Stonekite

First Julia, then an email I sent, then Julia, then my post on the subject, then Julia, then Vruba, then Spinkalina, now me again.

To start with, I think I need to clarify things a lot. Despite my misleading title “On the relative morality of living in rural areas”, Rural vrs. Urban is not how I would characterize my interest here. The question to me is a smaller and more judgmental one, in that I am questioning what I perceive as a disconnect between justifications, actions, and results.

My questions focused on the very end of Julia’s post:

“What we need is a transcendent paradigm,” I said, licking my fingers disgustingly. “We need a way of looking at lives lived in closer awareness of trees and salmon and bats that doesn’t marginalize it, doesn’t turn it into rather shallow archetypes of pre-civilized living.”

“Because we’re anything but shallow,” said Bob, trenchantly and even tendentiously. “There’s something going on here at the intersection of irony, culture, and nature that’s worth pursuing.”

And my questions were, essentially, “what is that thing that is being pursued? And can the paradigm that Julia & Bob seek apply to culture at large?” I am curious about this because of what I wrote in my next post: rural culture of the type that the islanders seem to practice is necessarily only available to a few, therefore I have to doubt models that are based on people living that lifestyle.

All three replies talked a lot about the great worth of nature as a learning tool, something with which I agree wholeheartedly. But I consider talk of the direct experience of nature as a justification to live on the island to be entirely beside the point, and only adds to my queasyness. What is important is the transference of the direct experience of nature to Homo Evolutus, who must currently live primarily in the city. That would be a beautiful intersection of culture and nature, and hey, maybe irony too. It is a worthy new paradigm.

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This is where Vruba’s criticism catches the wind. He compares the island to the space shuttle and antarctic research stations, presently unsustainable places where society has sustained effort and receives new data about that environment and our own in return.

He points out the absurdity of claiming the island does not transmit information while replying to an organ of transmission, and also introduces us to two cultural figures attributable to the island.

But,
People in the space shuttle don’t say “I’m glad we live here, it’s very enriching and efficient. There’s something going on here at the intersection of irony, culture, and space that’s worth pursuing”. Unless, that is, they’re talking about bringing that understanding directly back to society as a whole. Which they do. If I hear an islander say the same, I hope that they are working towards something as well. But I’m not convinced, because I still see most islanders stuck in a hypocritical “this is my moral right, my choice, it was a good choice, it’s good for the environment” mode.

Let’s ignore the majority, and focus on the two men that Vruba brought up. Morten Lauridsen and Sam Green are both associated with the island. First, association and causation are not the same thing. I am not convinced that they represent the island. More importantly, assuming they might be products of interaction with nature, that does not mean that they can represent it meaningfully. Vruba points out that nature serves as the “other”. Julia points out that solitude is something that is often missing from the city life (I had a similar experience with a geology class who couldn’t stand being in a cave with no flashlight on). People who make noises are by no means a replacement for that. Even as a substitution or medium they are problematic, as the audiences they interact with are generally quite specific and often need to have the right vocabulary to understand.

The experiences that Julie and Spink talk about are similar. “Raising consciousness” about the environment is not a replacement for experiencing it. Humans have a long history of interacting with the environment. People have heard about it before. They just haven’t always had a moment of complete silence, or been a part of something that is as intrusively beyond their individual understanding.

The direct experience, even if it is a weak direct experience, is important. Just four days ago a community project that took a defunct elevated rail in New York and turned it into an incredible walkable sky-park completed its first segment. It may sound silly and small and controlled, and it may be, but it’s also huge. It’s a community organized project that brought a taste of something not manmade into the vein of human commerce. That in itself, seeing grass and shrubs around you in the middle of a city, is sublime and something else, something “other”. The zeitgeist that brought this solution about is in the air, in the cities.

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I have no doubt that there is a need for people to live in rural areas, as I agree that outlying perspectives are extremely important. I just question the truth of this sentence:

“Because we’re anything but shallow,” said Bob, trenchantly and even tendentiously. “There’s something going on here at the intersection of irony, culture, and nature that’s worth pursuing.”

in the context of a meaningful new paradigm for society, without specifics to back it up. My memories of the island speak of something else.

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And I think there are things on the island that could count as new paradigms, if not in the way that I read Bob as saying. Julia and David were involved in the creation of the Citizen Science project. I feel like that already has direct relevance—especially if expanded, legitimized, rewarded and modernized—in the same way that the space shuttle and antarctic stations do.

There are other things that could be done: hosting regular field trips for urban kids (I understand there were kids there recently, what’s up with that?). More science projects. Ultra-sustainable housing (think of a square mile of suburbs that has a square mile of wilderness. A garden on every roof, close-knit houses [apartment style even?] around utilities/suburban retail, all houses facing outwards, with a backdoor opening to communal fields/retail). Timeshares. Responsible Bioengineering, or at least structural agricultural engineering. Kayaking.

I realize that asking people to do things for the greater good is kind of weird and kind of suspect. So I’m not (for now). But I don’t feel guilty asking what justifies the smug expression.