So I'm going to test this out. I'm going to spend tomorrow writing a paper which I'm currently busy putting off until the last minute, but after that it's fall break, and there's no reason I can't spend it incredibly confused and disoriented. It isn't like there are places I need to be.
So on Saturday I am going to practice thinking of the connections between things, keeping that at the front of my mind at all times-- thinking "this paper came from a tree", etc. I suspect I will get very little done on Saturday, but that's okay. In all likelihood I'll get even less done on Sunday, which I plan to spend not trying to think of locations. I'll probably end up wondering around the Quarter or someplace-- without any sort of boundary who knows where I'll drift off to.
I'm attempting to exercise the ecological thought as I understand it at this time. If there are other ways of understanding it, ways which might actually be practical,. please let me know-- I'd much rather try those.
Amelie, I hope that you will post your results: what you discovered or 'thought' while on your Saturday experiment in "the ecological thought." I'd be very curious to know what you saw/thought/heard/tasted/smelled/felt/did...while under the influence of the ecological thought.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you seek a more "practical" way to exercise the ecological thought? Should the ecological thought be practical? Practical to whom? To what end? How would we measure such practicality?
I agree with a lot that Tim Morton says, more than I have agreed with anything in a very long time. I disagree with him about dislocation. To me, this seems like "think globally, act locally" 2.0. I have spent too many years thinking AND acting locally to buy it. Total engagement with a local area involves activism, including shortening energy loops so that resources come from less far away (fuel, clothes, building materials, food). This can't all be done in the space of a day's class, or even a college semester, or four years, or even a single lifetime, but the DOING of it has to be NOW, or it will be simply NOT. We can say whatever we want, but the most intelligent conversation in the world isn't going to stop anyone from shitting in the ocean.
ReplyDeleteChristopher: The practicality of an ecological system can be measured very concretely by the diversity of beings it benefits and by the diversity of its means of benefitting them. A forest is an association of plants, animals, microbes, minerals, temperature and moisture. The trouble with the idea that thought doesn't need to be practical is that to communicate thoughts, you often have to write them down, and paper comes from trees, so if you're not taxing the readers and using the tax to plant more trees, then the words "ecological" and "thought" cancel each other out. In India there's a saying: "The head does not ask for flowers when the belly lacks rice." Ecological thought will fizzle out if it has no bases in ecological livelihood.
Nick, I totally agree that ecological livelihood is necessary and worthwhile. But I also think we need an accompanying sort of 'big awareness' (always risking the impossible) of the limits of anthropocentric thinking. Sure, I know we can measure the practicality of an ecological system; but *we* are measuring it. It doesn't measure itself, as it were; it doesn't 'need' to. And I'm not being nihilistic here, I promise!
ReplyDeleteAll I'm trying to point out (and really think through, however paradoxically) is how we sustain or balance the ecological thought (which *should be* dislocating to think it, it's so vast) and the kind of practical, very much 'emplaced', ecological livelihood that you (rightly and very smartly) espouse.
The questions in my initial comment above to Amelie's post are not meant to be rhetorical dead ends; they are to be starting points. (I hope!)
Sure, Chris. Good point. This is why I think ET and permaculture are in search of one another. There are a lot of respects in which American mainstream permaculture has lost its way; even pragmatism doesn't work unless it's universal, and understanding of universality generally comes from contemplation.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things permaculturists usually seem to understand is that our understanding of other beings (chickens, for example) will always be incomplete. This is why we say that a chicken has intrinsic value: if we CAN build the chicken a home in our garden, then we OWE it to the chicken that we should do so. What we find when we do this is that chickens eat the weeds and bugs that we don't eat, till and manure the topsoil...lots of functions we can appreciate, but the biggest reason to keep them is that it's just better to give chickens a home than to leave them to the coyotes, just because they have a right to be; if we're going to keep them, it follows that we have to manage them. We don't necessarily have to know the limits of anthropocentrism in order to acknowledge that there ARE limits and design accordingly. So ecological designers make space for chickens, AND for coyotes...but not necessarily together. All these things fit in zones, in which they seem to be happy and productive. We decide what these zones are, but we also design for the contingency that our decisions were deeply flawed. We're never going to be perfect. Neither will the trees or the mycorrhizae.
The thing is, places on the planet (including our own yards) are in so much trouble right now that they really can't wait for us to be thoughtful enough, and it sounds to me as if quite a few students and other people are experiencing disorientation from too much emphasis on thought. I can teach someone to be a philosopher, but that won't make them a good gardener. But if you teach someone to be the right kind of gardener, you only have the practical basis for good philosophy. I think ET can help a gardener-philosopher go further in both directions, but the two have to be complimentary; one doesn't precede the other.
Chris: I have not yet posted about my very disorienting experience with dislocation, an experience which I would NOT want to repeat, as it involved a lot of sitting down and trying not to think about thinking-- maybe it gets easier with practice?-- but I promise I will. Janelle had me talk about it in class, briefly, but I hadn't gotten around to talking about it here.
ReplyDeleteNick: I completely agree about your disagreement with dislocation, although I hadn't even gotten to the practical aspect of it (Chris is right about my general confusion as to the practical application of the Ecological Thought). I have problems understanding the complex relationships between distinction and interrelation in The Ecological Thought-- I'm currently really struggling to understand how my self, as I perceive myself, can exist within the mesh, and how I can choose to value one being over another from within the mesh, as I will inevitably need to do-- if a child has a virus, I will unquestionably choose to eliminate the virus and save the child. The Ecological Thought, along with much of critical theory as a discipline, is mounting a direct attack on my idea of self, and it's difficult for me to do anything practical when I'm not sure where I end and where I begin-- when I have no "location", so to speak.