Ideas On Nature

Here are the videos that prompted this.

True Life: I'm Living Off The Grid

George Carlin: Saving The Planet

I find the idea of returning to nature a bit...off. For one, we're in nature already. Man is a part of nature, we use natural things to create new amalgamations of different "natural" materials. Nuclear bombs are as natural as olive oil or dirt. They are comprised if atoms, all of them, and thus are "natural". The psychological barrier we place between us and nature is because we fail to recognize the above stated fact. When the natural order of things is arranged in a way that harmonizes with human understanding and intervention (such as a building) we feel alienated from it because of it doesn't look or "feel" natural. It has been processed through human thought and thus able to be interpreted through human understanding. A painting of a sad face or war scene is tinged with meaning, emotion, and intention where as a forest is without such mediums. Much like an abstract painting, nature has no meaning, no order, and no true interpretation. In both there are randomly assorted colors (that is, we cannot interpret them to symbolize anything, although we often do) and are open to interpretation as well as appreciated for the experience of their physicality rather than "message" or "meaning". I am a firm believer that humanity applies essence to existence, that is to say that we name things, give them meaning, measurement and purpose. Nature just happens, or occurs and what the result is becomes what it is as we experience it. This idea is profoundly important on how we view our existence, relationship with nature and quality of lives.

Throughout time is can be found that humans often wish for simpler times, and wish away their contemporary lives for the romantic simplicity of the past. There remains an assumption that the generations before them had it better, understood life more profoundly, and explain away the common troubles as unnecessary products of technology, godlessness, youthful carelessness, and social change. This is where conservatism preys and wages its battle on those "damn liberals". On the opposite end, those forward thinkers often abandon the traditional ideas and cling to new trends, technologies, art, etc as a key to greener pastures. This is most readily recognized in 20th century values and the cheering of progress, or rather PROGRESS! Each end of the stick clings to their end seeking ways to to improve the human condition, seeking solutions by either reinventing the wheel or clinging to its simplicity. Both are hindrances to happiness and contentment and both are nay saying to the life, time, and peers they exist within. Life cannot be apprecieated with eyes on the road ahead or rear view mirror. It is the drive itself that matters, and it is all we have. We all share a common destination and a common starting point. The upholstery and model of our vehicles may be different, but only in superficial ways.

As stated earlier, nature is viewed as a distant thing and often as a purer form of existence. Our ancestors who struggled, suffered, and died by the hand of nature have grown into a civilization of ungrateful nay-sayers wishing away the great feats of mankind by mistake of ignoring the examples left for them. In the age of information, with texts and wisdom from a countless number of brilliant, experienced human being we remain unhappy, suicidal, wrathful, hateful, bigoted, and anxious. We are richer in knowledge, opportunity, comfort, and resources than ever before yet we are also more miserable and lost. Though we may still possess the primitive demons of our ancestors we also hold enough history and examples to guide us to utopia. How many more times will the Visigoths overturn Rome? How many more Nero's and Hitlers will we give power to? How many more Galileo's will we chain to their homes for trying to help humanity? We are more enlightened than ever, 5th graders know anatomy that only the elite doctors knew three hundred years ago. We have access to Buddhists texts only read by monks outside of Asia up until two hundred years ago. There is no excuse for our behavior other than fear. I do not say all this standing atop my podium looking down, but from staring through my own eyes here on the ground. I see you. You see me.

We are now threatened by extermination by our own hands. This has hovered over us for the past century. We could wipe ourselves out thousands of times over. This reality has caused so much strife, paranoia, revaluation, revolution, and an all around change in the human psyche. But I ask you, when have we not been threatened by asteroids? By an ice age? We have always been threatened by the sheer randomness of the universe. We are blobs on a floating rock. I don't mean to sound cynical, but are we not ourselves on a cultural and psychological merry-go-round? Do we not suffer the same pains from generation to generation to generation? We've made greater enemies out of ourselves than nature ever posed simply because the trouble we create can be avoided. Asteroids cannot, ice ages cannot, solar flares cannot. We distance ourselves from these truths. We either hide them or are simply not aware of them. We've put ourselves in a psychological bubble, and feel dirtied and liberated by the unclean world beyond our creation. What do you expect the walls are made of? The plastic that wraps your bread isn't drawn in from another dimension. It was made from earth, will return to earth and the universe will go on. We have created an alien world out of our home.

Living in the woods, not leaving a "carbon footprint", "saving the planet" these are all insane objectives of a species so afraid of the unknown, so disconnected that we've put ourselves at the center of the universe to try to make something of it. The objective is not to save the planet, it is to save our species. It is delaying the inevitable. Its understandable, modern life is complicated, it can drag you in and make you psychotic. However, you have control over the very thing that creates all these problems. Your noodle. We're our own best therapist. Look at your desk, chances are its made of something from this universe. Hell, i bet its from this planet, eh? Your in nature. You are nature. I'm not going to tell you to be one with it, so what if you realize it? You're going to be either way. Don't go frolic in the woods, go shopping. Buy more stuff made from nature. Throw it out. Let it decompose. Hell, in a 10 billion years the sun will swell into a red giant and evaporate it all anyways. This isn't the best solution for OUR survival. However, it is a nice perspective to start from. Our ancestors had just as many problems as we do, just different ones. They solved them, moved on and turned into us. Let's solve ours and turn into something better. Without all the smog, pollution, and nonsense of the past few hundred years we wouldn't have had the capability to discover cures for polio or get to the moon. We're learning from our mistakes, and if we don't we're dead. Universe goes on. We become particles, get made into something else.

Simpler times do not exist, different times do. Not afraid of the plague? Bears attacks no longer a fear in your apartments? These were once as scary as mortgage payments. So what's my solution? Can I preach without offering up some brilliant scheme? Well, yes. Though, I have a few suggestions. Laugh, be content, find something to live for, love your friends, enjoy the little things, eat a damn twinky. I'm sick of worrying and picking out all the flaws of my time, my life, my friends. Criticism has its place-like on a blog :). I have a hankering that the best thing for us is to relax, enjoy life, do what matters to us, and be excellent to each other. A way between meaninglessness and seriousness, a middle way.

“Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.”

Seneca, Roman Philosopher

Jam Econo, Stay True