475
(1560–1609), particularly a work like his incredibly straightforward and dramatic,
“Landscape,” c. 1590 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), that defines the
movement of a canoe through a marshland with unequalled ingenuity.
24
The viewer
does not see the middle of the canoe. It is blocked by a leaning leafy tree.
The joys and the sorrows that attend upon our mathematical attempts to compute
change in nature, and what it means—between the frissons of weather, community
standards and practices, individual volatility, and the vast stretches of geological
and biochemical time—can be commiserated with, ignored, abided, and/or engaged
by some motive. Ultimately, our lives are fraught, regardless of intellectual, mathematical, or moral persuasion, with the choices we must make each day in favor of
something, while we still breathe. We could site an endless array of literature propounding our options. To take just one, as a kind of ambassador of our times for
such dilemmas: “Quantifying biodiversity trade-offs in the face of widespread
renewable and unconventional energy development”.
25
Populations, patches, metapopulations, rates of colonization, resiliency, and
balance, behavior in general, and then human behavior specifically: These are each
components of a human consciousness that—in contemplating the Anthropocene—
grows rapidly morbid, then defensive, swept over by an angry denial, fundamentally trapped in thought as in the resulting incredulity; in what Sartre had coined,
in despair. It would be easier to think of it as a mirage; to have cleaned one’s lenses
in hopes of waking up from a bad dream, only to again recognize the same wasteland in the guise of normalcy; hundreds of millions of stick figures, roaring motorcycles, 16-wheeled trucks, ink blots on the iris, belching smokestacks, poisonous
infiltrations at every tier of colonization, with every breath. To realize that our
entire orientation is human, no matter how candid our prayer for privacy or moment
of reverie in exile. We are connected by evolutionary integuments with adamantine
tensile strength, like the hierarchical proteins in the biomaterial of spider dragline
silk fibers, tougher than the highest-grade alloy steel, or Kevlar.
Yet, that same Sartrean condemnation of consciousness, by dint of its daily,
uphill trudge, ineffectively but incessantly manifests the affirmative, even in
acknowledging the more than 800,000 suicides formally documented each year—a
number that professionals believe is likely to double in coming annums, while the
number of attempted human suicides daily is approximately 43,835.
26
24 See Places of Delight – The Pastoral Landscape, by Robert C. Cafritz, Larence Gowing, and
David Rosand, The Phillips Collection in association with the National Gallery of Art, Clarkson
N. Potter, Inc./Publishers, New York, 1988, p. 83, 89, and inside frontispiece.
25 Popescu, V.D., Munshaw, R.G., Shackelford, N. et al. Quantifying biodiversity trade-offs in the
face of widespread renewable and unconventional energy development. Sci Rep 10, 7603 (2020).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64501-7, 05 May 2020, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-02064501-7, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64501-7, Accessed May 10, 2020.
26 https://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/, Accessed March 31,
2019. See also, Staff (February 16, 2006). “SUPRE”. WHO sites: Mental Health. World Health
Organization.
50.5 Affirming Nature
(1560–1609), particularly a work like his incredibly straightforward and dramatic,
“Landscape,” c. 1590 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), that defines the
movement of a canoe through a marshland with unequalled ingenuity.
24
The viewer
does not see the middle of the canoe. It is blocked by a leaning leafy tree.
The joys and the sorrows that attend upon our mathematical attempts to compute
change in nature, and what it means—between the frissons of weather, community
standards and practices, individual volatility, and the vast stretches of geological
and biochemical time—can be commiserated with, ignored, abided, and/or engaged
by some motive. Ultimately, our lives are fraught, regardless of intellectual, mathematical, or moral persuasion, with the choices we must make each day in favor of
something, while we still breathe. We could site an endless array of literature propounding our options. To take just one, as a kind of ambassador of our times for
such dilemmas: “Quantifying biodiversity trade-offs in the face of widespread
renewable and unconventional energy development”.
25
Populations, patches, metapopulations, rates of colonization, resiliency, and
balance, behavior in general, and then human behavior specifically: These are each
components of a human consciousness that—in contemplating the Anthropocene—
grows rapidly morbid, then defensive, swept over by an angry denial, fundamentally trapped in thought as in the resulting incredulity; in what Sartre had coined,
in despair. It would be easier to think of it as a mirage; to have cleaned one’s lenses
in hopes of waking up from a bad dream, only to again recognize the same wasteland in the guise of normalcy; hundreds of millions of stick figures, roaring motorcycles, 16-wheeled trucks, ink blots on the iris, belching smokestacks, poisonous
infiltrations at every tier of colonization, with every breath. To realize that our
entire orientation is human, no matter how candid our prayer for privacy or moment
of reverie in exile. We are connected by evolutionary integuments with adamantine
tensile strength, like the hierarchical proteins in the biomaterial of spider dragline
silk fibers, tougher than the highest-grade alloy steel, or Kevlar.
Yet, that same Sartrean condemnation of consciousness, by dint of its daily,
uphill trudge, ineffectively but incessantly manifests the affirmative, even in
acknowledging the more than 800,000 suicides formally documented each year—a
number that professionals believe is likely to double in coming annums, while the
number of attempted human suicides daily is approximately 43,835.
26
24 See Places of Delight – The Pastoral Landscape, by Robert C. Cafritz, Larence Gowing, and
David Rosand, The Phillips Collection in association with the National Gallery of Art, Clarkson
N. Potter, Inc./Publishers, New York, 1988, p. 83, 89, and inside frontispiece.
25 Popescu, V.D., Munshaw, R.G., Shackelford, N. et al. Quantifying biodiversity trade-offs in the
face of widespread renewable and unconventional energy development. Sci Rep 10, 7603 (2020).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64501-7, 05 May 2020, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-02064501-7, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64501-7, Accessed May 10, 2020.
26 https://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/, Accessed March 31,
2019. See also, Staff (February 16, 2006). “SUPRE”. WHO sites: Mental Health. World Health
Organization.
50.5 Affirming Nature