Metaphor and Illustration

 A lot of metaphors make use of a material "objective" imagery - which is simple to understand, and just as importantly, universally understood - which is then juxtaposed with a subjective, phenomenological truth, or a relational truth that may be invisible to the senses, but which can be grasped with mental abstraction. 

For various reasons, basic material objects and physical relationships - at least on the plane that concerns us, the plane of Earth - can be readily comprehended by the senses and immediately understood, which we call "simpler" than say a subjective, social, or even a technological reality, and so we reach for those understandings for leverage in explaining other truths. 

There are many subjective truths, for example, that go beyond the simpler and more universal experiences that individuals have ready access to and which can be immediately recognized without much ambiguity. These deeper and more specific experiences have to be witnessed through a certain progression of events or experiences that may be more difficult to access depending on conditions and individual faculties, which can nevertheless be elucidated and made comprehensible through corresponding metaphor. And experience can be time-sensitive, requiring the stepping into of a psychic space to see the relations and truths. 

This also goes for larger, more complex relations like complex societies and historical progressions. With good writing and communication, through a kind of magic, these relations can be brought into being in the perception through metaphor and illustration and exposition for the reader not previously attuned to such truths. And when brought into the perception, they can be acted on. But then the structures brought into being through language and image are nevertheless constructed, a crucial thing to remember. 

Uncertainty in the Built Environment Pt. 4

With all of the comfort, luxury, excitement, and pleasure that the built environment affords in its almost infinitesimal gradations and its spread over the earth and its lasting power, it seems that as a species we really shouldn't be all that uncomfortable at all, ever again. Of course this aspiration - however nice of an idea it is - will never be attainable by everyone everywhere; perhaps a good run or a golden age here and there where the energy pools and concentrates for some time, before boiling over and undermining itself in good time.  

Of course even in the land of milk and honey, in the seat of empire, the certainty and the confidence and comfort of a mastered nature is pierced through with phenomenological glimpses of uncertainty and the wilderness for those left out of the garden, and of course that is to a large extent part of the point and the design. The wilderness is not something to be left behind. 

Though for those who would believe it to be otherwise and who would pursue that deceit to its logical end, putting others' bodies before themselves and under themselves as shields would make for a good start in the right direction. But then those others' bodies are subject to the wilderness, and become the wilderness in turn, and the terminus of the project is only pushed further out, and staved off for a little longer. 

The nature of this state of affairs is endlessly fascinating and I could spend page after page describing it, transfixed, if I had the time and the energy and the means. But previously I claimed that I'd cut to the chase: what is the nature of uncertainty in the built environment? Is it growing? What are the immediate and practical consequences of this?

To establish a baseline we could try to define some of our terms. Uncertainty is a state of mind and state of being in which a given state of affairs is difficult to understand or anticipate, especially in relation to the immediate set of actions required for perpetuating a living thing, and so the ensuing doubt and loose potentiality of thought tend to lead to watery and half-hearted actions in a number of directions, supposedly to test out one's prospects and more reliably reveal an avenue of action. Uncertainty is fundamentally a kind of vulnerability, or a propensity for being more strongly influenced by outside forces for good or ill, and vulnerability can be good or bad depending on what you are and what you are in the presence of when vulnerable.  

One of the more expedient points of departure could be simply describing this uncertainty and this vulnerability phenomenologically, using simpler images of experiences in the wilderness itself, or at least that colloquial wilderness that lies outside the confines of the modern built environment, and then we can transpose this understanding to the built environment itself and perhaps we'll see something else altogether.    

Say, you are out on a long hike and lose your way. You are far from any recognizable sign, say a building or a road or a vehicle, or the like, and it is starting to get dark. Or else there is an unforeseen blizzard or whiteout and visibility is cut and the trail disappears. Depending on how prepared you were, this could get complicated and worsen fast, say with limited food and water running out as well. Are the clothes right? What will the weather do? It can get bad.  

When you start to have problems such as these, and there is no recourse to say, making a phone call, or communicating with another person to solve the problem or finding really any sort of lead that could begin to address the problem, then a realization begins to descend that you might not be able to solve a certain set of problems, problems that can't simply be waved away as frustrations, but real problems that directly threaten your life, which could have serious consequences indeed, consequences that are directly and immediately experienced and comprehended, and then a certain distinct feeling of being on one's own and under threat of death begins to set in, and a very distinct and vivid panic begins to emerge. 

The uncertainty comes in when one analyses the situation and no longer recognizes the required smaller practical steps to achieve what one wants: wet wood doesn't burn like those pre-chopped, pre-cured bundles for sale, and what to eat and how to find it or catch it? How even to put together a decent shelter that will hold together, keep out wind and rain, and keep one warm? How to find water? Is it safe to drink? How to cut wood in the shapes one wants, to do what one wants? How to travel reliably in the direction one wants, and how to even begin to determine what that direction is? And so on.  

Cold fingers that no longer possess the dexterity to get something important done, or an empty stomach and weakening muscles and descending confusion and light-headedness, or the growing realization that every action and movement needs to be subjected to a strict economy as the energy is going away. These are scary things, and these are old feelings and instincts that can take on dust with too much complacency, and then they are atrophied when we turn to them. And the more the panic and the fear set in, the more difficult it becomes to act with skill and efficiency. 

The vulnerability then sets in: one is directly vulnerable to the vagaries of weather, light, available energy and resources, and what can be organized and incorporated into oneself with one's own limited skills, which directly affects how one feels, how one thinks, and how ultimately one persists. 

Granted this terrible experience itself can lead to wonderful results if successfully lived through. One becomes perhaps more grateful for living, and more confident and generous in living, and the nature of the wilderness and the unknown changes along with the changes in oneself. And the skills for affecting this outcome can be cultivated and strengthened; I'll go more into that in a later piece anyway. 

This is a vulnerability that is fraught, but that can lead to growth. But it can also be the case that this is the experience that precipitates one's death. And then that is it. That was the chance, the raison d'etre; now one is gone. With a compromised vulnerability, one tips and is overcome. 

This illustration works so well because of the stark simplicity, which itself makes a point. If the built environment is stripped away, all of that dense human connection and support goes with it. All of the redundant and nested protections and fail-safes go away, and so the invisible forces sustaining oneself, taken for granted or forgotten or unaccounted for, can be scratched out in the immediate analysis. One can't go into the woods and order up a meal, or ask for directions. One has to pack in one's food, or else forage or hunt for it with one's own faculties, experiences completely set aside in favor of social and logic skills to navigate the world of people and symbols. 

And by its own nature and definition, such a form of wilderness is not built, and more importantly, not built for you. It must be navigated on its own terms, without the help of recognizable structures and symbols, and its nature is under constant subtle and at times dramatic change. There are few persistent structures and references one can go back to in order to get oriented, at least for those who have just begun to pay attention in this environment; even this supposedly simple analysis complicates quickly if we look at it any longer. This too we can revisit when the time is right.  

At least for now we can use the stripped form of the argument to analyze the built environment, but the discussion has grown long and there is still much more to do. We'll continue on into the built environment in the next post. 

Out

Out writing in the tent in the cold vigorous air. It is difficult to become suddenly unplugged from regular Internet connectivity, which becomes like an appendage with a regular current of feedback and feeling: one gets tied in through the various correspondences and expectations which beckon as communication once gain wanes, and through the regular absorption and radiation of information and creative expression. 

But then there is the rain crackling on the canvas, the icy cold coming in from the thin walls, which is then pushed back by the warmth of the radiator and blankets. And having a beer, sitting in soft and warm light in a circular space, listening to the owls up above in the towering fir, spruce, and alder trees, which stretch up to the starry sky. The wind passes down from higher up the mountain, and roars through the trees. And everything is alright. 

Breathe

Cold air and shafts of light tend to afford more detailed glimpses of the movement of air particles and the breath, which is a delight to see. What is there is a whole dancing, vaporous cloud of particles which is constantly moving, swirling, and curling, and being inhaled and exhaled, in a constant ebb and flow, an exchange between one's inner space and the outer air. 

The experience of breathing itself is quite immediate and visceral, and if one just thinks about the breath, it tends to be some simplified image like a burst of air, or the lungs expanding and contracting, or the pursed mouth taking air in and letting it go, in and out. Countless simplified images to go about our business and live our lives, but they are an immense compression nonetheless. There are worlds passing in and out of us, swirling about in the open space.  

Money-Love

At a certain point in which the movement of resources and the repetition of daily labors and accounting reached a certain threshold, money emerged somewhere from the center of that mass of activity and so the circulation of things, materials, and labor was able to disperse and widen and quicken. 

There was a corrosive effect only in the way that money could loosen those bonds which held between products of labor and the land and life that birthed them, until finally it had undermined the land itself beneath the landed aristocracy and its inherited wealth, corroding their power over the regional modulation of resources and labor particular to the land. 

First it was that land yielded rent in the form of expected income for desirable surplus product, but then the land itself could fetch a price and be alienated from its owner much like a common object, to be spirited to a new owner who could produce the desired sum, which would precipitate the rise of capital as the dominant social power. 

Money appears as something complex and civil, as the lifeblood of civilization itself, yet at its heart is something terrible and desperate, as seen in the harbingers of its early rise. It was the interlopers, the conquistadors, the traveling merchants, the far flung colonists that gained the earliest money power, those individuals who could access what was far flung, exotic, and exciting, and trade those things with steady accumulation, as the society they came from shed them in the course of its violent expansion and self-exploitation, sending them careening out into strange lands and far mysterious places, propelling them out and away as it voraciously pulled in whatever was outside and alien to it.  

It was in the accounts of these individuals one could find simmering resentment, the desire to be perceived as high on the already towering social ladder, which nevertheless was hermetically sealed and frozen over through the will of its incumbents, excluding and pushing down those perceived as lower. And money and gold, conquest and adventure and fame were a way to pry loose those upper footholds to the top of the collective prestige, a way to move outward and spread one's wings and get out from underneath that suffocating field of exploitation, not necessarily to live free and clear - there were plenty of individuals that did want this - but to resituate at the top of the heap, to exploit and dominate in their own way. 

The old adage, money is at the root of all evil, does indeed focus one's concerned perception on an important point of pain, but it was not money that started the thing. Money allowed for the movement, expansion, and circulation for new blood to challenge older structures of power which themselves were afflicting evil, and perhaps some good as well, depending on who was looking. 

Back Baby

The experts are back in charge, and the right guys are back on top. The image is situated back in its rightful place and everyone can go back to sleep, after having spent too long with the rightful perception that their hair was on fire in the midst of the chaos of the previous administration. The nagging sense that something was fundamentally wrong, that something had to fundamentally change, could be once again laid to rest and buried for now, albeit in a shallow enough grave. 

Now there are some reasonable reforms being floated and even put into place. I certainly prefer things to get a little better in general for now, personally, as opposed to permanent crisis. But marginal improvement is not good enough. Things haven't been fundamentally changed, and it is even difficult to talk about what that might entail. 

The next big crash can be staved off for a bit longer, but the sword of Damocles still looms - and what comprises that metaphor is a multitude of converging crises, none of which have been addressed in a meaningful way. We can let the faculties for profound action and change continue to atrophy, until they once again fail when they are most needed. But hopefully those of us paying attention can continue to do the work to prepare ourselves and others for what is on the horizon. 

Technical Difficulties

Plenty to write but now I'm living in a tent with no reception or Internet access. Certain pluses to that! But alas, I'll have to get back to writing drafts on word or something and then pasting them in here when I emerge to grab some temporary access. More to come.