“What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.” (Richard Powers, The Overstory)
Unfortunately, though, in response to this beautiful quote, most of what we make is not as miraculous or aesthetically nourishing or well-designed or flexible as a tree. Not even close.
Some of the enormous, beautiful palm trees that surround my house were cut down around half a year ago. I almost couldn’t watch when they fell to the ground, and the loud thug they made when they hit the ground was devastating; bam, bam, bam. It was the sound of decades of slow, steady, natural growth being dropped in minutes. It made the ground shake, like a small (or even medium sized) earthquake. And the men who felled the trees were laughing and cutting open the coconuts, pouring their water over their heads, which somehow made it feel like an assault.
Since the trees were felled, they have just been laying on the land next to my house. Slowly decaying. Why? — I am not sure. Maybe the man who owns the land was hoping to sell it and wanted to make it look more buildable. Maybe he thought he could sell the wood. I don’t know. But it appears that the supply-demand “logic” that governs our late-modern capitalistic landscape doesn’t always apply to natural resources. We don’t just take when there is a demand — or rather, we don’t wait for a demand to raise. Rather cut down a few extra trees, just in case someone could be interested in the land or the wood.
Where does our feeling of human entitlement come from? Is it a part of our education, of our cultivation? I think it might be, because I don’t experience it in young children or in adults who have intentionally sought to unlearn such conducts in order to rewild their outlook on life, consumption, nature etc.
Refraining from consumption when it comes to fast fashion items and other trendy knickknacks seems to have also become a nearly activist-like choice that signals consciousness and awareness (and is typically flashed on social media). But the act of refraining from consumption is for the privileged few only; for the once who can make a choice and decide not to consume — because they already have more than enough, and because they will never go to bed hungry unless this is a conscious decision.
(Quick parenthesis: when I write “they” I of course mean “we”, as I too am a part of the privileged few, who are fortunate enough to check in and out of consumption as if it were an existentialist quest.)
One could even raise the question: What are we if we don’t consume? (well, unless it is a conscious act of non-consumption, under which circumstances we are still acknowledging the driving force and the importance of consumption) What is our purpose if we don’t participate in the spending party — if we don’t desire anything or rather any thing? Because, let’s not forget that you can desire something without desiring things, objects, shiny stuff. But it appears that we have forgotten how to do that. And this despite the fact that all our most applauded current lifestyle tendencies (slow living, simple living, minimal living) celebrate living with less belongings and with more awareness.
To briefly return to Power’s powerful quote: may this line be a mantra for rewilded late-modernism.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Fallon Michael on Unsplash
