481
ultimate adulteration of the biosphere; the blinding lights impeding all sea turtle
nesting behavior, as documented by the Sea Turtle Conservancy.
16
Of course, the ecological queasiness belies our fond memories of Paris or Kyoto.
Or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Of our own home and those of
friends around the world. Of cafés, quaint bookstores, galleries and the urban pleasures of farmers’ markets we and our ancestors of dozens of generations have sampled, enjoyed or in equal measure eschewed.
17
But in this middling era of ecological
hedonism, there it is and psychologically, physically, manifest in every thinking
moment, activity, cause, and consequence, here we are.
Conservation biology and animal rights come down, in the most primal, emotional sense, to what Paul Gauguin famously titled, “D’ou Venons Nous/Que
Somes Nous/Où Allons Nous” (“Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where
Are We Going?”) painted in Tahiti in 1897–1898 (Boston Fine Arts Museum).
18
As
we comb every corner of the earth searching for more and urgent biological data,
our total population continuing to climb, adding 83 million each year at present,
19
the mind, pressed between the crashing rocks of its physical shell, the cumulative
extent of its exacerbations, and the inextinguishable craving for wilderness, is
caged. This trap aligns with ideals that betray the irrational biomes we have engendered over nearly 10,000 years of human history. Knowing it doesn’t change the
reality. Knowledge has not yet proved to be power. Not like a flowering meadow,
the arrival in Spring of the first Western Tanagers, or a cool breeze against the allout sweltering.
16 See STC, https://conserveturtles.org/
17 See, for example, the luscious, inspiring history of Paris in Pierre Cabanne’s Paris Vous Regarde,
Pierre Bordas et Fils, éditeurs, Paris, 1988
18 https://collections.mfa.org/objects/32558.
19 See Our World In Data, “Absolute increase in global population per year, https://ourworldindata.
org/grapher/absolute-increase-global-population?time=latest, Accessed May 11, 2020.
51.2 Lost Upon an Urban Surrealism
ultimate adulteration of the biosphere; the blinding lights impeding all sea turtle
nesting behavior, as documented by the Sea Turtle Conservancy.
16
Of course, the ecological queasiness belies our fond memories of Paris or Kyoto.
Or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Of our own home and those of
friends around the world. Of cafés, quaint bookstores, galleries and the urban pleasures of farmers’ markets we and our ancestors of dozens of generations have sampled, enjoyed or in equal measure eschewed.
17
But in this middling era of ecological
hedonism, there it is and psychologically, physically, manifest in every thinking
moment, activity, cause, and consequence, here we are.
Conservation biology and animal rights come down, in the most primal, emotional sense, to what Paul Gauguin famously titled, “D’ou Venons Nous/Que
Somes Nous/Où Allons Nous” (“Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where
Are We Going?”) painted in Tahiti in 1897–1898 (Boston Fine Arts Museum).
18
As
we comb every corner of the earth searching for more and urgent biological data,
our total population continuing to climb, adding 83 million each year at present,
19
the mind, pressed between the crashing rocks of its physical shell, the cumulative
extent of its exacerbations, and the inextinguishable craving for wilderness, is
caged. This trap aligns with ideals that betray the irrational biomes we have engendered over nearly 10,000 years of human history. Knowing it doesn’t change the
reality. Knowledge has not yet proved to be power. Not like a flowering meadow,
the arrival in Spring of the first Western Tanagers, or a cool breeze against the allout sweltering.
16 See STC, https://conserveturtles.org/
17 See, for example, the luscious, inspiring history of Paris in Pierre Cabanne’s Paris Vous Regarde,
Pierre Bordas et Fils, éditeurs, Paris, 1988
18 https://collections.mfa.org/objects/32558.
19 See Our World In Data, “Absolute increase in global population per year, https://ourworldindata.
org/grapher/absolute-increase-global-population?time=latest, Accessed May 11, 2020.
51.2 Lost Upon an Urban Surrealism