Author: acors197

I have long since dealt and struggled with the idea of suffering, and by extension, despair. I thought it interesting how this chapter of Bauman opened on despair, drawing some parallel between the four noble truths of suffering in Buddhism. Within ecological reasoning and understanding the notion of ecological crisis as it applies to the human condition I was always confused how people were aware the end would come at some point yet still pushed for sustainable practice and environmentally friendly living. They seemed to not be paying attention to the larger issues at hand or atleast playing around the edges of the actual problem. I felt this even when we went to see the hunks of ice and we learned that the weather was volatile and within human existence we had merely gotten lucky with such developments. Within Bauman’s excerpt we can see that people (Hamilton) believe that accepting this inevitability actually empowers the movement more. Hamilton claims that it’s the optimism in the face of these mounting issues that comes from a very deep and specific denial. Despair is the recognition of the world’s issues and awareness of the fact that you can’t change the situation, but you can re-visualize the situation. Sanders then goes on to explain the situation in a way that shows if you work on a personal close level with the world you can perhaps make more change and do more good than if you had tried to take on all of the world’s problems at once. This is actually how I view my own personal mindset as well, I’m very much either a negative or positive sphere person and that allows me to be happier than I otherwise would. Until I started viewing things in a close interpersonal positive effect way I was more prone to anxiety, bad moods, and rumination-eqsue thoughts. In the wake of this change, which was largely assisted by my passion for daoism and psychology. At the core of this, psychology is what actually affects your quality of life. In the book we are urged to do what is right rather than what is popular. This too is accurate because doing what’s right often means doing things without credit, praise, or any sort of recognition from another person. This sort of behavior can become deeply validating in it’s own way, which can empower you to stick by your own choices, as it has me. By pursuing what is moral, ethical, and right for the world can be done on a very small scale, whether it be within a friendship, the workplace, or even a construct as nebulous as one’s community. This can instill an increased level of hope in one’s self and of the world, but also gives hopes to those who are effected and moved by the action itself. Though this hope is not grand, according to the book, it is achievable and it can bring in a legitamate form of happiness. And honestly, I have to attest to that.

I attended a meeting at TNS on the Anthropocene on Friday and time was a concept that was played with a lot during it. Of course, the way humans experience time and the way our planet (and by extension, our solar system) experiences time are much different. Within the panel someone brought up that if Earth’s life were a 24 hour clock, modern humans had been here for about 1 second. The panel then debated on the nature of the rapidly changing climate in past years and how our ecological “Goldilocks” stage was an anomaly, not the norm. This made me wonder if any sustainability efforts are fruitless, as the Earth is already guaranteed to change it’s temperaments once more. I just wanted to take some time to look at the facets of time in relation to humans in the mean time, as well as some time-based concepts I find interesting.

Time is a human construct, made to gives us comfort and practicality. Much like Elizabeth Loftus’ false memories studies, we too can change the way we view time and the experiences that take place within it. Stephen King shows off this shift in perspective very well through a device in his books called “ka,” a spiritual element in a large number of King’s book. It can be guessed that his inspiration for ka can be loosely attributed to some Egyptian and Indian religions who believe that ka is a multi-part essence of the soul. King’s ka is a bit different as it represents fate and life-force. It’s actually described by Stephen King as “a wheel whose only purpose is to turn.” In this way, ka is fate, and in his books ka also works as time, and though it’s moving continuously, it isn’t always in the same way. A small example can be seen in his book 11/22/63, when a time traveler goes back and prevents President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, destroying the ka of the world and incurring several retaliations from fate. King actually incorporates ka and its importance in over fifteen of his books. Ka has the largest presence in his Dark Tower series where universes, worlds, and humans are continuously destroyed and created in a never-ending loop.

Ouroboros is another useful symbol for understanding time, as well as the inevitable creation and destruction it hosts. It first originated in the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld in 14th century BC, though it’s unknown who exactly created the text. In the book it shows the powerful god Ra in the underworld uniting with the Nether God Osiris while both hold a snake which is in the process of eating itself (aka Ouroboros). The depiction represents the beginning and end of time as conscious beings know it. Plato critiqued the Egyptian development later in his writing, Timaeus, “the universe moved… this circular movement required no feet, the universe was created with no legs and without feet.” Despite having no limbs with which to defend itself, and no real way to walk, destiny rolled on and on. It is through Plato’s building of the character Timaeus that we see Plato’s convictions around time arise, that each being’s existence and destruction within time coalesce into a holistic completeness (or ka is maintained, in King’s words).

To see things through a more human lens, we can look to the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and his work regarding the Ouroboros. He saw the Oroborus as one of his own Jungian archetypes or an “innate, universal prototype for ideas.” In his book Man and His Symbols he addresses the Ouroboros as a primordial image, and one of great importance. “The Ouroboros,” Jung writes, “it has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process… a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which unquestionably stems from man’s unconscious. Prima materia was very important to Jung as he believed it to be the matter that made up the original material of the multiverse, an idea formed by Aristotle. Though the matter is formless, it is omniscient, omnipresent, and unconscious. Jung makes it clear that the Ouroboros is merely a figurehead for the never-ending nature of existence. In essence, the Ouroboros and ka are the same thing, both circular symbols that never stop and always continue moving while holding the fate of the universe and those who inhabit it within their grasp. Ka and Ouroboros help us to see how this has been a mortal concern since 1400 BC, when in fact the nature in which we measure those years wasn’t created until nineteen hundred years later. We will always struggle with the magnitude and size of time, but the cyclical and repetitive nature of life can bring us comfort.

So there’s this thing called amphibious housing, and it’s very neat. Basically, they’re made to work with the water levels. Similar to floating houses, their designed to float as water rises. They are most usually connected to mooring posts to limit the motion of the water as well as make sure the house doesn’t sail away. Obviously, they’re ideal for floods and are being constructed more and more in places like the Netherlands, New Orleans, and the UK. They weren’t designed by wild smart architects either, just a few people who sat down and did some calculations and then modified their homes. They’re so cheap and simplistic to make that the scale can range anywhere from a single domicile to, in theory, a whole floating city. This really reminded me of the situation with Kiribati and how a development like this might be able to help.

I had a theory before I moved to New York that people needed to get a certain amount of sunlight, a certain amount of time to trees, and just an overall exposure to nature on a regular basis. I thought that if people didn’t get this time amongst nature they wouldn’t be as happy and healthy as they actually could be. Since moving here I think more people have things such as seasonal depression and anxiety, though I’m still not sure if it’s a legitimate theory. Either way, it had swirled in the back of my mind for awhile and just last week my Cognitive Neuro professor asked me to spit ball a cognitive theory at him. I figured that would be a great time to see if my idea had any traction and I threw it out there. Strangely enough, he neither accepted nor denied my hypothesis, but instead challenged my idea of nature. He told me that we were in nature that very minute. I was confused, it was most definitely the Lang building. He tapped at the wall and scuffed at the floor, and he asked me what I thought made up this building. Various materials for construction, of course. He asked me where humans got all this material for buildings. He explained to me that even if we deem things “man-made” and create things in ways only humans can, at it’s source it’s still a product of it’s source environment, nature. The idea still sits a bit abstract in my mind, but I think I better understand what he means now. He doesn’t see the towering skyscrapers and wall to wall cement as a capitalist structure far removed from any natural essence, but rather he sees each building as relocated parts of nature, almost like wide scale nature installations. My idea of happiness being tied with nature might still be valid, but I’m now more eager to test people’s perceptions of nature within cityscapes more so than anything else.