Environmentalism is based on an idea that will dawn upon me once in a while. That is, all the development that we have, the computers and internet and pollution, is actually an extension of nature.
There's too much talk that it's machine vs nature. I feel sorry and sad for the trees and the trees that die. One day, in the Oct 06 Essays, I described how I decide that we're not against the environment, we're part of it. I still feel sorry for the dying forests. It's just another way of looking at it, I suppose.
Wrote Environmentalism when was walking in Orchard Road and heard the construction sounds. I thought that they sounded like screaming rocks. If rocks could scream of pain, surely it'll sound like the sound they make when they are cut with diamond blade. Screaming rocks or iron or whatever. If anything inanimate could scream of pain, it'll be the sound they make when diamond blades cut through them. Or the sound they make when they're burnt with a welding fire.
Not the first time I wrote about construction sounds. It's also mentioned in the Quality of life.
Nature and a Red Plastic Bag Abomination
At this point it is important I feel, to share with you a new point of view that dawned upon me only just, and I don’t know why it occurred to me so late.
One jobless day, a few weeks ago, I went down town to the busiest of the business district to watch the crowds rush around. I sat there in the middle of buildings and watched the shiny tall buildings and the giant television screen blasting advertisements. I watched them and listened to the noise in the wind, and heard faint rumblings of a road construction somewhere not too far from me.
After a while, I walked to the Singapore River to watch the ebbing of the water flowing from the sea or to the sea, I do not know. The ripples and the sunset soothed me, and I was calm enough to wonder about the dead leaves and red plastic bag floating on the water.
A grey tabby cat came to stand beside me.
On another jobless day, sometime two weeks ago, I was watching a documentary on li jiang, china. There is an ancient town in li jiang, where people still reside. This ancient town is built upon the network of the li jiang river that runs through the place. The roads are curved and bent to the river, and not parallel grids. The people respect the river, and drink from it in the morning and wash in it in the afternoon. This li jiang ancient town has a river, and this li jiang river has an ancient town.
As I was watching tv, maybe I fell asleep or for some other reason, my consciousness went out for a while. When it came back, I realized that li jiang old town was the desired piece left of my jigsaw puzzle of understanding what is going on.
Somehow, somewhere, at some point in time, we human beings came to think that technology is at odds with nature. Some person, full of awe or jealousy, marveled at the industrialist opposing the nature, or vice versa. Now by that theory, makes me feel that living in a plastered room with clothes hanging from the back of my door and typing into a computer I don’t understand how it works about typing, makes me feel unnatural.
Look at lijiang old town, and how she came by across the so many years from a farmer village or something. Look at me now, living in my town, and how I came about from a town like lijiang old town.
The thing is, I think everything is a actually natural progression of nature. We keep thinking that humans are violators of nature, like a superpower who exist sub naturally, like an abomination, but truly, the computer we type into, the ceaseless advertisement from the super tv screen, the literature that we read, are just natural progressions. Just as natural as the viruses that are sent to disrupt our physical body, and the computer viruses that are sent to disrupt our piece of mind, industrialization and commercialization are sent to disrupt the old nature.
The ebbing of the human crowds is as natural as the ebbing of the water in the river. The giant advertisements are like the sunset on the river. The road constructions are as natural as the wind that carries their voices. The fallen leaves in the river are, as the fallen red plastic bag, natural.
It is often awkward to realize though, after the long time of thinking about how man made we are. Yet, the truly, we are what happened and are happening. Maybe the ozone layer will mend itself, or humans will extinct ourselves before potable water runs out. Whatever way the natural progression of things will take us, we must humbly execute and stop thinking that we are above nature’s fate and recognize the greater forces. With recognition of the greater forces, we can once again reconcile with the world we live in, and love everything we love without feeling guilty.
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