The necessity of seeing

The environmentalist and theologian Thomas Berry, in his essay "World of Wonder," quotes Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin: "One could say that the whole of life lies in seeing. That is probably why the history of the living world can be reduced to the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes ... See or perish. This is the situation imposed on every element of the universe by the mysterious gift of existence."

He then goes on, in this essay, to describe in detail the great natural wonders of the North American continent: the great rivers and plains, the extraordinary mountains, the vast and open deserts, the forests of the northeast and the northwest. All these wonders, he observes, have been severely degraded, in most cases irreversibly so, by Western civilization, essentially from the moment of its arrival on Columbus's ships. The loss, and the heedless avarice which has accompanied and driven it, is almost too much to bear. It is, finally, a fact that the mind cannot encompass. Consider, for example, that of the tallgrass prairie that once covered much of the midwest, only about 0.3% remains. The rest has been plowed under, often to grow feed crop for cattle, or corn that ADM will process into corn syrup. Spend a moment and try to feel the enormity of this mindless exploitation of this bountiful planet, endlessly complex and intricate variety tilled and hacked and plowed into dust, and replaced with unnatural expanses of monoculture. What was there is gone, and will never come again.

Why did this happen? Berry suggests that our culture has a fundamental lack of ability to see things as they are. The supposedly rational mind of the Western man views nature as a resource, a repository of wealth waiting to be extracted, and made of use to man. The immediate use value of tallgrass prairie is not apparent to the rational eye, but the soil beneath has obvious value. So, the one is removed to extract the value of the other. Anywhere you have a mining operation, you see this principle in horrifying action. Mountains in West Virginia have no obvious value, but the coal seams within them do. The mountain, then, must go. The boreal forest atop the Alberta tar sands? Valuable insofar as the wood can be sold. The life of the Gulf of Mexico? Of no use compared the the oil beneath the sea bed.

A recent letter to the editor about a proposed taconite mine in Wisconsin illustrates this point with frightening clarity. The mine should go forward, says the writer, because the taconite, in the ground, "isn't doing anyone any good." Apart from its value as a resource for industrial age humans, the taconite is worthless. This, I think, is a fatal blind spot in the Western view of the world. We are, finally, incapable of seeing the world as it is.

The Western religious tradition is also an abject failure in this respect. Berry notes that with its focus on personal salvation through a singular Savior, and its view of nature as corrupt, rather than as a manifestation of divinity, inherently sacred and inspirational, mainstream Christianity has little to say about the culture's inexorable destruction of the planet. The kingdom of God is elsewhere, not here, and because the world is devoid of divinity, Western religion can't be bothered to stir itself to its defense. In fact, anyone who finds divinity in God's actual creation is regarded as a heathen. To be truly Godly is to find not a speck of divinity in creation, the better to make money off its despoiling.

"Consider the lilies ... they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these," says Jesus, who was not afraid of invoking the miracle of the world around him. Unfortunately, modern Judeo-Christian religion has little use for the lilies, so busy is it with convincing its adherents that this world is the fallen one, and therefore of little concern. Like the Western scientific and technological tradition, Judeo-Christian tradition suffers terribly, fatally, from a lack of sight. Nature is fallen, and that is the end of it.

But, as Berry and de Chardin observe, sight is vital. We are blind to so much of this world. The great prairies were plowed under because settlers did not see them as whole or sacred or a manifestation of the divine or as a magnificent example of God's creation, possessed of the right to exist. In short, they didn't pause and experience them as of value in and of themselves. They were experienced and seen only in terms of their own needs, which is to say that they weren't seen at all.

Of course, it turns out that we need those prairies, and every other aspect of nature, far more than we need the black soil beneath. The prairie nourished the soil, just as the soil nourished the prairie. Mow one down, and you may possess the other in a sense, for a while, but soon it will tire of giving of its richness to people who not only do not give back, but who seem to feel that to take endlessly is their right. This is, to my mind, another fatal flaw in the Judeo-Christian approach to nature. God, in Genesis, says "fill the earth and subdue it ... have dominion ... over every living thing that moves on the earth." God may command it, but eventually the earth will balk at this relationship, and the earth has the last word.

The nature of our relationship to the natural world demanded by God is not one in which the natural world is truly seen. The nature of the relationship to the natural world demanded by science is not one in which the world is truly seen. God asks us to subdue the world, and in the world we see something to be subdued. Science asks us to pick apart the world, and in the world we see machinery to be broken down and brought under control. Industry asks us to draw every last resource from the world, and in the world we see fossil fuels, and biofuel, and minerals to be mined. What we see is not the world in its incomprehensible splendor, but merely our expectations of the world. We mistake our expectations for the world, and ultimately we suffer terribly for it, as does the planet. Paul Valery says "to see is to forget the nature of the thing one sees." Before we can see the world, truly, we must let go of the malignant ideas we have about it.

Angry

Today is October 25th, 2012. In the Caribbean, Hurricane Sandy is inundating the Bahamas. The storm will, over the next several days, move up the east coast of the United States, where, according to current forecasts, it will make landfall somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, bringing unprecedented rain, wind, and coastal flooding to a huge swath of the eastern seaboard. Last year, another hurricane, Irene, made landfall in New England, and Vermont, my home for a little over a year some time back, suffered severe flooding. It may - may - be spared the worst of it this year, but still, for the second year running, a part of the country that simply does not see hurricanes more than once every century is bracing for one.

I am angry about the cruelty of this, angry that the people of Vermont and of New England may have to rebuild much of what they just put back together, angry at the lives that will probably be lost, angry for the trees that will be ripped down, at the soil that will be washed away, angry that the northeastern United States must apparently now pay much closer attention to hurricane season despite the fact that hurricanes are not supposed to make landfall in New Hampshire, or New York, or New Jersey, or Vermont.

I'm angry because this is our doing, and because it simply doesn't have to be this way. Climate change is extending the hurricane season, and the warming of the ocean waters means that hurricanes have much more energy upon which to feed. The terrible change in the planet's climate which we have wrought - well, there's little we can do to change that now. But we can stop making it worse, and eventually, within a few hundred years, return the climate to the sort of stability we have seen over the past 10,000 years.

I am angry, because the causes are obvious, and the solutions so achingly simple. Stop burning fossil fuels. Stop cutting down the forests. Stop laying down pavement. Stop changing the chemistry of the atmosphere. This is all we must do. Modern humans have existed on this planet for at least 200,000 years, and we have only been burning oil and coal for the last 200. If we stopped, life would be very different, but ultimately, we would be fine. And we could all awaken each day knowing that, even though we must live for a while with a climate likely to throw drought, freak rainfall, and the like our way, that this is temporary, that over time this would happen less and less often, that over time the amount of carbon in the atmosphere would fall, and that the world would renew itself, and be bountiful and beautiful again. It is so simple, so simple. It strikes me full force whenever I consider it, the madness, and the deep sickness that forbids us from even thinking about this, forbids us from realizing that the so-called comforts of a world driven by the combustion of fossil fuels are worthless if we destroy that world in the process. It is so simple. What does it say about us that the obvious and certain solution is not even entertained? I cannot even express how angry it makes me.

So, when Hurricane Sandy makes landfall on the mid-Atlantic coast, and does as much damage as it is likely to do, what will we say? This is the price of doing business? The price of global, oil-fueled economy? As the freak storms become more common, and simply become "the weather," what will we say? What will we do?

I cannot tell you how badly I yearn for a world in which hundred year floods, freak weather, and perfect storms remain so rare that they are spoken of like mythical events, like Noah's flood, or the plague of frogs, so rare that they pass easily into memory, then into folklore, then into mythology, referenced as one references the fairy tales of childhood, or the gods and goddesses of the most ancient myths, real and powerful, but manifesting themselves with a rarity that simultaneously belies and affirms their power. Such stories ought to be told reverently around the harvest table, as cautionary tales about the rare fury of nature, what utter havoc she is capable of wreaking if her limits are crossed with abandon. The simple fact is that those stories can be told in that way again. We can make this simple, simple, life-affirming, earth-affirming choice. We can, if only we know the simplicity of it, and the consequences of choosing otherwise. My God, it is so simple.

I hope Vermont does not suffer again this year, the way it did last year. But it seems apparent that hurricane season is now something that the northeastern United States will have to attend to. But it doesn't have to be that way forever. It doesn't have to be that way.

If you see this movie, may Dr Seuss haunt your dreams like Freddy Krueger

It's not news that the film adaptations of Dr Seuss's books have been the sorts of things I imagine you are forced to watch in Hell. His stories are so pithy and whimsical, and so to-the-point even with all the inventiveness and cleverness of the language, that stretching them out to 80 or 90 minutes necessarily distorts and undermines everything about them. You read some books - even some children's books - and you may find yourself thinking about what a film adaptation would look like, and who should play what role, and who should direct it, and so forth. Dr Seuss's books are not among those. One does not read How the Grinch Stole Christmas and think about costume design for Cindy Lou Who, or wonder about how exactly the Grinch came to have a heart full of unwashed socks, as the song goes. This is so obvious that you know that the people who are making these movies are interested in them not as stories but for their marketing value.

This is mainly why creating a feature-length film version of The Lorax is so uniquely, awfully horrid. You'd be hard pressed to find another book with a central theme so resistant to the whole idea of marketing, unless you made a movie out of Abbie Hoffman's Steal this Book. The marketers (and presumably the scriptwriters) are trying to get around this by pushing the environmentalist aspects of the story. USA Today had an article recently about how the film is being used by a variety of corporations and government bodies to promote "eco-friendly" products and activities. The EPA is using it to sell products branded with the Energy-Star label, and DoubleTree Hotel is using it to persuade people to get on a plane to fly a few thousand miles to Costa Rica, so you can see what remains of the equatorial rainforest. Universal Pictures, the article explains, is being selective about who they partner with in promoting this film, which I guess means that BP will not be featuring any Lorax-themed tie-ins at their gas stations. So that's a relief.

But, as important as it is to the story, the environmentalism of The Lorax emerges from a deeper theme. If you had to express that theme in one word, you would probably choose greed, or avarice. But I'm not sure that entirely captures it.

+++++++

The Lorax begins with an unnamed boy wandering through a wasteland, where he comes upon the Street of the Lifted Lorax. In a derelict factory nearby (the "Lerkim") lives the Once-ler, who tells the boy the story of the Lorax. Long ago, he says, this land was lush - "the grass was still green and the pond was still wet and the clouds were still clean." There were brown barbaloots, and swomee-swans, and humming fish, all of whom lived and played in the shadows of truffula trees. It's the truffula trees the Once-ler is interested in. "All my life," he says, "I'd been searching for trees such as these." Their tufts are very fine, and as soon as he sees them, he says, "I knew just what I'd do." He builds a small shop, chops down a truffula tree, and from the tuft he knits a thneed, which is, of course, "A Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need."

Then, the Lorax emerges from the tree stump. The first thing he says is that he speaks for the trees. But then he demands to know what on earth the Once-ler has made out of the truffula tuft. The Once-ler tells him, in language indistinguishable from boilerplate ad copy, the many, many uses to which one might put a thneed. The Lorax says:

Sir! You are crazy with greed.
There is no one on Earth
Who would buy that fool thneed!

Of course, a customer comes along and proves the Lorax wrong. The Once-ler laughs at the Lorax and dismisses him with a line that you will not hear in the movie, I guarantee:

You poor stupid guy. You never can tell what some people will buy.

Though it's not in the book, I imagine that it was at this moment the Lorax realized the magnitude of what he was up against.

The Once-ler, in entrepreneurial spirit, enlists the help of his family, expands his operations, and razes the ground of truffula trees. The Lorax returns after a while to tell the Once-ler of all the creatures suffering because of the damage being done by his thneed-making business. The brown barbaloots must leave because fewer truffula trees means less truffula fruit. They "are all getting the crummies, because they have gas, and no food, in their tummies!" The Once-ler sort of feels bad about this, but,

Business is business!
And business must grow
Regardless of crummies in tummies, you know.

He's a job creator, what can you say?

The swomee swans are choking on the air, the humming fish find their gills gummed up by the sludge from the Once-ler's factory, and they are both forced from their homes. The Once-ler tires of the Lorax's hectoring, and indignantly tells him that he intends to continue chopping down truffula trees and turning them into thneeds. This speech is punctuated by the fall of the last truffula tree.

The Once-ler family, presumably much richer now, closes up shop. The Lorax, after surveying the broken and lifeless landscape around him, gives the Once-ler a backwards glance and lifts himself up by the seat of his pants, disappearing through a hole in the smog. He leaves behind a ring of stones with the word "UNLESS" carved into it. The Once-ler interprets this for the unnamed boy as meaning that,

UNLESS someone like you 
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.

He gives the boy a truffula seed, and tells him to go plant it and protect it, in the hopes that the Lorax and his friends will come back.

+++++++

All the Once-ler sees is money. When he first comes to the land upon which he will build his factory, nothing exists for him except for that thing which will make him rich: the truffula tree. He doesn't see or appreciate the tree itself, doesn't recognize its intrinsic value, the way it sustains and is sustained by the other beings around it. No, for him it has no value except as raw material for his product, the thneed, the quintessential consumer item, which is advertised as fulfilling every need one could possibly have.

The Lorax sees the absurdity of this. For him, the trees are not the first point in a chain of production. They are whole in and of themselves, and are not there to provide raw material for the Once-lers of the world. The whole idea that they need to be transformed or refined in order to be "useful" is insane, as is the idea that the end product could possibly be something that everyone needs. After all, "everyone" was doing just fine before.

His only hope is that others see things as he does. Unfortunately, he's not just up against the Once-ler, but against an entire system, an entire way of thinking and being, in which growth and consumption and constantly unfulfilled needs and desires are the values and lodestars. It's not so much that the trees have no tongues, but rather that the Once-ler and his family long ago stopped regarding trees - and, frankly, everything else that could make them a buck - as anything but objects whose value depends entirely upon how much money can be made off of them. The trees are speaking, and not just through the Lorax, but the Once-ler doesn't understand, and probably wouldn't bother to listen even if he did.

The consumers are just as much a part of this as are the Once-lers. Born and acculturated into a world in which they are constantly told that fulfillment and serenity lie just over the horizon, in the next generation iPhone, another beer, a new car, a new deodorant, why shouldn't they think that happiness lies in the purchase of a thneed? More to the point, why shouldn't the purchase of an Energy Star appliance, or of an eco-tour to Costa Rica, just to pick two completely random and unrelated examples out of the air, not make you feel better about yourself?

So the Lorax faces a system in which the natural world, in all its complexity and mystery, and of which we are a part despite all of our efforts to prove otherwise, is regarded as little more than raw material, and in which the products that emerge from that raw material are regarded as a means to happiness by a population deliberately kept in a state of constant unhappiness. Play such a scenario out to its inevitable end, and what you find is an almost lifeless wasteland, full of gricklegrass and old crows and little else.

The people peddling and licensing the products branded with the "Lorax" label are, at bottom, Once-lers. The Lorax is essentially a story about how - to put it bluntly - the process of manufacturing and buying stupid shit is destroying the planet. But it's more than that. It's also a story about the mindset behind that process. The objectification of the natural world. The irrational, nihilistic obsession with growth. The belief that fulfillment is about buying the right product. And Universal Pictures and the EPA and DoubleTree and every other Lorax licensee see this and decide that what they need to do is find a way to sell it, to slap a label with the Lorax's face on their products. Like the Once-ler, all they see is money. The book The Lorax is their truffula tree.

And why shouldn't they do this? After all, there's no telling what some people will buy.

+++++++

Here's the only animated version of this story you should watch:

Part one:

 Part two: