2 ms·

rip, sad day for my homestate, he's a giant here. and for me too, as he's one of those rabbit hole authors, revealing a Truth (capital T). berry is in the same

by trgn 1mo ago

rip, sad day for my homestate, he's a giant here. and for me too, as he's one of those rabbit hole authors, revealing a Truth (capital T). berry is in the same lineage as somebody like muir, and it really pains me to say, but i really wonder how relevant those individualist back to nature (and i dont say this necessarily dismissively, just dont know how to put it) imperatives really are. the world is technological, the necessities of life are commoditized, production and markets are global. how can there be any turning away from it, apart from it being a fetishistic practice, or just eccentric affectation. just think, portable nuclear reactors next to every data center soon. the march goes on. i had similar feeling with kaczinsky, who had similar views on sanctity of nature and impact of modernity, in a way the diagnosis is incredibly correct, but the regimen ~ a return to a more anarchic, hyperlocal, individualistic relation with it ~ completely misplaced. the terroir, does it even exist, has it ever even existed in america?

grantpitt 1mo ago
You might find Albert Borgmann a helpful voice here. He describes 'focal things and practices' which push back against the commodification of nearly everything. So, for example, making a meal and eating it with others at a table, reading a book with a friend, singing or playing an instrument, etc. Much more actionable about what can be done, reclaiming agency in a world that feels completely inevitable.
- trgn 1mo ago
  thanks, will look him up.
rglover 1mo ago
> the terroir, does it even exist, has it ever even existed in america? Not in the romantic sense and I'd imagine mostly ending in an Into the Wild kind of fate if at all. That said, if you're living in a more rural area, it's not terribly difficult to cultivate a little patch of that experience for yourself. It will never be picture perfect, but you can selectively engage with technology (and society) to an extent that you protect—at the very least—the little allotment you find yourself responsible for stewarding. It requires a reorientation away from a default validation of a highly technical society (both in the literal sense and the Jacques Ellul [1] sense). But until they replace all of the countryside with data centers, it's still within reach. May require some creativity and sweat but it's still out there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technological_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technological_Society
- trgn 1mo ago
  just on the ellul mention, I still think he has the best distillation of what it means to be a technical society, and it's one in which man internalizes the value system of the machine, and the machine only has one value, efficiency. it's a deceptively simple reduction, but can be applied very widely (e.g. into bureaucracy and statecraft). the into the wild fate i agree with, it does seem like the drive for some personal reconnection with nature, reality almost logically must end up there. 21st century man cannot become a collection of vagrants striking into the wilderness (at the extreme), but even on the spectrum leading up there there's many wavelengths that seem unworkable (e.g. we also cannot be cabin in the woods vagrants, and maybe all striving for some more pastoral mode de vie, that too, cannot be a shared ethos). it's incredibly frustrating. I've been somewhat captured by the idea, that while we may not be able to rebuild a localized terroir as an ecosystem for a 21st century knowledge worker, we may be able to reclaim city life. not the degraged mechanized city experiecne of today. but think more of the paris as an outdoor palace for the bourgeois in the 19th century, or vienna as a gay and vivacious center filled with art and music in the 18th, or bruges centuries before that as a intimate verdant cradle, yet also center of world commerce. that is, find that communion again with tactile reality, not in nature, but in the most perfect expressions of the city, its arts. nature then becomes distilled, the beautiful park, the well tended garden, the bonsai tree in the living room, etc etc... the lush spacious city as a sublimation of the the wilderness, the country side.
- ch71r22 1mo ago
  Another inspiring book in this vein is Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson. It looks at how Native Americans in California lived and managed the landscape. It gets really specific about which plants they'd use and how. A big part of the book is about reconceptualizing this idea of the romantic "wild" nature. I think it's interesting because it's an example of people who actually lived in a "back to nature" kind of way, but it doesn't look like a rural homestead or anything like that. It's also different in how it's collective not individualistic. The author cites Muir and Berry as influences

by trgn 1mo ago

grantpitt 1mo ago

You might find Albert Borgmann a helpful voice here. He describes 'focal things and practices' which push back against the commodification of nearly everything. So, for example, making a meal and eating it with others at a table, reading a book with a friend, singing or playing an instrument, etc. Much more actionable about what can be done, reclaiming agency in a world that feels completely inevitable.

trgn 1mo ago
thanks, will look him up.

rglover 1mo ago

> the terroir, does it even exist, has it ever even existed in america? Not in the romantic sense and I'd imagine mostly ending in an Into the Wild kind of fate if at all. That said, if you're living in a more rural area, it's not terribly difficult to cultivate a little patch of that experience for yourself. It will never be picture perfect, but you can selectively engage with technology (and society) to an extent that you protect—at the very least—the little allotment you find yourself responsible for stewarding. It requires a reorientation away from a default validation of a highly technical society (both in the literal sense and the Jacques Ellul [1] sense). But until they replace all of the countryside with data centers, it's still within reach. May require some creativity and sweat but it's still out there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technological_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technological_Society

trgn 1mo ago
just on the ellul mention, I still think he has the best distillation of what it means to be a technical society, and it's one in which man internalizes the value system of the machine, and the machine only has one value, efficiency. it's a deceptively simple reduction, but can be applied very widely (e.g. into bureaucracy and statecraft). the into the wild fate i agree with, it does seem like the drive for some personal reconnection with nature, reality almost logically must end up there. 21st century man cannot become a collection of vagrants striking into the wilderness (at the extreme), but even on the spectrum leading up there there's many wavelengths that seem unworkable (e.g. we also cannot be cabin in the woods vagrants, and maybe all striving for some more pastoral mode de vie, that too, cannot be a shared ethos). it's incredibly frustrating. I've been somewhat captured by the idea, that while we may not be able to rebuild a localized terroir as an ecosystem for a 21st century knowledge worker, we may be able to reclaim city life. not the degraged mechanized city experiecne of today. but think more of the paris as an outdoor palace for the bourgeois in the 19th century, or vienna as a gay and vivacious center filled with art and music in the 18th, or bruges centuries before that as a intimate verdant cradle, yet also center of world commerce. that is, find that communion again with tactile reality, not in nature, but in the most perfect expressions of the city, its arts. nature then becomes distilled, the beautiful park, the well tended garden, the bonsai tree in the living room, etc etc... the lush spacious city as a sublimation of the the wilderness, the country side.
ch71r22 1mo ago
Another inspiring book in this vein is Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson. It looks at how Native Americans in California lived and managed the landscape. It gets really specific about which plants they'd use and how. A big part of the book is about reconceptualizing this idea of the romantic "wild" nature. I think it's interesting because it's an example of people who actually lived in a "back to nature" kind of way, but it doesn't look like a rural homestead or anything like that. It's also different in how it's collective not individualistic. The author cites Muir and Berry as influences