A long time ago (2002), in Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart introduced the idea that we need to think about materials as belonging to two different metabolisms, namely a technical metabolism and a biological metabolism. The authors argued that waste predominantly results when the two metabolisms get mixed up and confused with each other in "monstrous hybrids."
It's an interesting idea that I believe is fundamentally right, but it seems that putting the idea into practice is (surprise!) infinitely more complicated. (An interesting article about McDonough and his complicated visionary status can be found here.)
But I'm not writing to talk about the practicality of zero-waste design, I'm writing to extend the idea of two metabolisms to energy consumption and energy efficiency. I've been casually grappling with the idea for a bit now, but I think I've come to something of a revelation with the aid of revisiting Cradle to Cradle.
Just like materials, our energy consumption can be thought of as belonging to two different metabolisms. One industrial/technical and the other ecological/biological. Energy efficiency makes sense only in the context of industrial energy, because industrial energy belongs to a metabolism whose primary input is carbon-emitting fossil fuels. With regards to the ecological metabolism, energy efficiency makes no difference whatsoever.
All the hoopla these days is about increasing the efficiency of industrial energy. I'm beginning to believe that we should really be focusing our efforts on first understanding and then manipulating the interaction between industrial metabolism and ecological metabolism. Okay, that's a bit confusing. But bear with me, this is an idea in progress.
Let's take buildings as an example. We could and indeed are beginning to focus our energies on how to make buildings more energy-efficient. Such efforts belong to the industrial camp. But if we stop thinking about buildings as devices to be engineered, if we get away from the industrial logic of energy efficiency, then we get a different picture and a whole set of different questions. How can we get buildings to partake in an ecological metabolism? How can we capitalize on natural energy flows (regardless of efficiency) to satisfy our energy demands?
In my opinion, we should be trying to maximize our dependence on ecological metabolism while minimizing our dependence on industrial metabolism. Rather than focus on the efficiency of devices, we ought to focus on how to be more a part of an ecosystem. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think there is potential in exploring the different types of thinking that follow from the different types of metabolisms. Is it possible to reduce our dependence on industrial metabolic logic?
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
On Being a Cog
Some quotes that I believe deserve to be read:
"Willie, aren't you wise to the Navy yet? It's all child's play. The work has been fragmentized by a few excellent brains at the top, on the assumption that near-morons will be responsible for each fragment...Whether it's the fragment of coding, the fragment of engineering, the fragment of gunnery--you'll find them all predigested and regulated to a point where you'd have to search the insane asylums to find people who could muff the jobs. Remember that one point. It explains, and reconciles you to, all the Navy Regulations, and all the required reports, and all the emphasis on memory and obedience, and all the standardized ways of doing things. The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and commonsense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, 'How would I do this if I were a fool?' Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you'll never go wrong." (The Caine Mutiny [Wouk] 105)
---
"I watch the cars go by for a while on the highway. Something lonely about them. Not lonely--worse. Nothing. Like the attendant's expression when he filled the tank. Nothing. A nothing curb, by some nothing gravel, at a nothing intersection, going nowhere.
Something about the car drivers, too. They look just like the gasoline attendant, staring straight ahead in some private trance of their own. I haven't seen that since...since Sylvia noticed it the first day. They all look like they're in a funeral procession.
Once in a while one gives a quick glance and then looks away expressionlessly, as if minding his own business, as if embarrassed that we might have noticed he was looking at us. I see it now because we've been away from it for a long time. The driving is different too. The cars seem to be moving at a steady maximum speed for in-town driving, as though they want to get somewhere, as though what's here right now is just something to get through. The drivers seem to be thinking about where they want to be rather than where they are...
Folks, I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral procession! The one everybody's in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country. We've been out of it for so long I'd forgotten all about it." (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [Pirsig] 333)
---
"It is precisely his fantastic dreams, his most banal stupidity, that he will wish to keep hold of, with the sole purpose of confirming to himself (as if it were so very necessary) that human beings are still human beings and not piano keys, which, though played upon with their own hands by the laws of nature themselves, are in danger of being played so much that outside the calendar it will be impossible to want anything. And more than that: even if it should indeed turn out that he is a piano key, if it were even proved to him mathematically and by natural science, he would still not come to reason, but would do something contrary on purpose, solely out of ingratitude alone; essentially to have his own way. And if he finds himself without means--he will invent destruction and chaos, he will invent all kinds of suffering, and still have his own way! He will launch a curse upon the world, and since man alone is able to curse (that being his privilege, which chiefly distinguishes him from other animals), he may achieve his end by the curse alone--that is, indeed satisfy himself that he is a man and not a piano key!" (Notes from Underground [Dostoevsky] 30-31)
"Willie, aren't you wise to the Navy yet? It's all child's play. The work has been fragmentized by a few excellent brains at the top, on the assumption that near-morons will be responsible for each fragment...Whether it's the fragment of coding, the fragment of engineering, the fragment of gunnery--you'll find them all predigested and regulated to a point where you'd have to search the insane asylums to find people who could muff the jobs. Remember that one point. It explains, and reconciles you to, all the Navy Regulations, and all the required reports, and all the emphasis on memory and obedience, and all the standardized ways of doing things. The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and commonsense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, 'How would I do this if I were a fool?' Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you'll never go wrong." (The Caine Mutiny [Wouk] 105)
---
"I watch the cars go by for a while on the highway. Something lonely about them. Not lonely--worse. Nothing. Like the attendant's expression when he filled the tank. Nothing. A nothing curb, by some nothing gravel, at a nothing intersection, going nowhere.
Something about the car drivers, too. They look just like the gasoline attendant, staring straight ahead in some private trance of their own. I haven't seen that since...since Sylvia noticed it the first day. They all look like they're in a funeral procession.
Once in a while one gives a quick glance and then looks away expressionlessly, as if minding his own business, as if embarrassed that we might have noticed he was looking at us. I see it now because we've been away from it for a long time. The driving is different too. The cars seem to be moving at a steady maximum speed for in-town driving, as though they want to get somewhere, as though what's here right now is just something to get through. The drivers seem to be thinking about where they want to be rather than where they are...
Folks, I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral procession! The one everybody's in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country. We've been out of it for so long I'd forgotten all about it." (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [Pirsig] 333)
---
"It is precisely his fantastic dreams, his most banal stupidity, that he will wish to keep hold of, with the sole purpose of confirming to himself (as if it were so very necessary) that human beings are still human beings and not piano keys, which, though played upon with their own hands by the laws of nature themselves, are in danger of being played so much that outside the calendar it will be impossible to want anything. And more than that: even if it should indeed turn out that he is a piano key, if it were even proved to him mathematically and by natural science, he would still not come to reason, but would do something contrary on purpose, solely out of ingratitude alone; essentially to have his own way. And if he finds himself without means--he will invent destruction and chaos, he will invent all kinds of suffering, and still have his own way! He will launch a curse upon the world, and since man alone is able to curse (that being his privilege, which chiefly distinguishes him from other animals), he may achieve his end by the curse alone--that is, indeed satisfy himself that he is a man and not a piano key!" (Notes from Underground [Dostoevsky] 30-31)
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The Iliad, Probabilistically
I am reading The Iliad right now, and as I make my way through Homer's epic poem, I find myself referring constantly back to a point that Taleb makes in his book, Fooled by Randomness:
Taleb's observation really drives home for me the appeal of probabilistic thinking. Probabilistic thinking provides a way to understand the real limitations of individual agency and gives the prominence of circumstance/ground/luck a fair reckoning. From Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, a similar idea:
Probabilistic thinking once again! An elegant way to deal with uncertainty, isn't it? A clarion call to live honorably, to live with probabilistic greatness, regardless of result.
My very first impression upon a recent rereading of The Iliad, the first in my adulthood, is that the epic poet did not judge his heroes by the result. Heroes won and lost battles in a manner that was totally independent of their own valor; their fate depended upon totally external forces, generally the explicit agency of the scheming gods (not devoid of nepotism). Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. Patrocles does not strike us as a hero because of his accomplishments (he was rapidly killed) but because he preferred to die than see Achilles sulking into inaction. (34)
Taleb's observation really drives home for me the appeal of probabilistic thinking. Probabilistic thinking provides a way to understand the real limitations of individual agency and gives the prominence of circumstance/ground/luck a fair reckoning. From Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, a similar idea:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference. (60)
Probabilistic thinking once again! An elegant way to deal with uncertainty, isn't it? A clarion call to live honorably, to live with probabilistic greatness, regardless of result.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Incentives in the Classroom
In a recent TED Talk, Bill Gates talks about the importance of great teachers in shaping leaders. He discusses the incredible variability in quality between teachers and ultimately suggests that a new model needs to be adopted to encourage the professional development of teachers. With his business acumen and demonstrated success in the corporate world, he suggests tools that he is no doubt familiar with:
1) Employing better technology with the video monitoring of classrooms, both for the benefit of surveillance as well as for the benefit of distribution and study.
2) Smarter incentives for teachers.
I really don't like any of these two suggestions. Truth be told, I dislike them with some kind of intensity. The great teachers I've had in my life have always emphasized their respective decisions to become teachers as not being motivated by money. What happens in a classroom is a special thing that exists outside the logic of business operations. That for me is the big picture argument against both 1) and 2).
In theory, video monitoring promises great returns. How else could I have access to all the great lectures distributed for free on TED.com? But TED Talks are a peculiar case. They are lectures and not discussions. Invariably, they are not interactive with the audience. Great teachers respond to the different personalities of different classrooms spontaneously and organically. Great teachers engage the unique interests and backgrounds of their students. Videos do none of these things. Yes, videos can play a role in the dissemination of information, but great teachers do far more than engage in a one-way flow of information from teacher to student. A recorded lecture commodifies a lesson plan. I cannot be inspired by a commodity. In a video, I would never have experienced the palpable passion that Mr. Maggio demonstrated for literature. Any move towards the commodification of education goes against everything that I have learned both as a teacher and as a student.
As for its other purported purpose, surveillance, video monitoring seems to wage a silent war against accountability and trust. The trust and mutual respect in a successful classroom cannot be legislated from the outside. It has to be built from within the classroom, from the ground up. In my opinion, video monitoring would undermine teacher efforts on this moral dimension.
What about smarter incentives? For one thing, incentives require measurements. If teachers are incentivized by the measurable amount in which their students' scores improve on some standardized test, then teachers will begin to teach to the test. There are so many problems with this that I don't even know where to begin. So I won't.
Barry Schwarz says in his excellent talk that we have thus far responded to the financial crisis by trying to improve the regulatory environment and devise smarter incentives. Regulations and incentives are important, but they neglect, according to Barry Schwarz, practical wisdom. The exercise of practical wisdom takes place independently of regulations and incentives. In fact, Schwarz cites a psychological study that demonstrates how the presence of financial incentives can undermine basic goodwill and the exercise of moral wisdom. Interesting stuff. People should behave ethically because it is the right thing to do and not in order to receive some monetary reward.
Bill Gates' suggestions about how we can improve teacher quality are efforts to improve the efficiency of regulations and incentives. Something important is missing. I agree that great teachers should be rewarded and paid handsomely. The service done by great teachers is truly immeasurable. But treating education in a business manner undermines what education is all about.
Nicholas Negroponte, in his talk about One Laptop per Child, discusses his decision to make his organization nonprofit. He says one of the greatest advantages of being nonprofit is that you can attract the best people in the world. Why? Because the people that you attract by being nonprofit are attracted by the merits of the project at hand. Because people who are the absolute best at what they do are seldom motivated by money alone. In my mind, what goes for the nonprofit world goes for what happens in the classroom as well.
1) Employing better technology with the video monitoring of classrooms, both for the benefit of surveillance as well as for the benefit of distribution and study.
2) Smarter incentives for teachers.
I really don't like any of these two suggestions. Truth be told, I dislike them with some kind of intensity. The great teachers I've had in my life have always emphasized their respective decisions to become teachers as not being motivated by money. What happens in a classroom is a special thing that exists outside the logic of business operations. That for me is the big picture argument against both 1) and 2).
In theory, video monitoring promises great returns. How else could I have access to all the great lectures distributed for free on TED.com? But TED Talks are a peculiar case. They are lectures and not discussions. Invariably, they are not interactive with the audience. Great teachers respond to the different personalities of different classrooms spontaneously and organically. Great teachers engage the unique interests and backgrounds of their students. Videos do none of these things. Yes, videos can play a role in the dissemination of information, but great teachers do far more than engage in a one-way flow of information from teacher to student. A recorded lecture commodifies a lesson plan. I cannot be inspired by a commodity. In a video, I would never have experienced the palpable passion that Mr. Maggio demonstrated for literature. Any move towards the commodification of education goes against everything that I have learned both as a teacher and as a student.
As for its other purported purpose, surveillance, video monitoring seems to wage a silent war against accountability and trust. The trust and mutual respect in a successful classroom cannot be legislated from the outside. It has to be built from within the classroom, from the ground up. In my opinion, video monitoring would undermine teacher efforts on this moral dimension.
What about smarter incentives? For one thing, incentives require measurements. If teachers are incentivized by the measurable amount in which their students' scores improve on some standardized test, then teachers will begin to teach to the test. There are so many problems with this that I don't even know where to begin. So I won't.
Barry Schwarz says in his excellent talk that we have thus far responded to the financial crisis by trying to improve the regulatory environment and devise smarter incentives. Regulations and incentives are important, but they neglect, according to Barry Schwarz, practical wisdom. The exercise of practical wisdom takes place independently of regulations and incentives. In fact, Schwarz cites a psychological study that demonstrates how the presence of financial incentives can undermine basic goodwill and the exercise of moral wisdom. Interesting stuff. People should behave ethically because it is the right thing to do and not in order to receive some monetary reward.
Bill Gates' suggestions about how we can improve teacher quality are efforts to improve the efficiency of regulations and incentives. Something important is missing. I agree that great teachers should be rewarded and paid handsomely. The service done by great teachers is truly immeasurable. But treating education in a business manner undermines what education is all about.
Nicholas Negroponte, in his talk about One Laptop per Child, discusses his decision to make his organization nonprofit. He says one of the greatest advantages of being nonprofit is that you can attract the best people in the world. Why? Because the people that you attract by being nonprofit are attracted by the merits of the project at hand. Because people who are the absolute best at what they do are seldom motivated by money alone. In my mind, what goes for the nonprofit world goes for what happens in the classroom as well.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Energy Perceptions
I have joined livingtheamericangreen.org as a contributor. So, when appropriate, I will be cross-posting on both this and that blog.
There certainly is a lot of talk about being green these days. A lot of publicity on a lot of different fronts. Given the media exposure, I think it would be prudent to see how well perceptions match up with reality.
As I am sure many a commentator has noted before, there is a truly disproportionate amount of attention being paid to three letters in particular: M-P-G. A lot of people seem to regard the mpg of your vehicle as a merit badge, a barometer for just how "green" you are. The unfortunate truth is that mpg represents but a small slice of the energy pie, even when considering the transportation sector in isolation. First, we should be concerned not about miles, but about passenger miles. Five people carpooling in a gas-guzzler surely beats five people each driving their own hybrid car. Second, we need to account for the embodied energy in the production of a new vehicle. With regards to transportation, we should ultimately be thinking about how to take cars off the road, and how to get people to share cars, bike, walk or use public transportation.
The outsized attention being paid to vehicular fuel efficiency ought to give us pause. How else do the various loci of media scrutiny skew public attention on energy issues? There are a lot of commercials these days about the wondrous possibilities of a smart electric grid and smart devices (vehicles included). Is all the hoopla deserved? Does it crowd out other energy interests? By many estimates, agriculture accounts for fully one-fifth of U.S. petroleum consumption. But is one-fifth of our attention being directed towards increasing the energy efficiency of agricultural practices? I don't have any numbers to back me up on this, but I would guess not.
Media scrutiny is important because it plays a role in shaping the public conscious and directing public as well as private funds towards the development of various initiatives. It would behoove the "green movement" to think about how the allocation of media attention matches up with underlying realities.
There certainly is a lot of talk about being green these days. A lot of publicity on a lot of different fronts. Given the media exposure, I think it would be prudent to see how well perceptions match up with reality.
As I am sure many a commentator has noted before, there is a truly disproportionate amount of attention being paid to three letters in particular: M-P-G. A lot of people seem to regard the mpg of your vehicle as a merit badge, a barometer for just how "green" you are. The unfortunate truth is that mpg represents but a small slice of the energy pie, even when considering the transportation sector in isolation. First, we should be concerned not about miles, but about passenger miles. Five people carpooling in a gas-guzzler surely beats five people each driving their own hybrid car. Second, we need to account for the embodied energy in the production of a new vehicle. With regards to transportation, we should ultimately be thinking about how to take cars off the road, and how to get people to share cars, bike, walk or use public transportation.
The outsized attention being paid to vehicular fuel efficiency ought to give us pause. How else do the various loci of media scrutiny skew public attention on energy issues? There are a lot of commercials these days about the wondrous possibilities of a smart electric grid and smart devices (vehicles included). Is all the hoopla deserved? Does it crowd out other energy interests? By many estimates, agriculture accounts for fully one-fifth of U.S. petroleum consumption. But is one-fifth of our attention being directed towards increasing the energy efficiency of agricultural practices? I don't have any numbers to back me up on this, but I would guess not.
Media scrutiny is important because it plays a role in shaping the public conscious and directing public as well as private funds towards the development of various initiatives. It would behoove the "green movement" to think about how the allocation of media attention matches up with underlying realities.
Information Anxiety
The Internet makes available a lot of information, and its democratizing effect really is unbelievable. If you are at all curious about or hungry for what is out there, though, the sheer amount and variety of information can be overwhelming.
So this is my plug for Google Reader. It takes a modest amount of time to familiarize yourself with all of the tools, but it allows you to conveniently centralize your information consumption and to keep up with sources that you might not visit with high frequency.
The information flow is still a bit overwhelming. I currently have 256 new items. But Google Reader allows you to manage the flow with some efficiency. The function that I am most excited about is the "Share" function. Rather than have an anonymous crowd filter Internet content, you can have those people whose opinions you respect and interests you share perform a filtering function. In this way, you get to see quality articles that you would never have seen otherwise. Plus, the "Share" function doubles as an archiving tool.
Now, the thing to do is get on Google Reader and find a group of people that will actively share. As with all network ideas, the "Share" function becomes effective only after reaching some critical mass. I have not reached the critical mass yet, and that is why I am writing this entry.
Bringing my connectivity up a notch...Many thanks to one James and one Benjamin for directing me to Google Reader.
So this is my plug for Google Reader. It takes a modest amount of time to familiarize yourself with all of the tools, but it allows you to conveniently centralize your information consumption and to keep up with sources that you might not visit with high frequency.
The information flow is still a bit overwhelming. I currently have 256 new items. But Google Reader allows you to manage the flow with some efficiency. The function that I am most excited about is the "Share" function. Rather than have an anonymous crowd filter Internet content, you can have those people whose opinions you respect and interests you share perform a filtering function. In this way, you get to see quality articles that you would never have seen otherwise. Plus, the "Share" function doubles as an archiving tool.
Now, the thing to do is get on Google Reader and find a group of people that will actively share. As with all network ideas, the "Share" function becomes effective only after reaching some critical mass. I have not reached the critical mass yet, and that is why I am writing this entry.
Bringing my connectivity up a notch...Many thanks to one James and one Benjamin for directing me to Google Reader.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Omnivore's Dilemma
I have nothing but praise for Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. It is informative, engaging, thoughtful and thought-provoking. I especially enjoyed the ecological perspective that Pollan employs as well as the intellectual humility with which he writes. Intellectual humility, by the way, I find myself prizing more and more highly everyday.
Ecological Perspective. We often think of literary analysis and the tools employed in such analysis as being useful for, well, literary analysis alone. But Pollan demonstrates just how far a simple literary conceit, a metaphor, can go in explaining the way behavior is organized. How a Cartesian metaphor largely explains the contemporary model of industrial agriculture. How an ecological conceit yields a totally different specimen, the Polyface Farm in Virginia that calls itself "beyond organic," or "postindustrial." The implications are dramatic for a term that I've been thinking a lot about recently, "efficiency":
I still need to do a bit more thinking about this, but I think the distinction between industrial efficiency and ecological efficiency is important and exciting. Especially with all the attention that "energy efficiency" has received recently.
Intellectual Humility. The book's NYTimes reviewer criticizes Pollan for being too nice a guy, for failing to judge when judging was clearly called for. To be sure, Pollan is neither didactic nor vituperative in his style, but I take the book's balanced argumentation as a sign of intellectual humility, something that Pollan clearly values as well:
I like this a lot: "a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery..." On buying Argentina-grown asparagus from Whole Foods, Pollan writes:
The material in this book could easily have lended itself to a rhetorical attack on the vices of industrial agriculture. But Pollan refuses to deliver on that account, and the final product is incredibly refreshing. Though I am none the wiser as to how one ought to disentangle the moral knot presented.
Ecological Perspective. We often think of literary analysis and the tools employed in such analysis as being useful for, well, literary analysis alone. But Pollan demonstrates just how far a simple literary conceit, a metaphor, can go in explaining the way behavior is organized. How a Cartesian metaphor largely explains the contemporary model of industrial agriculture. How an ecological conceit yields a totally different specimen, the Polyface Farm in Virginia that calls itself "beyond organic," or "postindustrial." The implications are dramatic for a term that I've been thinking a lot about recently, "efficiency":
Most of the efficiencies in an industrial system are achieved through simplification: doing lots of the same thing over and over...By contrast, the efficiencies of natural systems flow from complexity and interdependence--by definition, the very opposite of simplification...Polyface Farm is built on the efficiencies that come from mimicking relationships found in nature...(214-215)
I still need to do a bit more thinking about this, but I think the distinction between industrial efficiency and ecological efficiency is important and exciting. Especially with all the attention that "energy efficiency" has received recently.
Intellectual Humility. The book's NYTimes reviewer criticizes Pollan for being too nice a guy, for failing to judge when judging was clearly called for. To be sure, Pollan is neither didactic nor vituperative in his style, but I take the book's balanced argumentation as a sign of intellectual humility, something that Pollan clearly values as well:
The problem is that once science has reduced a complex phenomenon to a couple of variables, however important they may be, the natural tendency is to overlook everything else, to assume that what you can measure is all there is, or at least all that really matters. When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. (148)
I like this a lot: "a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery..." On buying Argentina-grown asparagus from Whole Foods, Pollan writes:
The ethical implications of buying such a product are almost too numerous and knotty to sort out: There's the expense, there's the prodigious amounts of energy involved, the defiance of seasonality, and the whole question of whether the best soils in South America should be devoted to growing food for affluent and overfed North Americans. And yet you can also make a good argument that my purchase of organic asparagus from Argentina generates foreign exchange for a country desperately in need of it, and supports a level of care for that country's land--farming without pesticides or chemical fertilizer--it might not otherwise receive. Clearly my bunch of asparagus had delivered me deep into the thicket of trade-offs that a global organic marketplace entails. (175)
The material in this book could easily have lended itself to a rhetorical attack on the vices of industrial agriculture. But Pollan refuses to deliver on that account, and the final product is incredibly refreshing. Though I am none the wiser as to how one ought to disentangle the moral knot presented.
Monday, February 2, 2009
The Journey Defines the Place
Maybe it's because I was an English major in college and studying literature has deeply informed my worldview. But, for me, this world and this life that we bumble our way through is most enriched when populated with stories. I say "enriched," but maybe "enchanted" better captures what I'm going for. Because stories, as meaning-giving, hermeneutic devices, imbue our discrete experiences with what is often for me a sacred dimension. A bunch of mumbo-jumbo that is.
Here is what I mean. A couple of days ago, I drove thirty miles from my sister's house to the Snoqualmie Falls. As I am prone to do, I got lost along the way and took a detour, bringing the trip to something more like fifty miles. The detour was both worthwhile and frustrating. I got to see beautiful parts of the Pacific Northwest that I would not otherwise have gotten to see, but I was also obviously delayed from arriving at my ultimate destination, the Snoqualmie Falls. Finally, after asking for directions at a gas station, I found my way to a lookout point. I parked my car in the parking lot and walked all of ten yards to a gazebo from which I could enjoy a quite stunning view of the falls. An hour of driving, getting lost, asking for directions, and thirty short seconds of walking. And there it was, Snoqualmie Falls as though in a postcard picture.
The waterfall was impressive but very much a letdown. Gazing down from the gazebo platform, I remembered another similarly sized waterfall I went to see last year, El Paílón del Diablo in Baños, Ecuador. To get to that waterfall, I biked for an hour and then hiked twenty minutes before having the waterfall unveiled to me from behind formidable rock formations. I could hear the thunderous roar of the waterfall well before I saw it, and as I approached, anticipation built even as my body tired. Undoubtedly, the path to the waterfall had been paved in a very literal way to ease my journey, but still, I felt that my view of the waterfall had been in some way earned. Seeing El Paílón del Diablo was a qualitatively different experience than seeing the Snoqualmie Falls. Much more gratifying.
So the journey defines the place. And what else is a journey but a story? Another example. This one from Kerouac's On the Road:
Kerouac presents San Francisco in its physical context, in its geographic setting. For Kerouac, having hitchhiked, bused and driven three thousand miles from the East Coast, San Francisco is a physical destination in a way that it isn't for me. After reading this passage, it dawned on me that I arrived in San Francisco by being dropped from the sky. My experience of the city is as a result qualitatively different from Kerouac's. Lacking a substantive journey to precede arrival, emptied of history, stripped of meaning, a city is nothing more than a bunch of concrete and glass, an abstraction of industrial development.
It is in this light that I have begun to understand technology. Technology shortchanges the journey in order to deliver the place. Snoqualmie Falls delivered to me. San Francisco delivered to me. What energy did I expend personally to arrive at these places?
I think this is why I experience aversion to things like Facebook. Facebook has the power to deprive social interaction of journey. As far as maintaining a social network goes, Facebook is infinitely more convenient than having to go through the trouble of composing a thoughtful e-mail let alone scrupulously handwriting a letter. Convenience is Facebook's utility. But at the same time, its convenience shortchanges the usual journey that is required of keeping up a healthy interaction.
The same logic can be applied to food. What knowledge do we possess of the journey that the food we consume took in order to arrive on our dinner plates? Most often, nothing. This is the magic of industrial agriculture and technology. Food delivered to us. Unfortunately, the anonymous food that we consume, and our ignorance of its journey, deprives the food of any real meaning. There is little to no enchantment involved in scarfing down a BigMac. We enjoy it only in an abstract sense.
None of this is to say that I am a Luddite. Believe me you, I enjoy my BigMac or McPollo as much as the next guy.
Thoughts inspired by The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan on which I will write more...
Here is what I mean. A couple of days ago, I drove thirty miles from my sister's house to the Snoqualmie Falls. As I am prone to do, I got lost along the way and took a detour, bringing the trip to something more like fifty miles. The detour was both worthwhile and frustrating. I got to see beautiful parts of the Pacific Northwest that I would not otherwise have gotten to see, but I was also obviously delayed from arriving at my ultimate destination, the Snoqualmie Falls. Finally, after asking for directions at a gas station, I found my way to a lookout point. I parked my car in the parking lot and walked all of ten yards to a gazebo from which I could enjoy a quite stunning view of the falls. An hour of driving, getting lost, asking for directions, and thirty short seconds of walking. And there it was, Snoqualmie Falls as though in a postcard picture.
The waterfall was impressive but very much a letdown. Gazing down from the gazebo platform, I remembered another similarly sized waterfall I went to see last year, El Paílón del Diablo in Baños, Ecuador. To get to that waterfall, I biked for an hour and then hiked twenty minutes before having the waterfall unveiled to me from behind formidable rock formations. I could hear the thunderous roar of the waterfall well before I saw it, and as I approached, anticipation built even as my body tired. Undoubtedly, the path to the waterfall had been paved in a very literal way to ease my journey, but still, I felt that my view of the waterfall had been in some way earned. Seeing El Paílón del Diablo was a qualitatively different experience than seeing the Snoqualmie Falls. Much more gratifying.
So the journey defines the place. And what else is a journey but a story? Another example. This one from Kerouac's On the Road:
The bus trip from Denver to Frisco was uneventful except that my whole soul leaped to it the nearer we got to Frisco. Cheyenne again, in the afternoon this time, and then west over the range; crossing the Divide at midnight at Creston, arriving at Salt Lake City at dawn--a city of sprinklers, the least likely place for Dean to have been born; then out to Nevada in the hot sun, Reno by nightfall, its twinkling Chinese streets; then up the Sierra Nevada, pines, stars, mountain lodges signifying Frisco romances--a little girl in the back seat, crying to her mother, "Mama when do we get home to Truckee?" And Truckee itself, homey Truckee, and then down the hill to the flats of Sacramento. I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air--air you can kiss--and palms. Along the storied Sacramento River on a superhighway; into the hills again; up, down; and suddenly the vast expanse of a bay (it was just before dawn) with the sleepy lights of Frisco festooned across. Over the Oakland Bay Bridge I slept soundly for the first time since Denver; so that I was rudely jolted in the bus station at Market and Fourth into the memory of the fact that I was three thousand two hundred miles from my aunt's house in Paterson, New Jersey. I wandered out like a haggard ghost, and there she was, Frisco--long, bleak streets with trolley wires all shrouded in fog and whiteness. (60)
Kerouac presents San Francisco in its physical context, in its geographic setting. For Kerouac, having hitchhiked, bused and driven three thousand miles from the East Coast, San Francisco is a physical destination in a way that it isn't for me. After reading this passage, it dawned on me that I arrived in San Francisco by being dropped from the sky. My experience of the city is as a result qualitatively different from Kerouac's. Lacking a substantive journey to precede arrival, emptied of history, stripped of meaning, a city is nothing more than a bunch of concrete and glass, an abstraction of industrial development.
It is in this light that I have begun to understand technology. Technology shortchanges the journey in order to deliver the place. Snoqualmie Falls delivered to me. San Francisco delivered to me. What energy did I expend personally to arrive at these places?
I think this is why I experience aversion to things like Facebook. Facebook has the power to deprive social interaction of journey. As far as maintaining a social network goes, Facebook is infinitely more convenient than having to go through the trouble of composing a thoughtful e-mail let alone scrupulously handwriting a letter. Convenience is Facebook's utility. But at the same time, its convenience shortchanges the usual journey that is required of keeping up a healthy interaction.
The same logic can be applied to food. What knowledge do we possess of the journey that the food we consume took in order to arrive on our dinner plates? Most often, nothing. This is the magic of industrial agriculture and technology. Food delivered to us. Unfortunately, the anonymous food that we consume, and our ignorance of its journey, deprives the food of any real meaning. There is little to no enchantment involved in scarfing down a BigMac. We enjoy it only in an abstract sense.
None of this is to say that I am a Luddite. Believe me you, I enjoy my BigMac or McPollo as much as the next guy.
Thoughts inspired by The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan on which I will write more...
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