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kimberlysteeleFor many, nature has become Star Trek’s holodeck. Nature is an experience in a buffet placed before the modernite: just one more item in the array of choices in the “you only live once” mindset. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s sci fi novel Aurora, the denizens of a spaceship bound for a distant planet only enjoy their home planet via a holodeck simulation: there is something infinitely sad about contemplating their fate, and I pity those who would try to replicate it in my lifetime by marooning themselves on Mars. The attitude of a person who does not understand what they are missing by becoming a space colonist is one that I recognize from my own childhood. When I was growing up and throughout most of my adult life, I didn’t talk to any of the entities in my house, the tree spirits outside, or my car on purpose. Instead, it would accidentally happen in the form of talking to myself, which when stressed I did compulsively.
For my atheist contemporaries (this includes the Faithful-In-Name-Only Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews), the wealthier they are, the more they tend to go the way of full-throttle materialism. When they are not inside their coastal, urban, climate-controlled townhomes or houses, they are in a fully-insured, dealership-detailed car on their way to another luxe, indoor space where they can consume to their heart’s content. Many of them have an intellectual admiration of the homespun arts but if they engage in anything so base, it is to showcase on a blog or on social media. Sustainability is a gesture and a virtue signal: it is done for show, not because one worries about a present or a future where there isn’t enough money. My atheist contemporaries hire it done. Lawn mowing, repairs, plumbing, and oftentimes, cooking is avoided in favor of hiring a team of professionals.
To the materialist atheist, wild spaces are museums to be preserved as a bulwark against human stupidity. When the materialist atheist has a tiny, momentary connection with wildness, it immediately churns the mud of cognitive dissonance. If they tune into the wild “frequency”, the resulting resonance ignites the outrage they have been trained all their lives to feel about wildness being destroyed by stupid humans. Anyone who has ever watched reruns of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom is familiar with the plaintive mantra: “But time is running out for the poor black-footed ferret. His habitat is encroached upon by greedy poachers and water pollution…” As with any nag, the sensible child learns to tune out the whining, hypocritical, chastising parent. The fleeting moment of connection with nature becomes unpleasant because as modern materialists, we cannot live up to the ideal of leaving the Wild Kingdom untouched and pristine. As the atheist ages, the painful connections to Nature (which is doomed) become suppressed and buried. They become crystallized under layers that form a great ball of hate. This hatred cannot be rationally dealt with in the conscious mind. The black pearl rooted in the gut is utterly occulted. For a special subset of materialists — the childfree, vegan atheists — its dispatches bubble to the surface as a passionate hatred of all those who ruin “Nature”. There is an undeniable reality that nothing creates more pollution or displaces more wildlife than the creation of more human children, especially if those children are upper middle class First Worlders.
The atheist has a hard time touching the emotion of a sunset or the joy of emerging chartreuse leaves in springtime because contact threatens to release the anger underneath the fear it is all going away. There are several bandaids that get slapped over the teeming cauldron and misunderstanding of the glacial cycles in which we are mere participants: one is Progress, the idea that there are new unspoiled wildernesses waiting to be spoiled in deep space. Another is the rallying cry of “Somebody’s got to do something!” This bleating is most popular among the Extinction Rebellion crowd, who buy into the popular delusion that civilization is going to end within the next decade. Childfree vegan atheists conveniently blame the entire species extinction predicament on the unexamined choices of “breeders” and throw up their hands because there is no stopping them. They do have a point: medical techno-triumphalism is responsible for extending human life far beyond its past due date, and it is easy to make a moral lesson out of the hideous depravity of keeping a severely deformed baby alive into young childhood “because we love her”.
It hurts to connect with the fleeting beauty you are certain is going to be Apocalypsed in a few short years. Duncan Creary, who produced James Howard Kunstler’s podcast for a time, spoke eloquently about the anxiety he felt whenever he saw a small patch of wild space in the suburbs where he grew up. Like me, he knew it and all its fauna would soon be razed for the next phase of “development”.
Of course atheists are still drawn to wild spaces, where they plan picnics, outdoor weddings, or hiking. The upper middle class version of a hike involves jet travel to international locales such as Macchu Picchu or the Tibetan Plateau, because that enables them to indulge their exotic fetishism while showing off how much money they have. What they don’t do is talk to the trees, the buildings, the furniture, or the vehicles they travel in because that would mean they are crazy. When they force themselves into the wilderness museum in the form of a nature preserve, they take every measure to shut down their senses lest their connection with those spaces tear at their heartstrings. To blunt their antennae, they try not to go into the forest preserve alone (wouldn’t want to allow the trees or the wind to get an uninterrupted message in there!), they wear sunglasses, listen to music through headphones, whiz through quickly on their bikes, or drink heavily/get stoned.
I remember what this condition was like. There is no one remedy for it, though discursive meditation would be a hell of a good start; discursive meditation and being willing to talk to your toaster oven, who after all does work very hard on your behalf.
For my atheist contemporaries (this includes the Faithful-In-Name-Only Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews), the wealthier they are, the more they tend to go the way of full-throttle materialism. When they are not inside their coastal, urban, climate-controlled townhomes or houses, they are in a fully-insured, dealership-detailed car on their way to another luxe, indoor space where they can consume to their heart’s content. Many of them have an intellectual admiration of the homespun arts but if they engage in anything so base, it is to showcase on a blog or on social media. Sustainability is a gesture and a virtue signal: it is done for show, not because one worries about a present or a future where there isn’t enough money. My atheist contemporaries hire it done. Lawn mowing, repairs, plumbing, and oftentimes, cooking is avoided in favor of hiring a team of professionals.
To the materialist atheist, wild spaces are museums to be preserved as a bulwark against human stupidity. When the materialist atheist has a tiny, momentary connection with wildness, it immediately churns the mud of cognitive dissonance. If they tune into the wild “frequency”, the resulting resonance ignites the outrage they have been trained all their lives to feel about wildness being destroyed by stupid humans. Anyone who has ever watched reruns of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom is familiar with the plaintive mantra: “But time is running out for the poor black-footed ferret. His habitat is encroached upon by greedy poachers and water pollution…” As with any nag, the sensible child learns to tune out the whining, hypocritical, chastising parent. The fleeting moment of connection with nature becomes unpleasant because as modern materialists, we cannot live up to the ideal of leaving the Wild Kingdom untouched and pristine. As the atheist ages, the painful connections to Nature (which is doomed) become suppressed and buried. They become crystallized under layers that form a great ball of hate. This hatred cannot be rationally dealt with in the conscious mind. The black pearl rooted in the gut is utterly occulted. For a special subset of materialists — the childfree, vegan atheists — its dispatches bubble to the surface as a passionate hatred of all those who ruin “Nature”. There is an undeniable reality that nothing creates more pollution or displaces more wildlife than the creation of more human children, especially if those children are upper middle class First Worlders.
The atheist has a hard time touching the emotion of a sunset or the joy of emerging chartreuse leaves in springtime because contact threatens to release the anger underneath the fear it is all going away. There are several bandaids that get slapped over the teeming cauldron and misunderstanding of the glacial cycles in which we are mere participants: one is Progress, the idea that there are new unspoiled wildernesses waiting to be spoiled in deep space. Another is the rallying cry of “Somebody’s got to do something!” This bleating is most popular among the Extinction Rebellion crowd, who buy into the popular delusion that civilization is going to end within the next decade. Childfree vegan atheists conveniently blame the entire species extinction predicament on the unexamined choices of “breeders” and throw up their hands because there is no stopping them. They do have a point: medical techno-triumphalism is responsible for extending human life far beyond its past due date, and it is easy to make a moral lesson out of the hideous depravity of keeping a severely deformed baby alive into young childhood “because we love her”.
It hurts to connect with the fleeting beauty you are certain is going to be Apocalypsed in a few short years. Duncan Creary, who produced James Howard Kunstler’s podcast for a time, spoke eloquently about the anxiety he felt whenever he saw a small patch of wild space in the suburbs where he grew up. Like me, he knew it and all its fauna would soon be razed for the next phase of “development”.
Of course atheists are still drawn to wild spaces, where they plan picnics, outdoor weddings, or hiking. The upper middle class version of a hike involves jet travel to international locales such as Macchu Picchu or the Tibetan Plateau, because that enables them to indulge their exotic fetishism while showing off how much money they have. What they don’t do is talk to the trees, the buildings, the furniture, or the vehicles they travel in because that would mean they are crazy. When they force themselves into the wilderness museum in the form of a nature preserve, they take every measure to shut down their senses lest their connection with those spaces tear at their heartstrings. To blunt their antennae, they try not to go into the forest preserve alone (wouldn’t want to allow the trees or the wind to get an uninterrupted message in there!), they wear sunglasses, listen to music through headphones, whiz through quickly on their bikes, or drink heavily/get stoned.
I remember what this condition was like. There is no one remedy for it, though discursive meditation would be a hell of a good start; discursive meditation and being willing to talk to your toaster oven, who after all does work very hard on your behalf.
Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-12 07:18 pm (UTC)I don't even care if nature and wildlife continue to be destroyed. The way I see it, wildlife has been around for billions of years. And wildlife has been doing the same thing for the entirety of that time, namely eating, defecating, screeching, rolling around in the mud, and reproducing. Nothing can remain unchanged for billions of years without losing value. Nevermind the fact that humans have interacted with nature for most of our +100,000 history.
Against those timeframes, any argument for the preservation of nature is difficult to articulate. Kind of like a child who has heckled his grandmother in to letting him play on the playground for 8 hours, who won't stop tugging on her pants leg and refuses to let go if he can't have another hour to ride on the merry-go-round.
Nature seems nice until you realize that it's a warzone. Animals are constantly fighting other for territory and resources, and with far more tenacity and devotion to violence than humans have ever mustered. It's easy to forget that the #1 destroyers of American wildlofe today are invasive animal species.
I would argue that the humans most attuned to nature are the ones who are constantly destroying it: poachers, loggers, real estate developers. They're just doing what most wild animals couldn't because they were too stupid and weak to make it happen.
One of my favorite poems, "Hunt", by Mel La Follette:
"All day it had been raining; now the leaves
Were crisp and wet with light. It was not late
Yet. Bright, the clouds were bright; but it was cold
And in your small shivering you let me hold
Your head against my chest, and in that great
Alone it was only the light of the leaves
That was watching us. Our breath was clouds, a stump
Steamed quietly, a goldfinch landed on a clump
Of thistle, and started to sing; and it was good
To be warm with you in that untrammeled wood.
But time, time broke around us like glass, our friendly park
Grew bristling, we soon stood apart. From the dark
Trees came a red fox, running. Then
The dogs closed in, and finally, the men."
People get all immersed in whatever they think is nature, but are disturbed by a fox hunt, which is itself a part of nature. Hunting and commotion are constantly occuring in nature, but we aren't bothered by it when we can't see it (such as ants battling scorpions). If you look more closely, our "admiration" for nature is merely admiration for the parts of nature that remind us of an ideal civilization: peaceful, quiet, clean, etc. But for wildlife, nature is anything but. Particularly once you get off the manicured trails.
And the proof is in the pudding: more animals choose to live in the suburbs where upper middle class people will fead them wonderbread and peanuts, and where they can huddle in cars and under sheds for warmth. There is an innate yearning for all forms of life to live in American suburb, where wildlife is growing. In the actual wild areas, wildlife is forever shrinking.
This is the true nature. Humans are simply better at it. Most forms of wildlife would consent to the destruction of wild areas, if only we would give them a shed to sleep under and 3 pieces of wonderbread daily. And of course no spiritual forces ever intervene. Why would they? Every religion on Earth, including pagan religions, condones the human modification of nature.
Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-12 08:05 pm (UTC)Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-13 05:54 am (UTC)Nature isn't love, it isn't "meaningful", and it isn't designed for a purpose. These are all human traits superimposed on Nature. Nature merely IS. You can rage, you can complain, you can tinker with it using the tools Nature - ironically - has given you to do so. But it's no more meaningful than trying to bail out the sea. Nature is Reality. If you wish to continue your atheism responsibly, please meditate on this and try to locate the source of your emotion... for your own peace of mind, if nothing else.
Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-13 11:16 pm (UTC)For instance, "There is an innate yearning for all forms of life to live in American suburb"
Um, no. Simply not true. The suburbs are hated, not just by animals, but by humans. If they weren't, James Howard Kunstler wouldn't have a readership or a successful living, and he's hardly the only anti-suburban commentator out there.
Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-14 04:03 am (UTC)Alright, but that's pretty much my point. Nature just IS, lacking in any real meaning or purpose, and I'm not complaining about that. But things like suburban sprawl, slash-and-burn agriculture, extermination of bison, etc, also just "ARE".
And I don't complain about those things either, because nature is of very little objective value to me. If we're going to be honest, most of the supposed value of nature is subjective, and based on superficial things that are pleasant to us, like visual aesthetics, the smell of a forest after thunderstorm, the way the whole system seems to thrive and organize under its own chaos, and for a few, the sight of a lioness killing a wildebeest.
But that isn't really connecting with nature or loving it (for itself). It's just spectating and self-medication. What we connect with here, and love, is ourselves.
We love ourselves, but do not truly love nature, because we spend the vast majority of our time doing things that distance ourselves from its painful aspects. I noticed nobody ever sought to get a good night's by sleeping outdoors in -20 degree weather, or getting harrassed by botflies or mosquitoes. Instead they prefer to sleep under more controlled conditions with a loved one. All we can do is love and connect with ourselves.
Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-14 04:22 am (UTC)When we cut to the chase, the kind of atheism you display here is for intellectually lazy ingrates. Lazy because the approach employs any number of thoughtstoppers like the narcissistic garbage of "What we connect with here, and love, is ourselves". I have no doubt you are in love with yourself!
The karma of ingratitude, which is the Way of this sort of atheism, is to get what you give. You hate nature with all its multitudinous, occulted reasons and processes and you think it and its animals are stupid. You have said as much. You are the caveman who throws a frustrated tantrum upon hearing the other caveman producing music with sticks and their voices. You hate complexity you aren't willing to attempt to understand. You prefer to admire yourself in the mirror. In return, anything you do that someone dumber than you fails to understand will be received with the same vanity, anger, obtuse misunderstanding, and violence. You will continue to be battered with these lessons until you choose to learn them, and the Universe does not care how many incarnations you take to learn. Good luck!
Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-14 07:26 pm (UTC)Atheism is a life philosophy. As such, it can be lived under responsibly, or... less so. In my view, the highest and best expression of atheism is to "see with eyes unclouded". That means being able to pull aside all the human layers of assumption that we all gather around us unavoidably, as part of living with a human brain, and observing what **is**. I believe that you believe that you are doing this already. But - there's a Part 2.
As in, *why* does it matter to be able to "see with eyes unclouded"? For what purpose? I think that atheism is pretty clear about this as well - in order that one may analyze the world more completely and comprehensively, in order to solve specific problems of existence. So here's my question to you. What problem are you solving, with your observation that - if you allow me to paraphrase - "Nature sucks and we shouldn't care about it, we should shrug our shoulders and just destroy it as fast as we can, that's the better way to live"? You suggest that doing this will improve our personal lives somehow. Uh... really? Could you, uh. Defend that in a court of law? Or with a straight face, in person, to just about any other human being?
Again, as one atheist to another: I don't think you've thought about this as deeply or as *logically* as you think you have. Let me propose a counter-argument.
I, as a human being, enjoy eating food. This is because without food, I will starve to death over the course of about a month to six weeks, with indescribable suffering in the process, and if the phenomenon of foodlessness is wide-spread, will likely be either the perpetrator or the victim of cannibalism during that time. Or maybe both. For reasons I hope I don't have to go into detail on, I'd strongly prefer not to experience this.
I have worked logically through all the other aspects of my life and have determined that none of them - absolutely none of them - are more important, for the enjoyable continuation of my own life, than continuous access to nutritive food.
Where does my food come from? Currently, it comes roughly 40% from a grocery store shelf and 50% from a local farmer's market. The remaining 10% comes from a restaurant or fast food setting and I can go without it (and could lose a few pounds in doing so, so no big deal).
The 40% from the grocery store relies not only on just-in-time fossil-fuel-intensive shipments from trucks and ships and planes, but is heavily based on industrial agriculture. I encourage you to read up on its practices, particularly the uses and effects of glyphosate. Needless to say industrial agriculture does not respect Nature in the slightest - the glyphosate spraying which has increased dramatically in recent years has led to immense insect die-offs, noticeable even by the common person who lives in nearby suburbs. Less mosquitos and mayflies - it's great, right? Progress, right??! But the bees which pollinate the local fruit trees have died off in the same numbers... and this isn't even touching the reverberations of taking out the entire bottom of the food chain. First birds, then frogs, then small mammals, then large mammals... sure hope all that industrial agriculture is indefinitely sustainable! Our brash disrespect of the natural world and its ways is all but determined to leave us few alternatives, should it ever fail us...
The 50% which comes from the farmer's market is a bit different. All of it is grown at a distance from me which could be bridged in a day by a horse and wagon, should the oil ever be inconveniently unavailable. The organic methods the farmers use are focused around stewardship of their land - low or no usage of fossil fuels, and the same living ground can be used year after year to grow a huge variety of products. Many farmers also keep livestock, or live next to farmers that do, and use that as their fertilizer. On top of that, it contains vastly more nutrients than the grocery store food, and tastes SO much better...! But the most important aspect is that, almost no matter what happens in our world, the farms will still be able to produce food for the forseeable future. Also, their existence is not aggressively killing off the world around them. I consider them an example of respecting Nature - not sentimentalizing it, not trying to keep it trapped under amber, but being conscious of it and doing their best to work with, rather than against, it. In short, working wisely with Reality and its constraints. And it is not merely pleasurable, but my **absolute duty**, to support them within our current financial system as much as I possibly can, to ensure that they remain and hopefully expand their operations.
The only thing keeping me from going 100% at the farmer's market is cost - they are still considered a "luxury" option by our culture - and also, a learning curve. From 2015 - 2020 I ate almost every single meal at a restaurant. This year, I decided to act upon my own logical observations, and change the way I personally live. Since January my family and I have been moving slowly, but inexorably, towards a way of life which might actually protect us from the starvation I would prefer we not experience. I have learned how to cook, and how to stock a pantry, and am planning to learn how to preserve food too.(I have also planted my first garden this year, which is going well, but harvest is not for another few months, and there is quite a learning curve there as well.) We live with family, and are strict with our finances (lots of Goodwill and library books!) in order to afford this lifestyle. I am actively looking about for a community that shares my values, and which can help protect us against those that do not. This isn't always pleasurable... but it is deeply, deeply meaningful.
I am doing all this, I believe, because I DO respect Nature. I respect its ways red in tooth and claw. I respect that I am not separate, that I am not special. That God will not save me from myself. That I very well might both kill and be killed in my day. That if I do not judiciously use the full faculties of my human intelligence which I have been granted by my DNA, that my children have little chance of surviving Nature's tests. And that no matter my emotional opinion on that, it is simply The Way That It Is. There is no time to whine - no time to lament - no time for sentiment. There is only a great Filter, looming closer to us every single day.
And therefore it seems to me, that in my pursuit of the extremely logical goal of me and my family's long-term survival, that the most important thing I can possibly do is to keep ahold of my own emotional control. We must move, as quickly as is reasonably possible, towards a way of life that we can sustain in the face of what may come. We must work with others - that means getting along with others. We must gain skills that our abstracted modern upbringings did not teach us (my father just told me that my lettuce is dying because I didn't heap up the earth around it to properly retain the water I am pouring on it. The more you know!). We must make smart choices while we still have the resources to make them. And we must do it step by step, with a heart which is at peace, and a mind which is not at war with itself, or we will make no progress at all, until it is too late.
So therefore, I'll repeat to you: Please, meditate on all this, and try to locate the source of your own emotion. I sense in your words that you are stuck. You are aware, on some level, that the life you live is a steaming pile of [retracted for Kimberly's blog], but you cannot see any way to escape it. Your mind cannot conceive of one. So you are trying as hard as you can to accept it. But your own heart - dare I say your soul - cannot bear it. You cannot bear that you live in a time and a society where everything beautiful and meaningful and reliable is being taken away from you. So you cling to the idea that "comfort" and "loving oneself" can somehow make up for their tremendous loss. But it can't - it can't. It can only numb you to the pain for a while... and not even do that very well.
I'll tell you one last thing. I am the only atheist I have ever met who has been able to face the inevitability of death calmly. At first this was a sop to my pride; then it was rather interesting; finally, it became deeply concerning to me. I read up on the statistics and realized that unless instructed otherwise at gunpoint, the vast majority of human beings have always practiced some form of religion or spirituality. I realized, in short, that spirituality is Nature. My atheism was the oddity - the thing that was just useful enough to express in a small percentage of the population (a similar example is reproduction by rape), but which can never be a majority, because outside of that narrow expression, it does not increase human flourishing. And in the midst of the incredible mess that was 2020, I finally understood why on a personal level. When suffering is happening to you, it is not enough to say "Hmm. I see that I am suffering. How interesting!" Your very soul will be dismantled, because this phrase cannot engage or manage your emotions, and they will destroy you from the inside. Most people find true emotional relief only in meaning, and for humans the well of meaning springs from spiritual practice. Only there, will most people find the calm that they need to carry on, and to face the challenges of their age with dignity.
This next part will not make sense to you, so take it as a separate comment, but in the isolation and darkness of late 2020, I remembered that I had done a lot of spiritual work before... in my previous life. I have been constantly using the techniques I learned then, unconsciously, to keep myself calm and productive in the face of all the challenges I have faced thus far. Atheism has been my way of side-stepping toxic spirituality, which is certainly the majority of what is practiced nowadays! This realization, though **deeply** weird, made every part of my life fall perfectly into place. I am now picking back up the regular spiritual practices I once did - and yes, it is exactly like I am re-reading, refreshing my memory, though I never once before came across the texts I am referencing in this life. I do not call on gods or spirits - I stick to my close observations of Nature, and refer to the elements in their place - so technically, I am as much an atheist as I ever was. But I understand now that there is more to life than what our five senses can prove. I will probably have many more decades to live on Earth, and I must figure out how to most correctly use them, and to use correctly the boons my soul has gathered up for itself as well. Out of that duty, I must tell you - and in time, all the other atheists I am acquainted with as well - that unthinking atheism is a mistake. It will not bring you happiness. It will not save what you love. And it will not protect you from Nature.
Whether you take my point or not, I hope that you will at least take time to think deeply about your own relationship to Nature, and use logic to get to the bottom of what truly **matters** to you. And that you will consider shopping at your local farmer's market once in a while, finances depending. All upside, no downside... meditate on it!
Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-16 07:40 pm (UTC)Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-16 08:37 pm (UTC)Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-18 05:10 pm (UTC)Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-13 01:08 pm (UTC)Your argument sounds like some forms of the rationalist suffering-minimalization ethic, which manages to convince itself that literally paving over the planet would be a moral good because it would prevent the suffering of living things. This is difficult for me to parse, as is the moral framework underlying your views. Where do you locate moral good?
Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-13 11:16 pm (UTC)Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-14 03:13 am (UTC)The idea that humanity should sit on the sidelines, so that animals can continue doing their dance of stupidity and pain, is not really easy to defend when you actually get down to brass tacks.
Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-14 03:58 am (UTC)Re: Nature's audience
Date: 2021-05-14 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-12 07:34 pm (UTC)It seems obvious to me that the valleys and hills of Mars (and other planets) would have their own entities, why wouldn't they?
Of course, visiting nearby Yellowstone can be quite alarming, some of those entities are not at all safe nor friendly, though others appreciate the attention, admiration, and, dare I say? worship they recieve from visitors. We have similar sorts here, but they seem to like or tolerate us (though I did have words with them about making my husband feel unwelcome, namely that he, I, and our children are a package deal and if they drive him off, we leave, too, which seems to have got them to ignore him--you make your choices and live with the consequences whether you're human, creek, or mountain!).
Anyway, all that to say while one might hope to flee non-human entities by going to Mars, I doubt it would work, and I rather suspect that, like Yellowstone's, the land entities there are less subtle than those entities that co-exist with human habitation. Anyone going to Mars in hopes of that had better stay in a sky scraper here instead. Best to send people who 'hear' the siren call and have some ability to answer!
As C.S. Lewis observed, and I think he's quite right, space itself is full of entities. There is no escape.
BoysMom
no subject
Date: 2021-05-12 08:09 pm (UTC)Grieving, then walking away.
Date: 2021-05-13 02:29 pm (UTC)A decade ago I pivoted toward nature conservation and read everything I could. One book stated the year Earth surpassed her carrying capacity as the year I was born, thus my entire life was over-capacity. I entered a state of grieving that seems similar to what David by the lake has described over the years on ecosophia.
JMG's example clicked some things into place for me. He deliberately chose a third-world lifestyle inside of a first-world country and openly claims his quality of life went up. He aspires to reduce his footprint to that of an Indonesian. The first thing that clicked into place was that there is no point in my listening to another human talk about nature conservation if my footprint is smaller than theirs.
The second thing that clicked into place is that I am 100% responsible for what I choose to do and 0% responsible for what others choose to do. I thus have 100% control over my footprint and 0% control over anyone else's, unless they come to me asking questions.
The actions I have or haven't taken for the environment are my own and between me and my gods. Americans, or anyone really, will never reconcile with the land they live on because they cannot accept and own their own actions. The first words out of their mouths are "It's not my fault." And if JMG's report of feeling blood lust in certain regions of the US is true, then the land might eat them for it! That makes reality stranger than fiction.
I'll stop doddering on now. Thanks for the thought-provoking essay.
Re: Grieving, then walking away.
Date: 2021-05-13 11:23 pm (UTC)Probably the hardest challenge is to love this era and its Equinox for what it is and not what we wish it to be. I was theorizing on JMG's discussion of Dogma and Ritual of High Magic that our materialist era could be (oddly) a period of rest for its opposing forces. Ebb and flow. Wave of deep spirituality and oneness with god crashes and in its wake comes a heavy, leaden phase teeming with demons bubbling out of the dense bottomlands. Poor OP is so despondent, he or she has become black-pilled and hates Nature, which is to say he or she hates himself. We are all Nature and we are all Evolution: there's no escape. Just wait until OP finds out this incarnation as a miserable, nature-hating human is only one of billions in a LOOONG sequence... that won't be fun!
Reply to materialist atheist
Date: 2021-05-14 04:33 am (UTC)While I realize that the Atheist commentator has a right to their own opinion, I can't imagine having such an empty, soulless view of the world around me.
"I would argue that the humans most attuned to nature are the ones who are constantly destroying it: poachers, loggers, real estate developers..."
I find this laughable. Across from my old work place I watched them grind up acres of trees, and for what? Do you seriously think that these people are attuned to nature? In what way, pray tell? Except to grind it up in their hungry profit machines?
Maybe the wildlife is forced to move in to the suburbs because they are losing so much ground to the cookie cutter housing developments cropping up everywhere and the ugly stack-em-and-pack-em apartment complexes that are turning our beautiful state into an extension of a soulless Disneyland.
It's that very same atheist I don't give a $#1+ mentality that just cannot leave any square acre alone in the name of more crony capitalism-hand shaking deals down at the Lodge greed.
And they don't give a crap about you either, by the way. They only care about their McMansions and their trips to faraway lands and the mindless shopping trips to fill their empty brains and quiet the complaints of their empty children.
And why the barely concealed contempt for those in the Burbs who enjoy and try to provide for the wildlife that seeks refuge in our yards?
Poor baby, did one of those dirty birds DARE to poop on your car?
You're right, it is a meat world that we live in but I can witness the circle of life and death in my own humble little piece of suburbia, the wildlife that you hate so much.
Watching a lizard eat a dying beetle and seeing their tiny babies taking shelter in my plants.
I hear the little cricket frogs chirp when I water and their musical song lightens my heart.
The sparrows bicker every day from the top of an ugly new concrete power pole and I wonder what they are chattering about.
The Sandhill cranes dropped by the other day with 2 babies to delight me as I came home from work.
The local Osprey couple is raising another family in a nest put there on another power pole out back after my call to the local power company when I noticed them wanting to settle in there 5 years ago.
I've watched them swooping and diving in the air above our home, calling out to each other in what felt like a celebration of more life to come. A dance. And my heart danced with them.
And yes, I see them bringing fish back to the nest, tearing them to bits to feed themselves and their children.
But you won't see them tearing their own children to bits over a few selfish seconds of squirting.
Colleen
Re: Reply to materialist atheist
Date: 2021-05-14 05:04 am (UTC)I do appreciate the atheist materialists though, because I thought of their howling emptiness today and it got me out to the forest preserve before work. I loved the wildness far more than they hate it (nature is too general of a term). I talked with the red oak and the maple, communed with some dead nettles, parlayed a bit with a red winged blackbird, and basked in the glory of the Midwestern prairie sunlight.
Re: Reply to materialist atheist
Date: 2021-05-14 01:23 pm (UTC)I agree with a lot of what you have said but I want to counter you on two points.
Stack 'em and pack 'em apartments: if by that you mean regular apartments, and not vacation flats for the rich that sit empty, then you should be in favor of this. With a high human population, high-density living is the only ethical way to live on the land unless you're a farmer. If you farm, it makes sense for you to have land. If you don't, it doesn't make sense to chop down wild lands and pave prairies so highways and suburbs can sprawl.
By this I don't mean American industrial agriculture, Monsanto, etc. I mean actual small-scale farmers who enrich the land they work with. It makes sense for the Amish to have land. It doesn't make sense for *me* to have land.
Suburbs: you might like looking at your yard, but something got bulldozed so you could have it. The birds are nesting on power poles because their prior nesting is gone. (Btw I've seen the sandhill migrations in Nebraska. That was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced.)
Someone living in an apartment and busing or walking to work destroys the environment way less than a suburbanite, even if they don't care two hoots about the environment in terms of their personal politics. That's one of the big things that Americans need to wrestle with. The American Dream and the American way of life are quite frankly crazy town in the eyes of most of the rest of the world.
One final note: apartments are very shoddily made in the US. The walls are thin and the ceilings are only nine feet. You can't escape your neighbors. It's pretty miserable. Contrast that to my flat that has four-meter ceilings and thick enough walls I never hear my neighbors unless the kids full-on scream. There is a reasonable way to live high-density that allows for human dignity, and that can readily be found in the world, just not in America.
Re: Reply to materialist atheist
Date: 2021-05-14 04:03 pm (UTC)Re: Reply to materialist atheist
Date: 2021-05-14 10:27 pm (UTC)Re: Reply to materialist atheist
Date: 2021-05-17 01:26 am (UTC)Concerning the stack-ems and pack-ems, they ARE cheaply built and seem to get larger, higher and uglier as time goes on. The “vacation flats” are called condominiums here, huge multi-storied concrete monstrosities that can take years to build, usually on valuable shoreline. Both are popping up everywhere.
Quality build does not always guarantee quality neighbors. It’s not this high rise sustainable Utopia that you might want it to be. So wonderful to be surrounded by stupid shouting people. Banging on the walls, thumping the ceiling overhead, yay! That’s just what I want to deal with after a day at work!
And your “high density living” sounds a lot to me like Agenda 21/2030. Are they pushing that heavily in Europe? (I ask because you sound a little European. We don’t call them flats over here.) Where you will own nothing and better be happy about it? Or else?
At least in our little suburban worlds, we could chose to have a garden as space would allow. More so than on a 6x10’ patio that you might get over there if you’re lucky. We could try to mitigate the destruction that has been done, such as re-planting native vegetation in our yards, not using toxic fertilizers that cause run-off in to the Indian River Lagoon, etc. A nearby neighbor has been growing a food producing garden in his front and back yards for months now. And by the way the concept of the ridiculously perfect green expanse of lawn wasn’t born in America. It was brought over by the English.
Things are a little more spread out over here, as well. Even in the vicinity of the crappy apartment complexes. One could live in an apartment and still have to travel 30 miles to their jobs. We make do with the system we are born in to and any number of rantings from little Greta Thundberg, entitled little creature that she is, is not going to change that.
“The American Dream and the American way of life are quite frankly crazy town in the eyes of most of the rest of the world.”
This comment is interesting. We’re not all crazy over here. I don’t know how much television or mainstream media that you are exposing yourself to, but it might be a little too much. Over here, for a long time the big invisible boogieman was the Muslims. They were all made out to be crazy, too. And maybe some of them are, just like some of us are, like some of the boogieman Russians are and on and on it goes. Lots of us here (but not nearly enough) are aware that the media has created a laughingstock of our country and are embarrassed and sickened by it. Not all of us worship celebrities and sports figures or have fainting spells over Donald Trump.
Like anyone, we want beauty in our worlds. Our souls are wired to appreciate art and beauty and for many of us, it’s a mainstay of our lives. Whatever we chose to believe in.
Nature is not a random and soulless machine. You just haven’t been paying attention.
Colleen
PS: This is my favorite poem.
There Will Come Soft Rains
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Sara Teasdale
Re: Reply to materialist atheist
Date: 2021-05-17 04:49 am (UTC)America's suburbs and many of its cities are badly built. But we aren't nearly as nuts as the Germans or the British, who have gone batcrap crazy with lockdowns and vaccines. Look at our northern neighbor, Canada. In every province, they are shuttering businesses, arresting the healthy, and interning people in Covid hotels as their economy collapses. Even in psycho Illinois, we have maintained some semblance of free commerce and you can get your hair cut without yourself and the stylist being arrested. Not so much in Ontario. If it weren't for free states like South Dakota and Florida setting an example for freedom, I suspect that all of Europe would be following in lockstep with Canada's lunatic COVID rules. I think the US deserves some credit for its "American" response to COVID. The buzzword in my nearly 3000 member-and-rapidly-growing Facebook group Speakeasy Illinois is "patriot". The group promotes businesses and establishments that respect people's freedom. I don't see Europeans or Canadians starting social media movements designed to go around the stupid and the fearful. The American dream is deeply flawed, but I think we deserve some credit for being willing to go against the globalist-controlled sheeple, at least this time around.