The Thinkers and the Workers

Looking out onto the blanket of trees that cover my neighborhood I see a diversity of botany. From what I can tell I see the Quaking (Snowbowl) Aspens, Acacia Greggiis, Acer Negundo (Maple), and a few Mesquites that have migrated to the residential area of my viewpoint. On the edges of town there are coniferous pines that line the mountain sides. I wonder if these old-time natives mind not being in the middle of all the blaring horns, machinery, and mayhem? Funny how one species gets pushed aside for another. Who really benefits and who really suffers?


This town of Flagstaff is new to me on many levels. People seem to live a simpler lifestyle than what I'm used to back in Southern California. People seem to genuinely be happy living at a slower rate than one would see in any metropolitan area. My neighbors are not work-a-holics who spend most of their time trying to get ahead, they simply maintain. This observance made me think of how our society is run. In a very general sense there are three kinds of workers and three kinds of thinkers. I'll note the former first. The workers of the world seem to spend their time either working for something in the future, functioning as maintenance in the present, or decaying their surroundings by being hung up on something in their past. The 'futurists' are very focused on working hard to make it to the end of the day or the end of the week or the end of the month or the end of the year. They are constantly fixated on future events and do not really take each moment in life as it arises as a means to see what is in front of them. It's always just around the corner. These workers often miss real opportunity for growth because real growth is not simply focusing on the future but taking all aspects of time as we know it (past, present, and future) and building off of that. Those that maintain usually are very grounded people in that they know very well what is going on in the present moment because part of maintaining or playing the role of maintenance entails making sure that a system works and is functioning properly. These people also tend to fall short on insight because they have no ambition for change or movement outside of the proverbial 'box' that they work hard to preserve. The third type of worker the "decayer" often diminishes their work and surroundings because they are focused on a memory or the remnants of past success or failure.

There are also the thinkers which somewhat resemble the workers but vary in operation. Those that are the "growers" are always thinking of the next step. In an almost compulsory way, these individuals make moves based on their vision of the future. Much like the workers it's always about what could be and never resting on what is. The "in-the-now" thinkers dissolve all constructs of what was and what might be. They truly live life in the moment without thought of regret or consequence. And finally there are those who have a somewhat delayed effect in that they seem to look at life after it passes them. These types of people often drive while looking through their rearview mirror.

As I look out over the blanket of trees that cover my neighborhood I think of how one "species" of humans gets pushed aside for another. Who really benefits and who really suffers?

The Howl of the Wolf

If there is such a thing as Gaia or Earth itself being an organism with all of its biota being the different organs that make up the whole, are some of us humans nothing more than a cancerous cyst? Some people see working for the earth as a responsibility to the land and themselves. How often does a hard day's work seem rewarding of itself? I have never met such grounded individuals as those who find meaning in their relationship with the earth and one another. Their energy sort of describes their story as one can get a sense that of the balance these people find in life.

When I think of a serene mountainside or an untreaded riverbank I imagine what Jesus and Buddha must have been thinking when they would retreat to nature to discover their relationship to the cosmos. What clarity and simplicity that can be found in the wilderness! To become the Witness as opposed to telling the world what it is. To observe history, the present, and the unknown all in one place, all in one moment. The wilderness is a place that makes use of all known and unknown senses to all living creatures.

In nature there is no room to frustrate any of the mechanics that aid in its continuation. The delicate balances of the natural world depend on all the elements and the processes that have created and maintained much of what exists on this planet to remain untampered by Human's concept of time. The natural world itself does not know time. Much of the animal kingdom do not know what time is. Only Human's interpretation seems to be at fault for the many miscalculations of our world. To think that we can put characters that we call numbers to represent an eternity of prior and continued existence is beyond any realm that a human being can experience. Isn't that what we attribute to be the duty of God? When did humans decide to take matters into their own hands? Was this the fault of Eve? Do we blame some ancient relative for inventing Human's first tool? Where did we go wrong and how do we begin the process of damage control? Can we control the damage we've made for the biological sphere by which we inhabit?

September

As I sit here looking out over the canopy that covers most of the town of Flagstaff I am reminded of the stories told of Leopold's realization on his farmland in Wisconsin. I'm not sure if anyone notices the little intricacies of what has adapted, over time, to the arrival and expansion of humans on this plot of "land". Oddly enough I do not hear many birds. Nothing but the occasional chopping of wood or hammering of some project that someone has undertaken. In the distance a train rumbles through as its echoes reverberate throughout the forest. Where have all the birds gone? I'm not an expert on the migration or local ecology of birds but I would have guessed that with such an abundance of real estate I would be listening to a symphony of calls and cackles rather than the high-pitch grumblings of the nearby yapper-dog. Perhaps Leopold and I have both experienced the quiet setting of September.

I find it interesting that we debate and toil over land management issues while all other species just continue to use the land the way they always have. We, humans, have used our greatest ability, thought, to complicate and redefine a very simple stage for us to perform on. How often do people think of the crow that flies overhead or the movement of the leaves indicating a push of air? Such an amazing act to witness yet we're more concerned with what time our favorite tv show comes on or making it to an important meeting. What can be more important than witnessing the glorious motion of life and time and space?

When I look out and see the slow motion of the swaying trees and all the interrelated motions of creatures that share the land, I feel that I'm connected to them by the simple statement "I am". We all share this. We may not share the same home or inhabit the same body but we all form an "I Amness" in our experience. My experience, in this sense, is no different than the ponderosa pine or the black lab or my neighbor. There is a subjective nature that we all share yet there are objective divisions that disable many of us to see our interrelated bonds. My body, my thoughts, and all that I see are nothing more than objects, quantifiable organizations of matter cooperatively working side-by-side to continue this thing called life. But what is it about this "life" that connects me to the past? What is it about this life that connects me to you or any other organism? There is a part of me that observes everything including myself. This "I Amness" of realization connects me back to every living thing that has ever witnessed, even if only for a short moment, its own existence. Am I to think that a dog has never realized its own self? How would a dog 'know' to get excited when its owner comes home? Is there not some memory indicating to that animal that it has experienced a moment of I Amness that it desires to experience again?

My New Found Hero

I think I have found a new hero. Aldo Leopold has written a beautiful piece of literature entitled "A Sand County Almanac". The more that I continue my reading the more I can understand the significance of our evolution as a species and some answers to questions that have puzzled me for quite some time. Toward the end of the book is where Leopold unveils the hidden meaning behind how man perceives the world. In his Land Ethic argument there is an interconnectedness that more often than not is overlooked and has become the problem of a lot of our environmental problems today. Keeping in mind that his book was published in 1949, there are concepts inside that are timeless.

He begins his book by chronicling each month of the year and what he learns about "nature". For this entry, I will offer my thoughts on the basic concepts of each month as I go through them.

January:

Here he talks about winter slowly breaking toward spring and what he discovers around the land in Wisconsin. There are tracks in the snow that show a skunk has emerged from hibernation and has begun his journey through another period of awakening. As the snow begins to slowly melt there are hidden tunnels beneath the top layer engineered by mice that has become noticeable from anyone (or anything) that sits above. What Leopold begins to explain is his observation of life'd revival toward a new season and a new year.

What I begin to notice while reading through the month of January is how the domino effect of life continues. The interesting point that I gather while I continue to read is that there doesn't seem to be an originating piece that has tip off this chain of events. More and more do I see a relation of one event or thing to another.

February:

In this chapter is where Leopold has really begun to open my mind. He talks about collecting wood for his furnace and the process of cutting a tree. Most people wouldn't think much below the surface when chopping down a tree or cutting one up into pieces small enough to fit inside of a wood furnace. He begins to explain how each motion of a saw goes back in time through a tree's rings. One can learn a lot from this process in a field called dendrology. Depending on the size of the ring one can see whether a drought or forest fire existed...in that year! As he continues through each year he relates it to events that were going outside of that tree such as when he says "We cut 1906, when the first state forester took office, and fires burned 17,000 acres in these sand counties; we cut 1905 when a great flight of goshawks came out of the North and ate up the local grouse (they no doubt perched in this tree to eat some of mine)."

The way he describes the relevance of each ring contained within a tree made me realize that there is wisdom not to be overlooked in the "land" of our world. Life did not start nor will it stop by our human ideas. Man's disconnect with the natural world is his assumed understanding of it. We DO want to think of things in a quantitative manner but unfortunately we have marginalized the qualitative aspects of our thinking. In my humble opinion, Plato was a genius at explaining the qualitative significance of the world in which we inhabit. Two concepts that have stuck with me are Plato's Allegory of the Cave and his interpretation of the Visible World vs. the Intelligible World.

March I will skip.

April:

In this month he explains how farms built upon riverbanks can be marooned by floods due to the melting of snow further upstream. He continues on to talk about how geese and birds react to the changing in the weather (and in particular with the floods) and begin their "claim" on the surrounding areas that other mammals and such do not have access to due their "floating" ability. It is not long into this text that he begins explaining the "battle" of brush fires that played an integral role in the prairies in the Wisconsin/Illinois area. Not until the arrival of a new animal, the settlers, was this process interrupted. The bur oak began taking over much of the prairie land because of man's intervention of the fires. He also goes on to talk about the dance of the woodcock in this time and brilliantly says "It is fortunate, perhaps, that no matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all of the salient facts about any one of them."

As I understand it, I begin to see that Leopold is admitting to himself that there are activities in the woods that don't necessarily need our understanding of it for it to exist. It's almost as if he is trying to rollback the argument of man's thinking especially when he says things like "Engineers did not discover insulation; they copied it from these old soldiers [bur oak trees] of the prairie war [the fires that raged throughout the prairie grasses]." Man would love to take credit for his understandings as if he created it. Thinking about this I am reminded of Benjamin Franklin. He did not "discover" electricity. I'm sure many before him had seen lightening in the sky yet because he puts his stamp of discovery on it he is now credited with this revolutionary element of our world. How often has man tried to take credit for something that preceded his understanding of it?

To be continued...

Leopold's 'The Land Ethic'

Many of the disconnections that I find in life between humans and their environment seem to parallel Aldo Leopold's 'Land Ethic' concept. I've always wondered how is it that people can say they care about the environment after watching a documentary or hearing testimony on the matter then throw away an aluminum can or ask for a plastic bag at a grocery market? This type of disconnect seemed both fascinating and scarier-than-all-hell when I thought about it. I think a lot of this is contributed, at least in my experience in the U.S., to a diminishing essence of community. All I really know is the time and age of my generation in my experience but I would agree with Leopold when he says "The complexity of co-operative mechanisms has increased with population density, and with the efficiency of tools." I can only speak on my experiences in my generation but it seems that, especially in America, our blinded ambition to acquire the highest valued materials are keeping us from truly uniting and creating an actual community. This disconnection within ourselves is the root of our disconnect with the natural world. If we are having a difficult time to even acknowledge that we're all in this together in the man-made world then how on earth can we take the blinders off to see our interrelatedness in the natural world?

"All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts."

As an evolutionary species we are in the struggle to balance our innate ability to become better and find a higher status in life while simultaneously we are also becoming more and more aware that we have a responsibility to ourselves and the environment. The only problem is that we're fighting this message against entities in the world that do not want people to become more aware for if they did it would crash the world as we know it. E.g., if a key corporation has become "Too big to fail" then regardless of their practices it is essential that they continue doing business or we may have an economic catastrophe on our hands.

"In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it."

This concept is probably the hardest to communicate to other human beings, especially in America simply because it would require a MAJOR paradigm shift in those that hold power in the world. In all fairness some have tried to do business more ethically but overall we still have a lot of work and a long way to go. We are raised to think the 'land of opportunity' and 'the American Dream' are things we are entitled to regardless of what or whom stands in the way. Look at pop culture today and you can see just how insensitive younger generations are to older generations and concepts such as the 'Land Ethic'.

"The ordinary citizen today assumes that science knows what makes the community clock tick; the scientist is equally sure that he does not. He knows that the biotic mechanism is so complex that its workings may never be fully understood."

This short paragraph remind me of Ken Wilber's work and the model of Spiral Dynamics (Beck/Graves). Don't sleep on this people! This concept is an awesome road map of where we are and where we're headed. The science community holds a good foothold with how we operate our world. Details, numbers, measurements, and such determine our economy and daily life. BUT, a big cause to why environmentalists are struggling to get support is because the scientific community are too focused on the details and need to ease up a bit to connect it to the bigger picture.

The best visual example I've seen on connecting details to the big picture is in the short-film, "Power of Ten".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUeFzvHz8Bw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

This video was one of the first paradigm shifts I had in relating myself to the universe :)