515
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_55
Chapter 55
No Equation for It: Numbers with No
Attachment
55.1 From Melancholy to Activism
As we task every observation with a marker, some object of recognition that coincides with our habitual manner of attempting to grasp an impression, we know,
from the outset, that we will never be able to interrupt the flow of time through our
instant of interaction. Time does not stop, we cannot stop, despite a plethora of clichés from existential meditation. Nor can we simply immerse ourselves in the stupor of that resignation so amply illustrated in director Lars von Trier’s 2011 drama,
“Melancholia” which witnesses earth gorgeously annihilated by an oncoming, previously hidden, planet.
1
What we continue to designate as “nature” is that overwhelming landscape absorbing every duality (including utter destruction) we may
conjure in our continuing experience of observations and impressions. They do not
neutralize, but compound. The cumulative experience is experiential, but no chess
match or crossword puzzle: there is no endgame, no conclusion (Fig. 55.1).
All the disciplines we elicit to penetrate surfaces of thought with imagined or
experienced detail, like the sight of our own blood, or urine, the throbbing of a
migraine, the inability to rush beyond the sheer bliss of bliss, the distance to Saturn,
have an evolutionary thrust to the calculations and performances of nature in ourselves that are animate, ongoing, and invulnerable to concretization. These are irrational equations and numbers, nothing attached to a grain of sand.
We cannot believe in, or even attune our behavior to the fixity that grains, or our
own breathing bodies, imply. We feel our pulse, and know the onrushing tide of
commanding events to be the only truism—of exquisite ephemerality—worth
believing in. Even the painting mounted on the museum wall is moving in many
ways. Its chemicals are still internally reacting, and every observer is affecting it as
subtly as wind atop Dhaulagiri, some version of what, in chaos theory (and popular
1 See “The Only Redeeming Factor is the World Ending,” Juul Carlsen, Per, May 20122, Susanna
Neimann (ed), Danish Film Institute (72): 5–8.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_55
Chapter 55
No Equation for It: Numbers with No
Attachment
55.1 From Melancholy to Activism
As we task every observation with a marker, some object of recognition that coincides with our habitual manner of attempting to grasp an impression, we know,
from the outset, that we will never be able to interrupt the flow of time through our
instant of interaction. Time does not stop, we cannot stop, despite a plethora of clichés from existential meditation. Nor can we simply immerse ourselves in the stupor of that resignation so amply illustrated in director Lars von Trier’s 2011 drama,
“Melancholia” which witnesses earth gorgeously annihilated by an oncoming, previously hidden, planet.
1
What we continue to designate as “nature” is that overwhelming landscape absorbing every duality (including utter destruction) we may
conjure in our continuing experience of observations and impressions. They do not
neutralize, but compound. The cumulative experience is experiential, but no chess
match or crossword puzzle: there is no endgame, no conclusion (Fig. 55.1).
All the disciplines we elicit to penetrate surfaces of thought with imagined or
experienced detail, like the sight of our own blood, or urine, the throbbing of a
migraine, the inability to rush beyond the sheer bliss of bliss, the distance to Saturn,
have an evolutionary thrust to the calculations and performances of nature in ourselves that are animate, ongoing, and invulnerable to concretization. These are irrational equations and numbers, nothing attached to a grain of sand.
We cannot believe in, or even attune our behavior to the fixity that grains, or our
own breathing bodies, imply. We feel our pulse, and know the onrushing tide of
commanding events to be the only truism—of exquisite ephemerality—worth
believing in. Even the painting mounted on the museum wall is moving in many
ways. Its chemicals are still internally reacting, and every observer is affecting it as
subtly as wind atop Dhaulagiri, some version of what, in chaos theory (and popular
1 See “The Only Redeeming Factor is the World Ending,” Juul Carlsen, Per, May 20122, Susanna
Neimann (ed), Danish Film Institute (72): 5–8.