I am on the fourth floor of USC’s Levey Library. I look out the window to my right; I face the south – I see the Aerospace Museum, MacArthur Quad and much of the USC campus with its summer-school students - they look like ants at this distance.
I look again, and this time, I see a world devout of meaning but with a purpose – a utilitarian purpose. I see that every atom that we lay our hands on is put to use. The trees are planted, aligned and trimmed to efficiently provide greenery to the campus, oxygen to the city and shade for the students. The grass lawns are cut and watered daily to remove the feeling of claustrophobia in an urban environment. The red rock of a San Diego query has been cut into identically shaped blocks and placed on the ground with a repetitive pattern to soothe our obsessive compulsive personalities.
Granted, this is not actually bad, I at times enjoy the look of my campus – it really does remove the feeling of claustrophobia brought out by the city. But it’s the omnipresence of this feeling that bothers me. Everywhere, nature is harvested and given a purpose to serve us humans. National parks are no longer just “nature” – they are locations for people to escape the stressful urban environment in a “pseudo-natural” manner. Fruits, vegetables, and animals are no longer creatures that roam this land, they are our nutritional requirements – we farm them – we use them. And now, humans are taught in schools, colleges and academies to further our evolution – to be used as machines.
All of this is done by man and none of it is done the way nature intended it to be.
Before, there was an anarchic beauty to the world, things that were needed, existed, things that were not, did not.
I am a shepherd with a growing flock. That young mongrel mutt of mine, the one I’ve spent so long training, he’s ran away. I find myself alone with the little that belongs to me using all my power to keep it. I know he’s just sitting at a distance beaming at me – laughing. He will come back when he’ll be ready, I won’t push him or punish him when he returns.
I herd these sheep – I love my doing. I love that I have nowhere to come home to. Am I lying to myself? Sleeping amongst the stars, the recurring dream wakes me often. It seldom varies in its ambiance. It’s always same, the realization, the feelings; they all surge at me when I wake. Why can’t I think in my dream? Dreams are thoughts after all. I suppose what makes a dream so beautiful is the absence of our obscene associations – that obscene consciousness that is created by society – that which we are born without.
I float on a raft on foggy waters. I paddle hard with my hands. All to naught. I move slowly – no worries of hitting an unseen object – this is the void. The fog is comforting – almost cozy. Sometimes, the fog may disappear entirely in the blink of an eye, and in such, all I see is more stagnant waters. I learn I am in a calm, stale sea with no land in sight – just water, all else is mirages I think to myself. I sometimes see more fog ahead, perhaps it hides another raft... perhaps these waters are infested with wondering souls. An illusion? Perhaps this is a world of likely beings all floating on a desolate planet of pure water. Perhaps we aren’t even beings. Perhaps I’m one of the few that has no cozy fog. Perhaps I know nothing.
Accepting the world outside the fog is not comforting, and worst of all, each time the fog returns, it becomes denser and the coziness weakens. What of a life of such? It’s simple. Every human being will find a niche in any world. They will either meet another raft (continuing to drift, but now in company) or they will find a part of the fog that satisfies them for some absurd reason only logical to them. Some may manage to emerge, close their eyes and drift forever in hopelessness for every rafter knows in his soul the promise of unseen land. That is why we paddle and do not dive off.
Only those who are mad enough to seek land underwater find it – bliss awaits them.
The true free living human-being is the one that achieves his dream without depending on someone. -Lao Tzu
This somewhat Nietzschean quote justly expresses my highest aspirations and gives good clues as to why I want to become a permaculture designer and horticulturist - as well as to what my stance about relationships is. Although autonomy is an illusion, developing understanding and control makes me feel alive and whole.
The various musings that have punctuated my waking hours for the last couple years have brought along gentle change. Like Anemoi slowly sculpting a dune, gusts of different intensities have given shape to my worldview, my sense of identity, and a sense of connection with my intuitions. The dune remains at the mercy of yet stronger winds in the future, collecting grains of sand from other dunes, but its body is essentially formed. An everlasting work-in-progress with boundaries in flux but boundaries nonetheless.
My exploration of personality theories, Yoga, Buddhism, a plethora of novels, the works and teachings of various philosophers and spiritual guides, social psychology and the world of pick up artists, as well as plenty of experiences with friends, strangers and family, abroad or home, have given me a sense of what is my "natural mode of interaction" with my environment. I have developed a certain capacity to isolate and listen to my voice within the sounds of the choir.
Despite embracing the concept of an "interrelatedness of all things" and knowing the crucial importance of learning lessons through a wide variety of experiences in order to grow, - many including other people - I am decidedly not a man of dogma, shunning "belonging for the sake of belonging" and prizing autonomy above everything else. I am one of Thoreau's men who hears a different drummer. Schopenhauer's self-heating porcupine. An arrogant prick who nonetheless holds compassion as the ultimate standard. A man doomed to be an apostate, who needs to create his own reality, who runs away from isms, knowing that even when he might be on his own, he will always belong to some abstract community. The somewhat moderate ascetic who shares the Stoicist's suspicion that overindulgence bogs down while peace of mind frees.
No, I do not wish to escape society by seeking refuge in a garden. There is too much to learn from others and to share. What I do wish is a livelihood which is compassionate, wholesome, demanding, frugal, solitary, within nature but where I have a certain amount of control over my environment and can satisfy my desire to constantly learn and grow good sense while playing with variables on a macroscopic scale (variables less dramatic than those of the shepherd Tim). If I do take "the one seat", permaculture horticulture would be a great one.
The sun is scorching, the limestone scalding the fingertips. The mind is struggling not to overheat and the legs are riddled with prickling scratches, the shoulders frying.
The index and middle fingers are bleeding. Who knew a single phalanx structure could develop so much strength through training? Countless times locking in chalked tiny holds, these worn precious tools had to compensate too often for weaknesses in the rest of the body - for the not always calibrated sense of unwavering balance yoga should bring. The time is now. The body is what it is, the mind is itself - a monkey mind. In the present there is little choice, the veteran phalanges and the powerful arms go back to work.
Five meters above the last quickdraw, there is no room for hesitation. A single mistake and the fall will only be stopped by the ground 10 meters below. Dammit! I thought safety was always complete on a climbing route. What an idiot. Past a certain level threshold it is assumed that you are either an agile daredevil or very experienced.
Too much training indoors and none on cliffs leads to this kind of frightening realization. The physical capacity to comfortably complete 5.11 routes should mean a near-zero risk of falling on easier sections. Because of this, bolts can be spaced up to six or seven meters apart during simpler parts of the route. If you fall while trying to pass the rope through the quickdraw seven meters above the last bolt, you will descend at least 14 meters in full inertia. Unfortunately, you may not be more than 14 meters above the ground when you fail to pass the rope.
Once the third bolt is passed, you are generally "safe". This is when performance peaks. A fall could mean rope burns, cuts, contusions, or worse, a fracture - maybe even traumatic brain injury, but very rarely irreversible damage. Enough fear to remain 100% alert, enough security to express yourself on the rock. What a rush!
The sling is attached to the anchor. Looking down 35 meters, elation and pride are savored. A village in the distance, olive groves, voices from below, fellow climbers like ants climbing on other routes. Time to let go and enjoy a long descent.
"The burger's ingredients include the following: Japanese wagyu beef, white truffles, onions fried in Cristal champagne, topped with pink Himalayan rock salt. The burger's ingredients include the following: Japanese wagyu beef, white truffles, onions fried in Cristal champagne, topped with pink Himalayan rock salt. "
Ok, so the numbers are a little manipulated here, but it works out to 19.3 times the energy consumption of an "average" American home. Of course, one would need to know what homes this "average" is based on (size and location) as well as that of Al Gore. But this doesn't change the fact that he is a total hypocrite.
As you are probably well aware of now, I've been obsessing over Diesel engines recently since they are, in my personal opinion (and facts will back me up on this), the best small combustion engines you can have (efficient, powerful, reliable). To give you a little taste of diesels, here's a little comparison of Diesels with Gas powered engines* (sources vary the numbers):
Gas
Diesel
Energy Efficiency rating
20%-30%
25%-45%
Energy Density of the Fuel
150k BTU/Gal
166k BTU/Gal
AVG DIST on Engine Lifetime
200k miles
350k miles
AVG Cost of 98 E320 Mercedes
$8k
$18k
*150k BTU/GAL for biodiesel and 100k BTU/GAL for ethanol (these are Imperial Gallons). Averages based on experience and personal research (the rest you can find anywhere online).
There is only a single disadvantage to diesels, and that's the Horsepower (the torque is far superior to gasoline engines though). This renders diesel engines poor for sports use (max speed is lower than for gasoline engines).
In short, the engine is amazing.
But wait, there's more. Diesels can run on biodiesel (here's info on why this the best thing since sliced bread - which I make). If you don't feel like reading that page, here's the gist of it: it reduces emissions, it is more efficient, it is easy to make and it can be made from algae (which thrives on CO2 and NO gases - filtering them).
'nough said.
Love Electric
Well, electric engines, are completely different from combustion engines; they are quiet, have a very high range of RPMs, can be easily repaired, have absolutely zero emissions and have a nearly flat torque and power curve (great for racing). The only issue is that the technology has not quite reached the level necessary to market it on a global scale and it requires the evolution of other technologies that have not yet been invented (fusion) in order to make it truly ecological and worthy of our use.
Hydrogen powered, fuel cell vehicles are conceptually great because they have all the benefits of electric engines but don't leach off the power grid directly enabling companies to manage their energy production more efficiently and give us the potential to evolve the technology. However, hydrogen storage is ridiculously expensive and very inefficient (tank takes up the space of an entire car trunk). This will take some time to be marketable.
Well, what I was getting to here, was that currently, we need to switch to biodiesel, 10 years from now, to electricity and then, finally to fuel cells thus allowing the petroleum companies to die slowly or adapt electricity as their main energy production (dropping crude oil).
So, hold on, I'm-a-coming - I'm jumping on the biodiesel wagon.
A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told—in the English phrase—to keep their distance. By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself.
Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.
Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
This is a famous aphorism from Schopenhauer I enjoy quoting, like you fellow blog contributors might have noticed.
Will is the instincts which move and drive man, make him act. It is a notion very much akin to Spinoza's Desire.
For Spinoza, "Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being; and the endeavor wherewith a thing seeks to persist in its own being is nothing else than the actual essence of that thing."
What drives this endeavor to survive is Desire and it is our very essence as human beings - the source and reason for all our actions. This closely resembles Schopenhauer's Will, doesn't it?
This is Darwinism pushed to the extreme. Every single human activity is about survival of the individual, the species or the group. A theory compatible with Tim's worldview if I am not mistaken. :)
There is no free will; the necessities of survival determine instinct, instincts determines desire, and desire determines thought and action.
Thank you Will Durant for expressing this clearly - The Story of Philosophy, page 136
But remember this from Schopenhauer's quote, even if all human activity is predetermined, we as individual can choose whether or not we do what we wish.
In life, the die is not necessarily cast. Let's divide the dice of life into three sets.
The die of genetics, the social background die and the die of instincts, desire and human cognition. This set of dice is cast before birth.
Each action leads to irreversible change even if only to an extremely small degree. In this set a die is cast with each action.
We have the freedom to act. We can create change in our life, try to take it in the direction we are aiming for. This set of dice can be cast over and over indefinitely.
We have the opportunity to throw die #3 as we please. Let us indulge, it is our only freedom, even if this "freedom" is a mere subset of a system where all is determined.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal. -Schopenhauer
We are links in the chain of evolution. The adaptation mechanisms at stake are outside our control and drive our actions, but with little decisions within this framework we make the whole chain hold. Even if it is predetermined by dice sets #1 and #2, the die of change - die #3 - gives meaning to our lives.
Christianity had a predecessor as the major system of thought in Europe. Stoicism had very little in common with the religion which effectively separated man from nature to make him God's child. Justinian understood that a stoicist world view was too pagan in essence to allow it to coexist with the new-found dogma and the unifying political potential it presented.
"Everything is right for me, which is right for you, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which comes in due time for you. Everything is fruit to me which your seasons bring, O Nature. From you are all things, in you are all things, to you all things return." -Marcus Aurelius
However, Stoicism and its values such as Virtue were the dominant philosophy which shaped the livelihood of leaders and citizens in late Hellenism and then in the Roman Empire.
Its meditative approach to life and the central concept of ataraxia - absence of turmoil through detachment - is reminiscent of equanimity and reveals rooting or at least similarity with Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies.
"Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of one's desires, but by the removal of desire." -Epictetus
What sets it apart from Paganism and Eastern thought is its obvious place in the lineage of other Greek schools which hold pure logos - rationality, thought, scientific dialectics - as the compass and arbiter of all decisions, behaviors and judgments.
"The vivid force of his mind prevailed, and he fared forth far beyond the flaming ramparts of the heavens and traversed the boundless universe in thought and mind." -Lucretius
Lucretius - the soberly lyrical observer, reminds me of Lao Tzu in his capacity to see what is timeless. Ovid, in his Amores, writes: "Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti / exitio terras cum dabit una dies" (which means the verses of the sublime Lucretius will perish only when a day will bring the end of the world). Everything experiences the inevitable dance of the cosmos: gestation, birth, growth, maturity, decline, illness, death. Not only is life caught up in the cycle but also societies, systems, ideologies, objects. All that remains is the stage - the universe - a patient spectator.
"Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortals live dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life." -Lucretius
Lucretius probably never doubted the Roman Empire would overextend itself and that its power would dwindle and that it would eventually be replaced.
Societies and economical systems collapse. It is inevitable.
In the video below, a parallel is drawn between our global oil-based economy and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. "According to Professor Guy Prouty, every civilization rises, evolves, and then collapses to a simpler structure — and this will include our own. Comparing America with the Western Roman Empire, Prouty notes the over-reach of our military, the unsustainability of capitalism, peak oil, and climate change. And, this time, we may see a global collapse. Transitioning to a simpler society will require us to change behavior and consciousness: decrease energy, get out of debt, decentralize, de-consume, grow our own food, build community, see ourselves as connected to the planet. Collapse is not the end, he says. It’s part of a natural cycle." (PeakMomentTV)
Who knows? We might start hearing the whispers of Epicurians and Stoicists again in a few decades...
