Re: "defense of wilderness" (wasRe: lexicon)
| From: | J Y S Czhang <czhang23@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, June 4, 2003, 3:42 |
|---|
In a message dated 2003:06:03 10:39:12 AM, Andreas writes:
>> >What are we meaning by "wilderness" here?
>
>> I mean Nature :) And we being animals too, we are part of Nature
>> tho' many still think we are somehow separate (& above) like those who have
>> in the recent historical past.
>
>Next question; what do we mean by "Nature"? :-)
LOL. Good question. It seems to be word that has mutated semantically
quite often.
>I've never been able to understand the "humanity as part of nature"
>vs "humanity vs nature" debate.
Me, too ;) Well, I "understand" it but don't know what to make of it ;)
It's quite foreign to me.
> I mean, _obviously_ we are part of the
>cosmos, as are flowers, supernovae and computers. Equally obviously, there
are
>parts of the cosmos that are, well, antithetical to human existence, and have
>to be controled/avoided/defeated if we want to survive (and most of us
>apparently does want to).
The above statement - especially the part that says "antithetical to
human existence" - still partakes of the Human versus Nature conflict/dichotomy.
The Asian viewpoint is that even death is part of life... that natural
processes can _not_ be controlled, avoided or defeated. That is why many
Europeans when they first encountered "Eastern" philosophies and religions -
worldviews - that Asian thinking was quite often described as "fatalistic,"
"quietistic," "resigned," "passive," etc. (besides "Oriental/exotic", "heathen" and
"pagan", etc.).
"Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is
dead. Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable." - _Bhagavad Gita_
>When certain westerners speak/spoke of "defeating"
>or "conquering" Nature, they were obviously intending the word to mean
>some subset of the totality of things that they thought could and should be
>meaningfully defeated or conquered - certainly not that they wanted to
>achieve a victory over the universe.
Nature as "the Other": the expansion of the American Old Wild West and
the idea of "Manifest Destiny"... Native Americans were viewed and described in
terms quite similar to terms used to describe "nature": wild, untamed, savage,
etc.. that the "Wild West" needed to be "tamed"...
"Victory over the universe"? Much of NASA's famous public relations
speeches are loaded with a subtext of Manifest Destiny Updated: "One step..."
>> > Chinese, Feng Shui-y, gardening seems to me like a perfect example of
>>> art as "defense against wilderness"; nature itself reordered to boot out
>> >disorder and maligncy.
>
>> No no... Chinese Feng Shui and Asian gardening (Chinese, Japanese,
>> Thai, etc.) is about balance and integrity with Nature... and a little
>> disorder and asymmetry is actually aesthetically heightened and highly
>>appreciated!
>
>Here you seem to use "Nature" to denote some subset of said totality which
>one can be in balance and integrity with. The "nature" that the 'Westerner'
>wants to conquer is not the same as that which the 'Easterner' (bad terms,
but
>I can't think up anything more fitting right now).
I think they overlap quite a bit, hence conflicts of the two differing
worldviews.
>(Incidentally, I'm always annoyed by (western) environmentalists who
>pontificate on how we should be living in 'harmony with nature' - I'm always
>tempted to ask how one is supposed to live in harmony with chaos. At a
>slightly deeper level, what bugs me about this kind of environmentalism
>is how it views humans as aliens in the biological world - while I don't
subscribe
>to any "all species are equal" ideology, I can't see what make humans
>less "natural", less legitimate inhabitants of the earth than are, say,
>frogs.)
"Human beings are bad animals." - William S. Burroughs ;)
>> > I'll happily admit that I'm unfamiliar with Chinese
>>> thinking/philosophy, but the outer form here strikes me as fitting
perfectly in
>> >Sally's box.
Then you _must_ get Ursula Le Guin's translation of the _Tao Te Ching_!
There is even an audiobook version with really nice, ambience-enhancing music
(not Chinese music, but improvised by IIRC Todd Barton)!
>> Surface appearances are incredibly deceptive ;)
>> Ferinstanz you may think that a French Baroque-period _jardin_ is
>> no different than a Zen stone-garden.
>
>> On closer examination, these two different gardens express highly
>>differing worldviews: one of highly deliberated, artificial forms, rigid
>>lines and precise geometric orderings ("Mankind Separate from Nature and
>>imposing his will on Nature") . . . and the other a near total antithesis of
the first
>> ("humankind part of Nature and attempting to be part of Nature and
>> natural processes").
>
>Two highly divergent worldviews - grantedly. But both seem interpretable
>as "defense against wilderness" in the sense I, initially at least, assumed
>that Sally meant it; as defense the against dangerous, "hostile", elements
>of the universe.
The Asian askes, "The aspects of the universe - existence - you see as
dangerous, hostile and other than yourself _just are_ the universe - are
part-and-parcel of existence."
The American Taoist Gung-Fu Surfer says: "Shit Happens. Roll with the
Punches. Go with the Flow [Tao]."
>> The purest expressions of this particular Asian mindset IMHO is
>> Taoist.
>> Buddhist thinking comes in a good strong second place (many Buddhists -
>> East and West - are active in ecology, animal and human rights).
>
>In my experience, few no other groups are as prone to view homo sapiens
>as deeply different from other species as are environmentalists and animal-
>rightists. Grantedly, those such I've known have not been Buddhists (nor
>Taoists).
Perhaps those environmentalists and animal-rights activists are still
trapped in the pre-Modern European dichotomy of "Man versus Nature" or still
dragging around the baggage of the paleo-conservative Judeo-Christian idea that
"Man is superior to Nature because Man was Made in God's Image."
"Ah, the deadweight of dead and rottin' generations weigh heavily on the
brain dead masses livin' in the present-moment, day-to-day... many are they
who barely recall the dead and dying of plague night..." - from one of my
_cento_ poems
In a message dated 2003:06:03 02:04:48 PM, Sally Caves quotes me and Andreas
& writes:
>J. Y. S. Czhang:
>
>> > Surface appearances are incredibly deceptive ;)
>> > Ferinstanz you may think that a French Baroque-period _jardin_
>> > is no different than a Zen stone-garden.
>
>> > On closer examination, these two different gardens express highly
>> > differing worldviews: one of highly deliberated, artificial forms,
>rigid lines and precise geometric orderings ("Mankind Separate from Nature
and imposing his will on Nature") . . . and the other a near total antithesis
of the first
>> > ("humankind part of Nature and attempting to be part of Nature and
>> > natural processes").
>
>Andreas:
>
>> Two highly divergent worldviews - grantedly. But both seem interpretable
>> as "defense against wilderness" in the sense I, initially at least, assumed
>> that Sally meant it; as defense the against dangerous, "hostile", elements
>>of the universe.
>
>Yes... inimical nature, deadly nature: snow, storm, wind, dense forest
>filled with predators, drought, desert, stinging creatures, stinking bogs,
>swarming ants, the cold heath, creeping roots, snagging tree limbs, entropy,
>decay, maggots, spiderwebs in your face, GERMS, even weeds. Especially
>weeds. :)
ROTFLMAOSHIHLH!
Mere nuisances... mere nuisances in the Big Picture. Like blips in the
continuum...
Lil autobiographical note: Many years ago - in Houston, Texas, my younger
brother was watching me nap. He swears that a mosquito landed on my arm and
began drilling for blood. My brother says the poor thing died on my arm - he
thinks it is because I had poisonous blood * . My brother, who is always covered
in insect bites of all sorts in the summer, retells this with un-ironic
bittersweet envy that just makes it even funnier.
* not far from the truth: I was using drugs back then.
>Don't get me wrong... I love the earth. But as a species, we've taken
>measures to make our habitable spaces free of some of the creeping intrusion
>of Nature (there ought to be a Teonaht word for that). The example of
>the Japanese garden with its reverence for natural design, the delight taken
>in artful asymmetry is a celebration of nature, but nature tamed,
nonetheless.
>The Teonaht asymmetrical houses do the same thing, but they are still
>shelters that keep out the weeds.
Civilisation is evil, but like all necessary evils indispensable once
accustomed ;)
{Do not get me wrong, I like - er, loooooove a lil creative mischief, mayhem
and evil at times... *evil trickster grin*... people don't nickname me
"Stripe" or "Stitch" or "Chino Loco" for nuthin' ya know...}
---
Hanuman Zhang, _Gomi no sensei_ [Master of junk]
& Gatherer of Extremely Enlightening Knowledge (or GEEK, for short ;)
"To live is to scrounge, taking what you can in order to survive. So,
since living is scrounging, the result of our efforts is to amass a pile of
rubbish."
- Chuang Tzu/Zhuangzi, China, 4th Century BCE
"The most beautiful order is a heap of sweepings piled up at random."
- Heraclitus, Greece, 5th Century BCE
Ars imitatur Naturam in sua operatione.
[Latin > "Art is the imitation of Nature in her manner of operation."]
" jinsei to iu mono wa, kichou na geijyutsu to ieru deshou "
[Japanese > "one can probably say that 'life' is a precious artform"]
in more radical, paracultural terms: "the (R)Evolution of the Everyday"
"There is no total revolution, there is only _perpetual_ Revolution,
real life, like love, dazzling at every moment." - Paul Eluard
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GFA/H/L/MC/MU/SS d--- s: a39 C++ U? P L- E-- W N-- o-- K--- w---
O-- M+ V-- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP-- t-- 5++ X+ R- /R* tv+ b++++ DI--
D-- G e++ h* r y++**
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
http://www.geekcode.com/
Replies