Author: Madeleine Sinnock

In advance of my presentation tomorrow, I just want to share this work by the artist Zheng Bo.

The work is titled Survival Manual I (Hand-Copied 1961 “Shanghai’s Wild Edible Plants”), and consists of 72 pages of drawings and hand-written text bound in a book. “Shanghai’s Wild Edible Plants” was an encyclopedia of local, edible plants originally published by the Communist Party in 1961 during the famine caused by regulations during Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Zheng copied the book by hand, including the illustrations, and renamed it “Survival Manual,” emphasizing the book’s use and undermining the original euphemistic title. The piece also emphasizes a theme Zheng has worked with throughout his practice: the politicization of plants.

Survival Manual reminded me of Kimmerer’s story in Braiding Sweetgrass (Wal-marsh, if you recall). I think Kimmerer’s orientation to plants could also be political, even though she speaks about them in such an individualized way. I’m thinking of that line from her first camping trip with a group of university students. Lying on the forest floor, she thinks how bored her students seem, and how, even though she doubts they will remember what she tells them about the spiders she notices, she feels a responsibility to the forest “I had to speak up for the spiders.” In Zheng’s work, other living organisms, especially plants, have a great capacity to speak to marginalization, queerness and, by extension, the political. To speak on behalf of those whose voices are not heard like the plants, like weeds, is important in understanding ourselves as inherently akin to the natural world, but also perhaps in having compassion for that which seems so unlike us.

You can view Survival Manual I and other works by Zheng Bo here: http://zhengbo.org/2015_SM1.html

My prez and bib can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13v7saL6z6YAR9wjlDZMB-x7Zym6CA8Z3tnUaQu0n-3M/edit?usp=sharing

Here’s an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Philosophy Bites, on the concept of the “Extended Mind” (you can listen on iTunes or the Podcast app). Philosopher Andy Clark describes his theory that our mind is not limited to the walls of our biological skull, but that the tools/technologies we use to access our short and long-term memories (such as a notepad and pen, or a smartphone) are also a part of our consciousness. We have been learning how contingent our perceptions are on our ecology,  could we broaden Clark’s concept to encompass interactions with the natural world? (Philosophy Bites also has an episode with Graham Priest on the Buddhist concept of no-self, if the Mountains & Rivers sutra piqued your interest).

The image above is from the company Capsula Mundi, which will bury your ashes in a biodegradable pod. The egg-shaped pod is buried in a specific plot of earth, and its nutrients help grow a tree that is then planted above it. At the moment, they only bury the ashes, but they are working on a prototype for the whole body. Rather than engraved stone, you can find your loved one’s plot via GPS.

Each tree serves as a natural marker of a person’s life, and a reminder that in life as well as in death, we are not separate from the earth. Implementing this technology on a wide scale could replace cemeteries with sacred forests. Rather than ordaining an individual tree to stop logging, a grove of ancestors is planted like an army of guardians for the sacred forest. I’m intrigued by this futuristic design, and am wondering if these sacred forests could double as public parks, to really inculcate the idea that we are inseparable from the earth.

Warm weather reminds me of myself again in ways I don’t realize I had forgotten (maybe that’s just Seasonal Affective Disorder?) but I had a similar experience coming down from the mountains in China after a month of monastic retreat, down into a completely different environment: the city of Ningbo. Walking on the sidewalk in a crowd, watching traffic lights, crossing between cars, all very mundane activities of negotiating the city, made me feel immediately at home. There was the same feeling in Dublin last winter. While I had never been to Ningbo, I had been to Ireland & Dublin many times. But last winter, when we came to the city, after being in the countryside for days, I realized I felt at home in Dublin in a way I couldn’t feel in the vast farmland of County Kerry. In the countryside, I could certainly love, and be in awe and gratitude standing on the breathtaking Irish shore or laying on the gorgeous rolling green hills. But it didn’t hit my heart in the same way the narrow pavement, tall buildings and crowded streets of Dublin did.

The way the authors of Spiritual Ecology, and sometimes Kimmerer too, talk about human orientation to nature, it is an experience of primordial, overwhelming love, and their calls for ecological awareness tend to follow the narrative of humanity returning to nature, to our natural origins–our purity, our truth. But I think something Miller makes clear in China’s Green Religion is that, in a way, we’ve never lost that connection because nature and humanity are not ontologically separate entities.

Furthermore, the ‘return to nature’ narrative (implied it seems by the discourse around the Anthropocene) feeds into this urban/rural dichotomy, where the two are antithetical, opposing forces. But, speaking to a group of people who have chosen to live in New York City, aren’t the experiences of kinship and awe, often used to describe a loving human/nature relationship, also felt in an urban landscape? The urban/nature divide doesn’t recognize that experiences of happiness or transcendence happen in the City. It doesn’t imagine a future where human life consists thoroughly of both the urban and the natural; but, as we know, if the progression of human technology is to continue, it must also include the flourishing of nature.

A list of things I habitually do to reduce waste:

-Bringing coffee in travel mug to school to reduce use of paper cups (I still buy  2-3 coffees a week from coffee shops though). TIP: If you bring your own reusable mug to the UC dining commons, they only charge you $0.99 for coffee or tea. It’s a great deal! (I could write a whole section just on coffee & coffeeshops. For example: take a stack of their napkins to use later. Or, order your iced drink without a straw or lid, especially if you plan on eating in, or you’re just walking down the block to class.)

-Carrying a reusable water bottle. Are people still buying plastic water bottles???? Knock it off!

-Washing and reusing plastic sandwich bags. I use Ziploc bags as many times as I can before throwing them out and taking a new one.

-Always have at least 1 tote bag on you in case you need to buy something from the grocery store, or CVS, etc. to reduce your plastic bag use. (If you have to get a plastic bag, save it and reuse it later).

-When I moved into my first apartment in Brooklyn, I was horrified by how much food scraps I had to throw straight into the regular trash (at home in CT, we composted religiously). There was a short-lived attempt to compost by putting food scraps in the freezer & then bringing them to the farmer’s market, but I never really committed. (If you’re looking to reduce waste though, it’s definitely an option for composting in the City. I would check out the composting situation at the farmer’s market in Union Square).

-Look at every single-use item and think about how you can re-use it. Even to just save glass jars for later for when you might need them (to store homemade sauces/hummus/pesto, bring leftovers to school or work, as a candle holder, etc). Get take-out as little as possible. If you’re ordering to eat at home, ask them to hold the plastic utensils.

-Always recycle!! I am constantly holding onto empty glass bottles, plastic containers, cardboard coffee sleeves, etc. until I find the right recycling bin. I used to take empty water bottles & other recyclables off the top of trash bins at school and transfer them to the correct bin, but now I think the UC’s recycling situation is so messy that it may not matter which recyclables go into which bin. Last year, I lived with a roommate who had no clue about recycling, or was just too lazy to do it. I frequently took it upon myself to remove her recyclables from the trash, rinse them, flatten them and put them in the recycling.

I think recycling is one of those behaviors that seems to have little impact in and of itself, but is actually quite effective because it reinforces and normalizes ecological values.

Many of these habits I have adopted due to financial need (I love coffee, for example, (as perhaps has become evident) but I can’t buy a cup of coffee from a cafe every day). When you have such limited resources, I think you’re much more likely to attune yourself to ways of saving and reusing, because you just don’t have the funds to buy new things. Perhaps then, the richest countries of the world need to change their mindset to one of Depression-era desperation.

We have extremely limited our resources through climate change, and need to adopt a pervasive attitude of reuse, frugality and gratitude, in a way that it becomes instinctual, normal and automatic.