We are stardust, we are golden

we are billion year old carbon

and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden

– Jonie Mitchell, “Woodstock”

Ferrets are more determined than they are bright. Case in point being my own pet ferret, Rosie. Rosie explores nooks and crannies with the unrestrained zeal of a fanatic. Wikipedia tells me that ferrets have been domesticated (they are the domesticated version of the polecat) since perhaps the time of Socrates and Buddha, and all that breeding – for going down holes, for ferreting out pest rodents – has resulted in a lovable freak of nature that behaves nearly suicidally in its compulsion to know, KNOW!, what’s down that hole, or in that crevice! Even if that hole leads to a drop off of ten or more feet (that’s like a twenty story building to a ferret), and a fatal fall, the only thing that will stop a ferret is the loving, exasperated hand of its owner. We can’t understand ferrets in this regard; it’s something they “just gotta”.

Or perhaps we can understand them, and all too well at that. My thoughts are now linked with those of so many others as we contemplate the unspeakable tragedy that is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. As the oil spews out from a mile below, it is staggering to consider how technology has been so horrifyingly misapplied in this instance. Explorers were able, through sophisticated devices, to discover that there is a vast reservoir of oil out there beyond sight of land. Engineers developed machinery that can dig through solid rock, another mile below the ocean floor, in order to get at that reservoir. Because we “just gotta” have that oil! Cruelly ironic that we have developed astounding technology in order to drill through bedrock, but have not developed applications to produce or harvest energy that doesn’t send the environment, our one and only home planet, down a tailspin of degradation. Humans, like ferrets, are more determined than they are bright.

Lemmings don’t really commit mass suicide. It turns out that that is a myth. The whole myth developed like a meme in reaction to some wildlife footage shot in the mid 1950s, and televised frequently thereafter, for a Disney-produced wildlife documentary. Multiple generations watched in horror, on their upholstered couches (and I was among them) as a mass desperation forced the pathetic critters to fling themselves out over a cliff, into the cold, cruel sea, where they swam a futile swim to exhaustion and a watery death. This was a culling process of nature, we were taught to believe; that as their population exploded beyond a certain point, instinct forced them into behavior that they would never otherwise consider, as if a switch had been thrown by Mother Nature. The footage itself, and how it was presented, was hokum. First of all, the “documentary” aspect of the scene that fused itself in our brains has been challenged. The animals we saw were herded, it is now alleged. The rush hour subway density of lemmings was staged in order to heighten their panic. Lemmings do behave radically when their population exceeds a certain quotient. They do fan out in all directions in search of new habitat. They do, if they encounter a body of water, jump in, in order to explore the land, and its food potential, on the other side. But lemmings are very good swimmers. More often that not, as in WAY more often than not, the majority of them reach the other side. Therefore, the fact that they were transported to an inhospitable coast by filmmakers is all the more ghastly. Those critters thought they had a good chance of crossing over, because in a natural situation, they would have. Alas, this all too convenient, and frequently used, metaphor for our own existential situation is forced and inaccurate. We do not have allies among our fellow animals (or at least if we do, it is not the misunderstood lemming) in plunging carelessly toward our own demise. We as a mammalian species are alone in engaging in obviously suicidal behavior, with the concomitant collateral side effect of taking billions of other life forms with us.

And there can be no mistake, this IS the direction we are heading. One of Einstein’s most famous quotes is that problems cannot be solved at the level of consciousness at which they were created, and yet many hasten to assure us that technology, for all the devastation it has wrought since the Industrial Revolution, is nevertheless the solution to the ills we face today. Apparently, according to this way of thinking, it is now incumbent upon our technology to transform itself into Superman, and rescue us from the death trap its Lex Luthor alter ego has placed us in. Uh….right.

Technology is not the answer. Nor is it the problem, per se, so much as it is a symptom. There is a sickness affecting humanity that threatens our very survival as a species. We have lost touch with our center, our very DNA, and are behaving as if we are not part of this earth any more. We base our way of life on a system that will stop working in less time than the duration between now and Shakespeare. It is utter madness, but we go about our lives as if it will all work out somehow. We are the true “lemmings”, and our divorce from our naturalness will not, and cannot possibly be, solved by forcing ourselves even deeper into the ouroboros that is the left hemisphere of our brain, there to extract ever newer technologies to serve as antidotes to the technologies that are being run with such destructive consequences in our modern civilization.

Our survival as a species has nothing to do with technological geekery or, as some technophiles have suggested, “heading out to the stars”. Imagine the audacity! We trash life on this planet, but hey, it’s okay, so long as we learn to cultivate our own moon, or the moons of Jupiter or wherever. The very fact that some would consider this to be a solution is indicative itself that something is really wrong with our current mindset. A species, a contributing member of the biosphere and completely dependent on it, deluding itself that it can pick up and move elsewhere if need be. The Sufis advise us to “be in the world but not of it”. Sound advice when its meaning relates to an individual striving for peace of mind. But for the human race as a collective, the admonition should be, “Be in the world and don’t forget for a moment that YOU ARE OF IT!” Ours has been a history of pulling ourselves out of the real Matrix, the impeccable miracle that is our planet’s propensity to, generously, host ecosystems based on the simplest and most brilliant of exchanges – oxygen for carbon dioxide, food for fertilizer, death for life – and placing ourselves in an unreal Matrix that weakens us fundamentally and threatens us existentially. And we must learn how to stop.

Surely Tokyo, where I live, is one of the most wasteful cities on the entire planet. The foods that are thrown away each day, the electricity used in the neon light signs and giant televisions advertising bubblegum pop music in front of the major train stations; the air conditioners blasting out from four million domiciles in the summer, raising the temperature two degrees (Celsius) higher than outside the city; the appliances and computers and cellphones that are pitched and replaced rather than repaired, etc.; taken together this would easily provide enough food and energy and sundries to supply a city of a million or more people each day. And yet, a mere hundred and fifty odd years ago, Tokyo, or as it was then called, Edo, was a very different place altogether. It was, as has been suggested in a book by novelist/historian Eisuke Ishikawa titled “The Edo Period had a Recycling Society”, the most environmentally efficient city on the face of the earth. The Japanese of Old Edo were not self consciously preserving their environment so much as they were subconsciously aware of themselves as part of the environment. Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the commercial use of “night soil”, a lovely euphemism for human excrement, as a fertilizer. If you were to go back to Edo and stop by a roadside teahouse, you might meet a man who would proudly tell you, “I sell shit”. And why not be proud? While Europeans were risking plague at every turn, throwing their raw sewage out onto the street, the Japanese were living healthily and sanitarily, giving their produce back to the earth, so that it could continue to yield its produce for their use. This is the way of things, it is what Nature teaches us, and yet it is something that we have forgotten. Instead, we eat chemically fertilized foods, laced with pesticides and denuded of nutrients, and dump (literally) that into our water supply, of all places! We have night soil for brains, it seems!

We have to, metaphorically if not literally, return to the wilds and become creatures of the forest again. In a forest, absolutely nothing is wasted. Not air, not sunlight, not a drop of rain or sweat, not a carcass or a pellet of shit. A forest can run, continually rejuvenating itself, for millennia, once a system is set in place. In a place called Gaviotas, in Colombia, a group of scientists and environmental engineers figured out a way to put a rainforest back where the desert had encroached, and not by simply planting trees. They built it up from the ground floor, beginning with the small plants that would have originally grown there, and moving forward incrementally. Almost miraculously, the birds began to appear as if from nowhere. And the lizards, and the rodents. Over time, the forest was back, and all its creatures were working in harmony. Gaia knew what to do, and just needed a nudge.

I am not idealizing forest life as if it is some sort of trans-species hippiefest waiting to welcome us back. In any given clump of dirt in a forest that you may happen to pick up with your bare hand, an atrocity is occuring. The little things of this planet dispense with each other in ways so gruesome and cruel that they would blush the faces of the most depraved Medieval torturer. It can easily be surmised that the very terrors of the natural world have impacted our psychology and seeded our destructiveness. We needed to learn to use our brains for protection, for offense and defense. We would not have survived had we not learned to attack, fight for our very lives, take without asking. It’s part of who we are and it was bequeathed to us by Gaia. We are her legacy. Nevertheless, that is not an excuse to stay on our present course as it leads down a road toward extinction. We can use our minds to imagine, and create, a new Eden. Our children can be the butterflies and birds that spread the seeds and nectar, through their vigor and curiosity. Our senior citizens can be the massive sycamores that hold the very life of the forest in their hearts and minds. Every one of us must discover our place in this new “human forest” before we can reintegrate ourselves with the broader ecosystem both on our terms and its. Because what we are really wasting more than anything is our minds, and what we are destroying is our humanness. We have to remember what that means first, to be human. If we want to be sane again.

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AdLib
Admin

How lucky is The Planet to host your wonderful artwork and perspective? Very lucky indeed!

I really appreciate your exposing the lemming myth, it wasn’t until more recent years that I learned the truth about that fallacy. Still, the concept for the term “lemmings” has become ingrained in the public mind and will continue to be used, even by those who know what it is based on is not true.

Also, the quote you provided from Einstein resonates.

Technology does present problems for human beings. As computers were coming into more widespread use, the national conversation began that it would lead to more leisure time and even four day work weeks. Instead, what happened is that jobs could be sent overseas and farmed out to contractors…thanks to technology.

It’s like the monkey’s paw, you can make a wish for technology to be developed to make something easier and not know ahead of time that it could make many things worse.

Many teens find it difficult to have in-person relationships and conversations, some would prefer to mainly text friends instead of spend time with them. Thanks to the miracle of technology.

Overall, technology is not bad, it is just seductive. It does tempt us to become less involved socially, playing Wii, watching Tivo, etc. However, as exemplified in this very site, it can be used to bring people together and enhance communication and socialization.

Just as we have to make decisions in our lives not to be tempted by bad-for-us foods or affairs, we need to learn not to be tempted by technology so it harms our lives.

It’s more about personal responsibility, using technology to enhance life instead of dominate it. So, though I don’t agree that there needs to be a move away from technology, I do agree that it needs to be tempered in our lives so that it serves us and we don’t serve it.

Questinia
Member

You illustration portrays the First Couple as remaining in the Garden of Eden because they can approach the infinity of immortality with all their gadgetry. But what happens when they get bored? Wouldn’t they need some kind of button to push to give them something that is not on their control? The only thing I can think of that satisfies that is Nature. Nature is a jack-in-the-box. It transports us from our usual thoughts and experiences and let’s us not be in control. Doesn’t being bored usually make one seek more and more technology which is again to be controlled? It’s like achieving higher and higher levels in a video game. At some point one wants to be surprised and overwhelmed and out of control.

Maybe God’s little apple was a symbol of the first “surprise”.

The only people who may not cotton to that are Republicans!

Questinia
Member

The civilized world has co-opted the material and natural world and reduced it to symbols. We use money as a symbol for wealth, inches yards and feet for measurement, IQ points for intelligence. We become so pre-occupied with the symbols that they become stand-ins for nature and the material world. We mistake the menu for the food. Maybe these symbols are versions of the natural world we are meant to play with.

Maybe, civilization and Rosie are all about play. Seeking out ecstasy, pre-occupied with it. But in civilization ecstasy needs to be upped, people can get desensitized and bored by ecstasy, they need higher and higher levels to satisfy them. However, people don’t seem to get desensitized to pain because too much time is spent trying to avoid it, so there is less exposure to it and a greater sensitization to it. To be happy with simpler ecstasies and use more fancy ecstasies as condiment. To not be afraid of pain because there is ecstasy in that too.

kesmarn
Admin

WTS, every article you write is so packed with terrific observations that a decent response would be longer than the article itself. Thanks for your latest contributions: artistic and literary.

I see Rosie there in the illustration, poking her little nose into some hole that contains god-knows-what, and it does remind me of our own species’ incurable curiosity. A curiosity that has brought us delightful stuff (What happens when you string guts across a wooden box and draw a bow of horse hair over it…Vivaldi!) and destruction (Just how far down can humans drill in the ocean floor for oil? oops.).

Curiosity, like so many other things is, in short, a double edged sword. Technology, too, I see as — maybe not so much a symptom, but — a tool. Like fire, water, blades, drugs, etc., technology is a tool that can be used to hurt or heal. We can use opium and its derivatives to bring blessed relief to sufferers or to dull the pain that’s a necessary part of spiritual growth…eventually, even, to kill. The same blade that a surgeon can use with skill to remove a diseased organ, can be used to inflict pain. Water can restore life to patients who are dehydrated, or for be used for the Cheney-esque pastime of
water-boarding. I’m a Christian, but I don’t hesitate to note that antibiotics have healed more people than Jesus did when he was here in the flesh. Food is one of life’s great pleasures. But it can be that, or the substance that produces a 600 pound person who is reduced to a life of immobility and endless medical crises.

What sort of “sickness affecting humanity,” as you so aptly phrased it, WTS, causes us to make the negative choice so often now, in the use of those tools? Why do we decide that — for instance — we Americans would rather import drugs and humans from Mexico, than to do emotional or physical work ourselves?

I wonder if the problem is that we cannot accept the fact that labor, pain and death are as much a part of being a human person as leisure, pleasure and life are? When we say that we use technology to master nature and the pain that nature can inflict, aren’t we also saying that we think we can become the masters of death itself? A wee bit arrogant, perhaps?

As is saying: “After we’ve finished trashing this planet, we’ll just move on to another.” The Perpetual Frat-Boy mentality. Cleaning up after the party — all the pizza ground into the carpet, all the spilled beer and the barf? Isn’t that what maids are for?

When the Wall Street induced financial crash happened, I noticed that the only ones who were virtually unscathed were the Amish. When a psychopath murdered a number of school girls, the most functional and merciful response came from the Amish. When gas prices spiked, the people who were able to cope were the Amish. These amazing people who live connected intimately to the earth every day. And yet…and yet…the Amish school girls who were wounded and survived, did so because of…technology.

A vexing question you raise, indeed, WTS, but I thank you for raising it.

dildenusa
Member

I love your art work. Very appropriate for modern life.

Where I live in northern Arizona the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Department are reintroducing the Black Footed Ferret to it’s home range in the high desert grasslands. And I’ve seen Ferrets in the wild. Very interesting creatures. The point is at least there was enough breeding stock left to allow for the repopulation and allow for genetic diversity.

Anyone who has studied biology knows that a species must dispose of it’s waste products in a sustainable manner otherwise the species chokes on it’s own waste. In our rush to poke holes in the only home we have, we will not only choke on our waste products but we force all the other sentient beings to do the same.

Kalima
Admin

A beautiful drawing wts, the wasting in Tokyo I take a little offense to. No better or worse than anywhere else on this planet.

Questinia
Member

Brilliant and thought-provoking as always whatsie!

“How one sees the origins of human culture is also a description of how one wishes to see the future of humanity.” – William Irwin Thompson, Gaia: A Way of Knowing

People see

Questinia
Member

….and while I’m at it. A little sumthin’ on A&E. Prior to the Adam’s rib nonsense, it was writ that Adam was made of menstrual blood and clay. We also know that the default human is female; the male is based on the female template.

Men have been the ones to write the cultural scripts. The global patriarchy may need to cede to a matriarchy at this point.

Just matriarchatin’