“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Remote Ocean

Someone asks, how can one notice the "nonlocal" effects of the hyperobject ocean thousands of miles inland?

Well, there are three ways to answer.

1. Dogmatic and Jeremaic statements of the obvious! Like "You see sushi flown in from the Pacific in your supermarket. Sometimes it is on the self faster than if you lived in SF because they fly that stuff really fast."

Like "You already wonder whether the coastal town you visit might be inundated soon." Or "If you like fish it will soon be gone from your dinner plate." Or "You won't be liking to snorkel because the coral will be all white." Or "massive hurricanes..." etc.

2. Much nicer and more interesting. Like when I lived in Davis. A landlocked town in an irrigated desert in northern Cali.

As it has a Mediterranean climate the weather is very digital. Burning hot for six months. Constant drizzle for six months.

In the summer you could feel the coolness of the night air until about 10am. Sometimes this air would smell of the ocean. Seagulls flew about.

Your soil is very silty or clay like.

Also you flush your toilet. You know it's going to the waste water treatment places in the sandy salty bay.

Also you feel your body. It is made of 70% salt water because ocean life etc etc.

3. Ultimate awesomeness and nonviolence:

Simply by wondering whether you can or not feel the hyperobject ocean close to you inland, you are feeling it.

In fact in this way you are noticing that hyperobjects sparkle with nothingness. Are they there--or not?

You are already "in" ecological awareness. Before you wonder whether you are.




1 comment:

Nick Guetti said...

Another aspect of this: ocean water gets turned to heavy vapor, which condenses to droplets in the coastal rainforest (the reason it's called that), drips into the forest soil, then the trees drink it and transpire it into the air mixed with particles from the forest that act as ice nuclei, forming clouds that drift a couple thousand miles east and become rain. Rainforest gets cut down, no rain in the Midwest.