the Daily). What some people might also say is that it also relates to changes in social structure. But modernization to the world is absolutely a Western-style modernization. I think there can be other sorts of modernization, like living harmoniously with nature, place and people, without necessarily violently extracting resources from the Earth and leaving degradation behind. That is the modernization I wish to see. This is at some level why I do use quotation marks - to point out that there can be alternate definitions to those widely accepted.

The second issue he raised was about my explanation of sacrifice. I mention that when we sacrifice, we choose to make something sacred. With my no-trash project, I have sacrificed new clothes, and an iPhone. But I would like to think that what I have made sacred are the Earth, people, and natural resources sacred. In her mind, what I am doing is not sacred, and that talking about sacrifice could make people think that I think I am a martyr. I absolutely don't consider myself a martyr, and I hope those reading this blog don't, either. Here is why I talk about sacrifice. An example is worthwhile.If someone has been smoking and realises that it is bad for them, they quit smoking. What they have chosen to do is consider their body sacred, directly, and the bodies of others around them sacred, directly or indirectly. I have absolutely sacrificed things and experiences with trying to live trash-free. Any choice we make involves some sacrifice, what economists would like to call "opportunity costs." I don't like the use of technical jargon for stuff like the Michigan Daily, so I choose to use the word "sacrifice," because at least in this case, it fully encapsulates what I'm trying to get at. Further, it is something we all can relate to. We all, well many people, sacrifice, all the time. I am not insisting that everyone go trash-free, although that would be nice. What I am indirectly saying is that if there is to be any change in our society, sacrifice of all kinds will be a must - sacrifice of coal, sacrifice of rare Earth metals, sacrifice of "convenience," etc.

Lastly, he questions why I chose to talk about philosophy, rather than provide concrete examples of how people can themselves reduce their trash. I think that for any sort of durable change, change which people internalise and think constantly about, there has to be more of a connection than saying, "Don't use plastic bags." Therefore, I chose to explain why I am doing what I am doing. I know everyone doesn't share my philosophy, but I think it is important to explain myself before people make their judgments about what I'm doing.