WaggleDance :: ScentPost ::

The Speed of History

R4mr0d Inc — Mon, 07 May 2012 04:50:24 +0000

It is a cliché to claim, “everything is changing so fast, faster and faster all the time, the world is unrecognizable now to an 80 year old.” People say this without thinking, and then sit back as if they have said something profound and now we must ponder it. But I am not so sure.
Sometimes I think it may be more a matter of perspective.
If you are sitting at the side of a long, straight highway, in the desert, you can see an oncoming semi-truck from miles away, and from that distance it does not appear to be moving very fast. It is only as it approaches you that you begin to sense the tremendous speed with which it is barreling down the highway; and just as it is passing you, its speed is unimaginable — too fast to be perceived.
Just so, life in the distant past seems not to have changed very much. But it’s important to realize that, just as with the truck, we don’t have access to many details about what that life was like. It is tiny, indistinct at such a distance. It is only as we approach our own era that we begin to have access to such granularity of detail that objectively small changes seem tremendously important; and the world around us, our own lives, is rushing past us with such a wealth of detail that we really have no sense of perspective about whether it is “changing” or not.
One day, historians will say, “in the late 20th century there was a style of music called “pop,” and it was performed by a musical group called “The Beatles.” We think there may have also been others, but we’re not sure.”
Someone living at the time The Beatles were making music would have been exquisitely attuned to each new record they released, would have been intimately aware of the networks of mutual influence among them and all the other bands active at the time. This granularity of detail is already lost to us. We, on the other hand, feel that if we neglect to check the blogs for a month we’re hopelessly out of date.
Much is made of communications technology, and the ways the world has “shrunk.” But it strikes me that no real improvement in the speed of communication has been made since the first telegraph cable was laid. Neither telephone nor radio nor internet is any faster. It is just different types of information that are making the the journey. Future historians may see it this way. “In the 19th Century people discovered how to send information down a wire, and for some reason they continued using this inefficient method for several hundred years, with no real advancement until our era, when Jones invented the semiotoblast,” they may write. We, intoxicated by the granularity of detail we are experiencing, see the tablet computer as a “revolution.”
Even more ridiculous to my way of thinking is the absurd assumption that “hunter-gatherers” (as if such disparate lifeways could be referred to by a collective noun in this way) living today can tell us all we need to know about their and our pleistocene ancestors, because “nothing changes for them,” as if that was obvious on the face of it, as if any of us had access to a metric that could determine such a fact. It seems much more likely to me that we are simply unable to see the ways their lives are changing; as Brian Eno succinctly put it once, “‘primitive’ means we don’t know the ways in which it’s advanced.”

Group Ownership

R4mr0d Inc — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:50:02 +0000

Owning land together with someone, or in a group, is fraught with troubles. All around are stories of friends who entered into shared purchases of vacation land when they were younger, for instance, and now their co-owners cannot afford to do any upkeep, and the property values are falling, and no one can buy anyone else out. Or couples, now separated, who own property together, and cannot subdivide, and despite their colossal increase in paper wealth as the property has appreciated, one of them refuses to sell.
We all know examples like this; so it is obvious that shared real property should be entered into only fenced about with complex and unpleasantly litigious agreements, and even then is likely to end in irritation if not tears. So be it.
But there is (perhaps) a reason for this.
I am an anti-capitalist. But I do not believe, as most anti-capitalists do, that the root of all post-colonial evil is the economic exploitation of workers by bosses, the alienation of workers from the surplus produced by their work. I think it is an evil, but not the root. Nor do I believe, as many do, that our problem is money, that we need to find a new means of exchange, or perhaps a gift economy. I agree that this would be a good thing, but I’m not sure it is possible without further change.
Nor do I even feel that the issue is one of private property — that we feel we can own something like a flat-screen television, or a slave. I agree that this is a strange idea. But not the strangest I have heard.
The strangest idea I have heard is the idea that you can own an area of the earth — real property. That, in the words of Chief Joseph, the earth could belong to us, not we to it. Sentimental, perhaps, but after some thought I am sure it is a bizarre and corrosive idea, and until we can erase such a strange idea from our minds our society must inevitably remain violent and unfair. For it is founded on a principle of unparalleled violence and unfairness. The insane idea that the earth itself can be owned, or that one can own some bundle of rights to it.
And, as it happens, the society into which we have been born holds that as a fundamental right — believes, in principle, that not only can the earth be owned but that it is all owned, by someone; that good fences make good neighbors, and any areas not owned by individuals are owned in common.
So as it turns out, communal ownership is not a solution to this problem, though it sometimes seems to be. It is a dysfunctional solution. It leaves unchallenged the underlying assumption — that real property can be owned — while attempting a rearrangement at the level of consequences. This is why utopian gestures — announcing “this bus owns itself, the pink slip is in the glove compartment,” “this house is the peoples’ house, anyone can do what they want here” — almost inevitably devolve into traditional ownership. 3/4 of the time, the original paper owners step back in, assert their rights, and take their responsibilities; 1/4 of the time it is a total trainwreck, the property is taken from its would-be liberators, and, eventually, some dystopian entity assumes traditional ownership.
Better, in my opinion, to use the language of mainstream society to engage its social contract in a way that avoids these outcomes, while remembering, and making space for, the truth that we belong to the earth, not it to us; that, no matter how it appears, we wander free upon its surface; that our lives are short and its is long.

A Witch’s Egg (Part 6)

R4mr0d Inc — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 05:02:41 +0000

Howard T Odum

Arne Naess

Rolf Lidberg

Archetypal Time

R4mr0d Inc — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 04:40:31 +0000

Time is not linear — or not necessarily. That is just a way of looking at it.

Another way of looking at it is as a circle.

Instead of extending in a line, from past to future, with the present represented by a tiny dot somewhere in the middle, both ends extending infinitely,

we think of it as circling, or,

as an unconnected collection of moments.

There is the moment of sunset, when it is time to prepare dinner,

the moment of sunrise, when it is time to shake off sleep.

Any moment of sunset is one with all the others,

is one with all the others, forever,

there is only that.

Sunrise does not “follow” night; night is its own moment.

Each moment is fully itself, and not in the way that a dot on a line is fully itself; it is fully itself as a circle returning to a certain point on its traversal.

We do not think, “now it is evening, what have I accomplished on this day — this is day # 15332 of my life — tomorrow is almost here” etc.

Instead we think, “now it is evening. I know this moment. This is the moment of beginning to prepare an evening meal. I wonder what’s in the fridge.”

Each moment fully itself, an archetype.

Not embedded in a line.

Not embedded in a circular kind of line, either; when we say “circular,’ we mean really “archetypal” time;

time in which cyclic moments are archetypes, and our responses to them are ritualized, are whole.

We say,

NOW the sun is high in the sky, and it is time for lunch,

NOW the bell has rung, and it is time for zazen,

NOW the rainy season has begun, and it is time to bring in the furniture,

NOW the first flowers are blooming on the plum trees, and it is time to plant the crops,

NOW the shortest night of the year, time to build a bonfire and leap over it.

NOW a child is born, we must care for it,

NOW I am lying in my bed, can no longer get up, and it is time to say goodbye to this beautiful world.

Each moment is fully itself, and in a way it does not matter if it was “you” who experienced it all those other times,

or if, in fact, it was “other people,” “ancestors” — in this circular time it is always now, you do what the moment calls out of you, as your ancestors did before you,

as you did all those other times,

as you and people will continue to do forever.

You don’t think, “it is evening, exactly 24 hours ago I was also preparing dinner,”

you think, “it is evening, time to prepare dinner, as it always was and always will be.”

Your ancestors are participating in the moment with you,

all the earlier versions of “you” are also ancestors, are also here in this moment, participating.

You could produce earlier versions of “you,” through memory, and think, “I did it this way this time, I did it that way that time,”

but this thinking is unnecessary; your response to this moment is already informed by the other times you’ve met this moment,

and really what is happening is that the moment is alive.

Really what is happening is that the moment is alive,

there is no “you,” no “object,” the moment is what is;

but it is harder to perceive this burdened with the image of a moment as a point on an infinite line,

the idea that time is flowing somehow, or that we are moving down it, moving along it.

We are, in fact, so strongly conditioned by this model of what time is, of how it works,

that it is difficult for us to think of anything else as being “time” at all,

difficult to see that this cyclical time, archetypal time, ritual time,

is still time, but a time that does not flow,

a time of moments that are just what they are.

Difficult for us to realize that we do not FEEL time flowing,

that we cannot SEE it extending infinitely back and forward;

that actually the time we experience is so different from the time we think.

That there is no “moment,” here and gone,

but a NOW which is spacious, big enough to hold whatever we need to find in it, big enough for an entire life if we let it be.

First impressions

R4mr0d Inc — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 15:27:43 +0000

First impressions are usually correct. The reason for this is the temporal and logical opposite of what you might think.

It is not because of any insight on our part. Nor is it because of any signals sent through gesture, clothing, pheromones or wrinkles.

It is because the “person” we eventually come to “know” is always at least half our own invention.

She is a co-creation.

This is also why friends’ deaths have such a strange effect. The body has died, it is incontrovertible. But somehow, we feel the “person” is still there. A ghost.

The “person” that we knew, whose death we mourn, was always at least half our own creation. At least half (maybe it is much more — I cannot be sure of the proportion) of our loved one carries on regardless of the body’s death.

This is equally true of our “enemies” as of our “friends.”

They have some limited autonomy, to help or harm us. But at least half of what they do is our invention.

So, of course our first impressions are correct. We may have already imagined such a person in fact. Our imagination must simply continue its procedure, and the person, perhaps without realizing it, becomes what we had already imagined her to be.

Lest this seem discouraging, we must always remember that this is also true of ourselves.

Whatever we think we are, it is at least half imagination.

Further, whatever our existence in the world, it is at least half our friends’ and enemies’ creation.

Predictions

R4mr0d Inc — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 15:07:25 +0000

1. Most, but not all, of the carbon in the earth will be turned into CO2 by humans. It will be stopped short of complete transformation by an epidemic combined with social and economic collapse which will, in turn, be caused by the rising price of getting the carbon out of the ground.

2. The epidemic in question has a simple cause which is overcrowding — not overpopulation per se but the economic arithmetic which is leading to exponential urbanization around the world. Human monocultures combined with overuse of antibiotics will inevitably lead to epidemic disease, simply because bacteria and viruses have lifetimes several orders of magnitude shorter than ours and evolve that much faster.

3. No one knows what the effect on global climate of this catastrophic release of CO2 will be. The overall response of warming is fairly linear, and thus theoretically predictable. However the global climate is a non-linear system and thus inherently unpredictable even in the short term. Unpredictable literally means “un-predictable.” No computer has been designed which can make a prediction about the effect of this warming on the global climate. The results of climate models run on computers — positive feedback, leading to a surface temperature equivalent to that of Venus, a new ice age, or something in between — are nothing better than guesses. These results cannot be assigned a probability, or a margin of error.

4. High tech methods, like photovoltaic cells, integrated fast reactors, clean coal, etc, will do absolutely nothing to stop this process. The fundamental reason for this is that humans are not smart enough to design foolproof systems. Any design-intensive solution will fall victim to the law of unintended consequences. Further, human politics are only human neurosis writ large. We are a short-sighted species and, as long as there are profits to be made, long-term rational decisions will not be made. This is because profit is a proxy for evolutionary fitness and we have no choice but to maximize it. Also, the non-linearity of the global climate system assures that hard evidence of climate change will not be available to us until it is too late to turn back. Photovoltaic cells, fast reactors, geoengineering, GM crops and the rest of it are brought to us by the same minds that brought us thalidomide, DDT, Chernobyl, the Green Revolution, and biofuels — that is minds intoxicated by hubris and profoundly conditioned by greed and short-sightedness. Minds exactly like our own.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (13)

R4mr0d Inc — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 05:25:10 +0000

I feel the whole valley is full of my spirit. I look up and see the rock I meditated on yesterday afternoon, look down & see the pond I bathed in this morning.
This morning on my way to bathe I watched an old turtle wait for a young one as they migrated downstream.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (12)

R4mr0d Inc — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 05:23:29 +0000

Butterflies:
Mid Fork Coyote Creek –
–Tiger’s-eye orange with umber veins. 3 cm.
–Yellow & black striped
–Black with yellow spots, line of red dots on wingtips, 3 cm.
–Brown with eyes on wings, 2 cm

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (11)

R4mr0d Inc — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 05:17:10 +0000

Historically ours has been the losing side. Humans with a connection to the Earth have been perpetually disenfranchised and slaughtered by those without. So be it. The biota does not care. (The biota cannot “care.”)

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (10)

R4mr0d Inc — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:58:43 +0000

Tents sprang up all along the valley last night, including right across the creek from me. That’s another thing I don’t quite get: tent-sleeping. I mean I get it psychologically — home = safety — but viewed objectively it’s such a funny thing to do (unless it’s raining or snowing). Last night was an exquisite, moonless, star-filled night, Venus, Mars & Mercury lined up in the sunset sky; later, at the darkest time, the Milky Way was like two strips of cloud across the heavens. To come all the way out here and then miss that — I don’t know.

Plus tents are manifestly unsafe for the same reason — they dull your senses. I could have strolled over there and tagged their packs (if I were that kind of hermit) and they would never have known.

In the pre-dawn dark, before even the birds began to sing, coyotes upstream let out the most insane-sounding song, like a chorus of maenads and banshees, really unearthly, and then all stopped at once. If I’d been in a tent I’d've been terrified. As it was I was terrified, but at least I knew where they were.

And in a tent I might have slept right through it, which would have been the greatest loss of all.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (9)

R4mr0d Inc — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:51:34 +0000

After bathing I stood in the river for a while, after the manner of my species.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (8)

R4mr0d Inc — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:50:30 +0000

Made Things in a World of Born Things

Balloon ribbon with a scrap of balloon
Balloon
Capri Sun container
Bottle cap reading “Smirnoff”
Rectangle of automobile tire

Thinking Out Loud (again)

R4mr0d Inc — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:40:01 +0000

“White on Black”: 2011, paint on sheet metal, wood, stain.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (7)

R4mr0d Inc — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:29:49 +0000

The problem with the Children of Abraham — adherents of the world’s monotheistic religions, in Gary Snyder’s happy phrase — is that their concept of God the creator of all blurs the distinction between made and born that is essential to humanity’s finding its way out of its current dilemma (well, I think so anyway — not that I’m especially hopeful). The trees were made by God and the cathedrals were made by man in praise of God, they say. And it becomes as if everything was made, and can be unmade and remade better.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (6)

R4mr0d Inc — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:25:45 +0000

Given how butterflies maneuver, that they get anywhere at all is surprising. That they migrate is incomprehensible.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (5)

R4mr0d Inc — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:22:58 +0000

Hunched over my pot of chili like a real prospector. Only I’m prospecting for nothing.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (4)

R4mr0d Inc — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:19:58 +0000

Buck language and doe language. Buck and doe language.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (3)

R4mr0d Inc — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:08:08 +0000

When I write, “world of contingency,” I mean that I am nothing other than a part of that world. Ripples and tides in it affect me. If I have no faith in it, I have no faith in myself. And vice versa. I am an expression of it. An animal among others. No more, but also thankfully no less, thanks to which I can survive here, without most of my made accoutrements.

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (2)

R4mr0d Inc — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 06:30:11 +0000

Butterflies:

–2 cm across, white, yellow wingtips

–3 cm across, speckled dark brown & gold

–1.5 cm, light violet with a little orange on the tail. Sit quietly for long periods of time on dry thistles at dusk.

All above on Middle Fork Coyote Creek

On Blue Ridge:

–4 cm yellow with black stripes fore & aft. Mating now. Black longitudinal stripes also.

East Fork Coyote Creek:

–1.5 cm ivory

Middle Fork again:

–2 cm, white, orange wingtips

The Terrible Beauty of the Bride (1)

R4mr0d Inc — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 06:20:28 +0000

In the woods, I am reborn into a world of contigency. I have no choice but faith in this world, and assumption of my role in it. My place in it. The realization that I have a place in it.

Conditioned as I become to my place in society, and the world of made things that are one eternal refusal or postponement of contingency.

Humans are like those sea-worms that excrete labyrynths around themselves. Wherever we go we line our highways and byways with made things.