A Brutal Chop

I gave the patch of grass, weeds and wildflowers a brutal chop yesterday and I feel terrible about it. I feel bad not only for the death and maiming of the plants but also for the disruption and death of the countless insects that had taken up residence in what was truly something of a wilderness after all of the rain we have had this season. I had to do it because I need to rent out the house and as beautiful as the wild growth was to me, I did not think I could sell this aesthetic to a prospective tenant. The conflictual relationship between ecology (the logos of the oikos) and economy (the nomos of the oikos) has never been clearer. Indeed, some nomos. When I was midway through my murder and mayhem, a mocking bird set off a terrific alarm, flying and squawking out the news about my shameful behavior, flying and flashing his or her black and white wings as if in semaphore.

That same day, or maybe it was the day before, I heard a radio program on a project that introduces children to the slaughter and butchering of animals. The idea is to make them aware of how animals come to become our food. I wish I could remember the precise term that the anthropologist used to describe the state of ignorance in the matter under which we live because the process occurs far away and out of sight, and has been the case for decades.

Most people do not have the same feelings toward plants. In fact, the thought ran through my mind several times, that if I were doing to kittens what I was doing to dandelions, well . . . of course I couldn't do it. Even when I decimated an earthworm or a caterpillar, I felt a stronger twinge of regret than when I sliced down a bunch of grass. It occurred to me that the process might have been gentler and less objectionable had I been using a scythe instead of a gas powered weed whacker, but I am not sure why. I suppose the aesthetics would be different but then what does that matter? Does the mouse feel less pain when it is sliced in two by a horse drawn plow as opposed to a tractor? What say you 'wee sleekit cow'rin tim'rous beastie' ? Right. I thought so.

I suppose there would be more time for aversion, or at least a greater opportunity for regret and reconciliation. So while the actual material fact of the act would be the same, perhaps it does matter how it is done, in the grand accounting of it all.

Wee sleekit cow'rin tim'rous plantie.

Sorry Rabbie.

There is something not to like about plants

These words may seem shocking to you, but I have no trouble saying them, because I think they are true. I suppose it is really not the trees themselves, but their placement, that sometimes displeases me. The event that precipitated this comment occurred about a week ago. Under and around the freeway overpass that is just a few blocks from my home, Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation, cut down dozens of trees and cleared out acres of brush and ground cover, plants in other words, that had been growing there for decades. After a day or two of brutal work at the hands of crews armed with chainsaws, tractors and weed eaters, what was once a dark and foreboding forest is now a wide open space with clean lines and bright sunlight. I have always found it strange that we build beautiful things, and yes I find freeway overpasses to be beautiful, and then clutter up their architecture with foliage that just does not belong there. Trees are not meant to be decoration for our cities. They have the right to live as they form naturally, organizing themselves into communities with multiple species clustering together. What we do all too often is to line them up like soldiers along streets, perverting their true nature. It is a point that Peter Wohlleben makes well in his recent book. It is not good for the trees, shrubs and flowers and it is not good for our cities, streets and buildings. I am sorry that plants had to die, but maybe their sacrifice is a signal that a new form of urbanism, one that does not abuse plants, is on the way.

In Response to David Brooks' Column in the New York Times

I am sorry, but I have lost patience with any discussion of the world that does not include the condition of nonhuman entities, including inanimate phenomena and systems. By that token, however, I completely agree: the 21st century is broken, but so was the 20th, and the 19th and perhaps the 18th, if not also earlier eras.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/opinion/this-century-is-broken.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0

In Response to Paul Krugman's Column in the New York Times

From a standard progressive perspective, I agree with this criticism of the Republican leadership's take on the economy. From a deep ecology perspective, however, I do not see much difference between what the right and left are proposing with regard to the direction that civilization should take. Indeed, since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, even since the invention of agriculture if you want to really identify the roots of the problem (no pun intended), human beings have exerted a disproportionate and malignant force on the Earth, its nonhuman inhabitants, and its systems. Quibbling about relatively small differences in how the human economy should be run really misses the larger point, which is that human behavior has to be radically changed in such a way as to restore life on Earth to a more mutual state of health for everyone and every thing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opinion/on-economic-arrogance.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Animism

What can I say? Indigenous people had and continue to have the right idea. If you live your life as if everything has a spirit, you will lead a naturally sustainable and ethical life. I could say more, but I doubt intense philosophizing, if I can call it that, would make the point any clearer. In fact, I think that kind of rhetoric just makes things more confusing. There are numerous ways to do this, and just as many constraints, but I see it as the only solution to the toxic levels of industrialization that have made our form of civilization so fraught with problems. Where I differ from the deep ecologists is that I think, or accept, that the reconciliation of this inherent conflict is possible, at least in a representational sense, but still satisfactorily, through art. Beauty will save you . . . us?

The Wisdom of Jainism

I am increasingly becoming an admirer of Jainism. This religion/philosophy is at once ancient and modern, the exact prescription for what ails us, in my opinion. As with mainstream Hindu beliefs, the core principle is nonviolence. The aspect of this tenet that interests me most with respect to plants relates to diet. As I described briefly before, the main value lies in eliminating harm, so one may eat a part of a plant (a fruit, say) but not the whole thing (for example, a carrot), because doing the latter would entail killing the entire plant, an outcome that is not a consequence of the preceding scenario. Uprooting a plant would also harm animals clustered around its roots or lodged in its leaves and stems, so there is an ecological aspect to the practice as well. By similar logic, one cannot drink wine or beer, or any fermented thing, because to do so would require killing the beings that live in the product, those that are responsible for the fermentation. Even water is filtered, to remove any little creatures resident therein. Traditionally, one drew water from a well, filtered it through a cloth, and then rinsed the cloth with some of the filtered water back into the well, so as to return the creatures to their original home. Needless to say I find Jainism to be enormously appealing, not only for its direct effects but also for the mindfulness that such careful daily practice must cultivate.

I suppose I could argue that the bacteria in the yoghurt I eat would just reestablish themselves elsewhere in either the ecology of my body or that of a larger scale environment. Or, I could take what I believe is a Buddhist approach, and view life as an energy that is resident in a being and therefore, like all energy, capable of being neither created nor destroyed, rather just temporarily present. But from an ontological perspective, this latter view does not rest easy with me. Where life is instantiated in a being, it is the being that matters, not the life: the particular form takes precedence over the abstracted essence, in other words. I find that this approach is much more conducive to mindfulness, as it would lead one to understand that one is eating this onion, this fish, this cow (God forbid), rather than an onion, a fish, a cow. General principles are fine, but I think it is safer to pay attention to what lies immediately in front of you. 

Eating Onions and Other Root Vegetables, Continued

So it may in fact be true that I have very little empathy for root vegetables, at least not to the point of not eating them, as practitioners of the Jain religion do. But my feelings about the matter are not at zero, so I have to reconcile them somehow. Undoubtedly the vast majority of people in the world do not think twice about the the fact that they kill the vegetables that they eat. Even now, at the age of almost 53, I have not lost the childlike habit of attributing emotions to nonhuman life forms and even to inanimate objects. This propensity in children is apparently the reason why a book like Goodnight Moon was so popular. Children are natural animists and everything is relatable and communicable. And as I said, I have never outgrown the impulse. I will select the ugly apple from the pile at the grocery store because no one else seems to want it. When I see someone pluck a leaf off of a tree I cringe. I feel the same way about a car getting scratched, however, or even worse, some crazy person taking a hammer to a statue, but the feeling in these cases is qualitatively different from how I feel when human beings do things to living things be they other humans, nonhuman animals or plants. I recall one time trying in vain to keep our family's German Shepherd from stepping, unbeknownst to him, on a pretty little caterpillar. I must have been all of six or seven, I imagine.

So about this problem of reconciliation. Irrespective of scholarly work on the origins of religion, I somehow feel that this need to reconcile a contradiction that is central to being a human being is at the root of religious practice. Interestingly, a young Brazilian filmmaker just released a fictional ethnography, an idea that I love, in which fisherman spear fish so that they can eat them, but then cradle them in their arms while they die, murmuring comforting and apologetic sounds as they expire. Such is the nature of sacrifice, something that humans have practiced since hunter gatherer times. Should it be the same when one eats a potato? I don't see why not, but it is surely better to have it take the form of mindfulness or some other modern psychological-emotional exercise or practice, such as being aware of where the potato came from, what it took to grow, who harvested it, et cetera. The point is not necessarily to not eat potatoes, pace Jainism, but to eat them with some kind of humility and realization of what such an act entails.