Occasionally I sit on a New York City park bench and watch with silent amazement. I count how many people are wearing watches, how many people have evidence of a cell phone, how many are listening to music (or pretending to). I marvel with rapt attention at how clean, stone-faced, and oddly comfortable everybody seems. It’s so mechanized, sterile, and almost hilariously peculiar. I do the same thing on the train, in a meeting, in a classroom, in a crowded room. Anywhere there is evidence of a person, I’m wondering how it happened.
The thing is, people are everywhere – or, at least evidence of people is everywhere. When I was younger, I was somewhat enraptured with wildness as many young boys growing up in Montana become. I took this rapture with me on my jobs in the US Forest Service throughout the least populated areas of the western US and Canada. I traveled hundreds to thousands of miles on foot and entered some of the most pristine areas in the world.
I still saw it. My first venture in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, reportedly one of the most pristine areas in the US, I saw a beer can in a lake. People have been everywhere. Look up, do you see chemtrails from planes? I have sailed across oceans from Alaska to South America, around the Galapagos Islands and up to the ice in search of the Earth that lives in my mind. I’ve been searching for a connection for decades that pushes past the world of humans, and the universe of myself. I haven’t found a place that was untouched by people. It’s not possible.
I applied for a job as a trash collector/processor in Antarctica (after all, I needed to make money) just attempting to get a glimpse of a place where few humans had ever been. Turns out, there’s a lot of people willing to pick up trash in Antarctica, and I was beat out by a guy with a Master’s degree. Getting to wildness is a lot harder than it used to be even 50 years ago.
I cannot find meaning outward, and ended up in the most densely populated area in my country. My conclusion is that we are nature. I have been foolish to separate humans from nature.
Carl Sagan is famous for pointing out that we are elementally no different from stars or any other type of matter. Humans are nothing but a collection of ions, particles, atoms, molecules, genes. An individual human is nothing more than a collection – an organization that is due to random uncontrollable events that began billions of years ago. We are billions of years in our own bodies. We are carrying the secret of everything. We are carrying the secret of infinity — and aware of it.
When I look through my eyes, I can control my perception to no longer see humans. I can see collections of molecules, knowing that my human brain is simply processing something for me – hoping I won’t go insane with thoughts on non-reality or multi-dimensional abstraction. I can see Nature.
Nature is everything. Nature, I think, is another word for God or the Infinite – although I can’t be sure. Humans are scaled capsules of Nature. We cannot stop the immortality that we harbor in our chromosomal code that has been replicated for millions of years. We, as a collection of molecules, are the walking dead. The code doesn’t care if we live or die except that it appears to WANT us to continue the randomness. It seems to want us to continually select for the prevailing circumstances. The code is Infinitely brilliant because it has placed in every living being a will to survive long enough to understand whether or not we are worthy of that gift or burden.
We are the walking dead, but that should not be frightening. We are the walking dead. It is the only thing that we all share. Our own death and perception of death is our only common denominator as we have no control over our birth. At birth, we are granted only the code. The code knows more than we do when we’re born.
At death, we know as much as we shall ever know. The great denominator is a great common binding gift that all people, cultures, and communities share. We need not be afraid.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
We often speak of “the code” as though it is the same in everyone, or as though there is a ‘normal’ version of it. Our particular collection of molecules is Life’s random attempt to Be Different, not to standardize. Each of us is a unique attempt by Life to counteract the entropy of Randomness. We are each one random chance at Future Usefulness. Death is a deep part of these attempts. It is tightly bound with sexual reproduction to the rate of change. The shorter our lifespans, the faster unique offspring are generated with ‘defects’ that may fit new environments, and the quicker we get out of the way. Humans have a permutation which allows them to pass adaptations down through language and memory from generation to generation, rather than just through molecules….yet we separate our elderly and our children from each other with condos and daycare, abandoning half of our species’ strength in favor of the convenience of wages.
I’m at this moment reeling from horror at what “they” have done to Austin, TX since I was here 40 years ago. I’m here because my sister is dying of liver cancer. In a short time she may know all that we will ever know, and I envy her.
Deep, deep sadness today. The country, the world. We’re all still learning, aren’t we? I just want some BALANCE, dammit…
When life insurance hucksters tell me I need tens of thousands of dollars for my burial, I stop them cold with the reply, “A shovel doesn’t cost that much.” With apologies to those whose love and devotion to their departed loved ones are offended by my philosophy, I reject the idea of my body being sealed in a unreasonably expensive sarcophagus whose only function is to eternally defeat nature’s purpose to recycle my molecules. My body is not me. It is a bio-machine I use to function in a material world. When my demise comes, I shall abandon it as an empty husk.
My brother died in 1949, and he was buried in a wooden coffin. A tree grew up at his headstone, and is now a tall, beautiful, living monument to his memory. I’m sure its roots have incorporated his molecules. When I look at that tree, I am face to face with my brother. I cannot imagine a more fitting transformation than to see his molecules alive again.
Reminds me of “Fearless, The Jeb Corliss Story.” Different path, same conclusion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzQ7pdTfp2g
The code allows us to seek virtue by honoring our gifts.
@Will,
Thanks for that link! I had a rush of anxiety just watching him jump, and liked the quick foray of humans having an unyielding urge to fly for centuries. It was great to watch.
“Hmmmm… he was probably about 7 years old when he brought the rattle snake home.” –Jeb’s mom.
Hilarious.
@Robert,
That’s intense, and reminds me of Edward Abbey who was buried by his friend in the desert — his final request. I have never heard of anybody doing it since, but think it’s an incredibly good idea.
@John,
I am sorry to hear about your sister and your sadness. Part of the gift of sentience is feeling the full range of emotion even if it’s hard to take sometimes. I’ll keep checking in on your site and hoping your family is alright.
@Auntie,
“The code” is sort of an unfortunate word because it connotes some sort of programming. I think your “counteract entropy” statement is right on. I wish there was a less misleading word.
The idea that society is a problem, and that the best experiences are “out there” beyond human runs deep in our culture. It is why monks retreat to the monastery, why the Amish won’t drive, and why Ed Abbey’s cowboys have to go back to the hills. It is also why Chris McAndless went to Alaska.
Of course if you follow the logic to its end, you run into two problems. 1) people are and have been everywhere, and 2) we are social creatures by nature and need social knowledge (like how to jerk moose meat)
The solution, as you’ve pointed out is to recognize that we are nature, which Ed knew. He knew the waterfront in Jersey, the concrete and steel canyons in Manhattan were wilderness too.
The idea that nature is good and human society is bad, is simply the inverse restatement of the idea that nature is bad and we humans must subdue it.
We are nature. Nature is us.
Good post. Regarding humans being a part of nature: No other animal is so destructive with the rest of nature around us. We think we are above it. We distance ourselves from nature and often try to escape it. Though our actions and mentality remove us from nature, we still are a part of it, and every once in a while are brutally reminded. We get dragged back into reality and are given a good ass-whipping. This is only going to get worse the more our population increases and we allow our children to grow up with the same insane perceptions of past generations. Saying we are nature is fine, but that doesn’t make everything we do natural. In nature everything is striving for the same goal: To survive. In ignorance, humans create these elaborate scenarios of death, disguised as life. I don’t find our technology natural because we haven’t learned how to use much of it properly without it eventually coming back to bite us in the ass. You don’t see that in other areas of nature. Our physical bodies are still bound by the rules of nature, yet our minds are often from somewhere else.
Michael: Shouldn’t you be sleeping?;-) I think you have a good point there: “We are Nature.” I would say “we are of Nature”
The use of language to separate humans from Nature and each other is treated by the Bible as “God’s will”, with the tower of Babel story, an anti-cooperative story about how humans shouldn’t work as one to ‘reach God’. (Skipping the conspiracy theory of which merchants/war mongers would make up such a story..)
The species that survive are those that cooperate with their environment. Humans tend to place ‘intent’ on so many nonhuman things, where accumulated ‘code’ vs randomness will result in the same results. The problem I see more and more is the CLAIM that we have some method to our madness, and the CLAIM that there is such a thing as ‘leadership’ or even an intention to take action (with some directive in mind), when the real impetus for humans to do anything is really just “what..EVV..errrr”, and priority given to whatever causes money to change hands faster. Government doesn’t govern in this complex system, it sells indulgences. People don’t ‘elect’ leaders, they get them for ‘free’ with a fill-up.
The problem as I see it is that most are not what they CLAIM to be: Leaders don’t ‘lead’, Societies don’t cooperate for any overarching useful purpose, and homo sapiens don’t actually use their intelligence(including me most days). What is unnatural about it is not the failures, but the claims of usefulness, which are mostly applied to useless activities(see also “patent office”). If our decisions are made based on the exchange of money for people to drive to work to exchange more money to drive to work, then the claim of intelligence is a lie, and thus, homo sapiens might as well be Mold With Tools(Rock Band!-lol). You are correct that society is part of us, and we are part of Nature, but when our systems are no longer guided by natural needs, they become random themselves, and in that light, destructive. Better (for the future of natural systems) to be knocked back a couple of notches until we can re-establish need-based uses for society. Maybe that’s the lesson of the Tower of Babel: too much cooperation based on Blind Faith leads to unimportant work with nobody stopping to ask, as my father used to say, “Is that really necessary?”
What is Elizabeth Warren’s true goal here? To save the ‘economy’? To continue the American Dream? To create ‘jobs’? To maintain the consumerist illusion of those 50 years without Boom/Bust cycles? Yes, she’s brilliant, but to what end?
Well at least the United States military is helping keep the population down.
Will: At first glance we would think so, but population isn’t the important part: consumption is. The U.S. military is probably the highest consumption per capita that has ever been devised. It takes something like 10 gallons of fuel to get one gallon to the ‘front’. The infrastructure required to enable the high-tech wars creates ‘jobs’ that cause even more people to drive to work,etc. For every one they kill (or commit suicide), they support consumption of 100 or more living people. Apparently, it’s OK to pay them to create an economy by killing people, but paying them to come home and work in fields or hospitals or windmill factories would be horrible socialism.
If “we are (of) nature” and our technology is driven by natural resources, then there’s nothing un-natural about our technology. That doesn’t mean it’s “right” or that we can’t do better, but what were humans supposed to do? — discover oil (for example), just leave it in the ground and keep riding horses? I’m not advocating “business as usual” or “intelligent design,” but I think it can be argued that the Earth itself is a form of technology, which creates by destroying things all the time, even if it’s not in its or our own perceived best interest.
I agree with you that the “important part” is the consumption, especially with the military. The waste is incomprehensible. To answer your father, “No, it’s not necessary at all.”
We’d be better off, as you mentioned, employing people in fields, hospitals, factories, but it doesn’t do any good if people have no work ethic. Despite the hordes of unemployed, farmers in eastern Washington have had to fly people in from Jamaica (!) to work their orchards because no one but illegal immigrants were willing to do the work, even for $20 an hour.
I read every post voraciously. Savoring your nutritious content in much the same way I savor Carmine’s decadent chocolate torta (minus the empty calories). I appreciate the thoughtful, constructive, and equally nutritous comments made by the FG community. This forum is shockingly constructive, supportive, and lucid. Thank God! I don’t generally contribute, because, frankly, you guys are way smarter than me.
However, I will depart from my usual voyeuristic indulgence of FG to pay tribute to its community ( especially Auntiegrav, Will, and Murray- Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!)
Tommy, this article made me sob. Your clarity and intimacy in printing the essential questions adds real value to the collective consciousness and to the actualization potential of a community.
If everyone understood the equalizing nature of our molecular identity, perhaps we would be more hard pressed to practice RESPECT. Being respectful doesn’t mean being a saint. It means constantly making the hard decisions that place the “greater good” high on the priority list of day-to-day living.
I believe that a deep sense of respect for our brief existence, along with a clear understanding of our molecular connection to posterity is at the root of RESPECT. Our survivability,indeed, depends on this “molecular” notion and practice.
Taosjohn: I have you and your sister in my thoughts. I’m putting good energy out in the universe for your family.
robert,
organic burial. my brother platted a small cemetery on his property and we buried our dad organically, per his wished. reminds me of frank lloyd wright’s love of organic architecture. subdivisions strike/haunt me as out-of-sync with nature. so do traditional cemeteries–subdivisions of the embalmed/encased/inorganic dead. (pls forgive me folks if my view of cemeteries offends you with its appearance of disrespect for dead. i do not mean it to.)
@Respectfully,
Wow. Thank you.
@HIGHRPM,
The more we embrace natural process with minimal invasion, the better off we’re going to be. This includes the ultimate recycling of our bodies.
Culturally, this is tough on a lot of people hence your sensitivity. I didn’t realize there were many people doing this, so thanks for the account.
“Backward and forward, eternity is the same; already we have been the nothing we dread to be”.
Herman Melville
@respectfully:
I think you’re smarter than you give yourself credit; at least you articulated well your thoughts and feelings, which is emotionally intelligent – most of society is lack in this intelligence, in my experience!
I think you’re spot-on with RESPECT. I think our society picked up a pretty lame attitude somewhere in our history…
“You have to earn respect.”
How ignorant. I respect everyone I meet, and complete strangers. An example of this thought, or what comes immediately to mind, is the thumping car stereos that you hear a mile away.
Those folks don’t respect anyone because it hasn’t been earned. And at what time/opportunity would the general public have to earn their respect? Ridiculous.
I say the attitude/philosophy should be changed to…
“Respect first until you have a cause to revoke it.”
Eloquent posts.
You should all read Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now and The New Earth. Inevitably you will find ‘yourself’ there.
As far as burials are concerned, I’ve never been able to figure out what all that nonsense is about. How arrogant… to have yourself set up in a box for a big parade, then erect a riduculous stone in your friggin “honour” as if your life had more meaning than anybody else’s based on the size of your stone! What a bunch of hogwash, feeding into our fragile ego’s. The death industry taps right into it. Phewy!
I think we are (along with our technologies) intrinsically “part” of nature. in separable from it, regardless of what we do or don’t do.
Our problem is that we have overshot the planet’s resiliency to withstand our onslaught.
The planet is simply a gigantic living organism. We have selfishly fed off it to the point where it can no longer sustain us. And like a fungus or a mould that takes over it’s host, the planet will eventually go into a state of apoptosis (if it hasn’t already) which is a state of programmed cellular processes that are geared to death, not life any more.
It’s hard to hate a mould or a fungus; they’re just doing what comes naturally. From space, we are that fungus. We are that mould. We just happen to have a ground-based perspective on it.
Ever look at trees and see them simply as some form of a fungus or mould that coats the planet? Once you can do that it puts us in perspective.
Tolle’s The New Earth is an excellent book; I should read it again. I have not read the Power of Now.
On first reading I did not feel I had anything to say or share on this topic, but today I found myself pondering…
Yet before I share those thoughts I want to echo the sentiment already expressed – ‘this’ is good. This opportunity to engage, to consider, to share… to inspire, to solve? To salve.
Thank you all.
Like it or not, we are animals. Sentient and conscious, but still animals (although it seems our collective agreement has been to forget this – the “No Animals” signs in my local park are testament to this, and stick out to me for the fallacy they are) – and as such we are ‘part of nature’.
Our capable and conscious minds do not and cannot remove us from what is, from where and how we are – however hard we may try to insulate ourselves from all that is beyond our control and that we fear.
In trying to forget, and in the distance we create, we make room for our separation – for our sense of ‘unnaturalness’ to incubate. And from this is borne a sense that nature is cruel, vicious, and threatening… and so the self perpetuating cycle continues.
But nature is not cruel. Or if it is, it is only because we perceive it as such.
No. Nature is harmonious. Nature works cyclically, with checks and balances. And whether we like it or not, acknowledge it or not, accept it or not – we cannot escape it, we are of it. Trying to do so will have consequences, and that is as it should be.
However we quantify our experience and interaction in and of ‘nature’, we remain part of the intergalactic molecular soup… and something somewhere someday will shake our collective tree and remind us…
This perhaps?, http://gu.com/p/2jvp4
With Respect,
a freeman, walking.
Will wrote: ” That doesn’t mean it’s “right” or that we can’t do better, but what were humans supposed to do? — discover oil (for example), just leave it in the ground and keep riding horses?”
One word: “Amish”.
The first thing people think of when they think of the Amish is religion. The first thing they should think of is “Net Usefulness”. What the leaders of Amish communities do is evaluate new technologies and decide if it will help or hurt their lifestyle of living lightly and improving their lands.
This is pretty simple, but difficult to do when everyone’s emotional elephant REALLY REALLY WANTS to break into the village and raid the beer vats. (yes, mixed analogies…enjoy!)
To Auntiegrav:
I love that expression: “everyone’s emotional elephant” (in the room, presumably).
I reiterate: read Eckhart Tolle. It will shine the necessary light on that elephant, then show it the door. The more people who plug into his approach, the better off we all will be.
Envirofrigginmental,
Just picked it up. I’ll let you know when I finish. Thanks.