The Pandora Possibility
I: On Battle, Boundaries, and Balance
It’s April. Buds are bursting, new leaves are taking form, seeds are sprouting, the muted colors of winter are rapidly transforming into a riot of growth and color, soft fragrances of young poplar leaves and apple blossoms and lilacs are wafting on warming winds, warblers are winging northward bringing new songs to the forest each day. For the past two years I have written April posts exploring this wondrous bursting-forth, poetically and philosophically, seeking to pierce the veil of our supposed understanding to open a sense of wonder and awe and mystery.
This year I am embarking on a larger project that will span three months and culminate on the summer solstice. My goal is to explore the contrasting realities presented in the Avatar movies – the Na’vi living in harmony with their world and the extractive, invading Earthlings – and to ask what is the difference, truly, between these ways of being? I’m choosing the movies rather than very real historical examples of this dynamic because I want to avoid questions of stereotypes, privilege, justice, and power – the “guns, germs, and steel” of colonization – and focus more centrally on the difference between these two paradigms, as laid bare by this cinematic caricature. Most people who view the movies identify with the Na’vi, and with those humans who choose to become part of the Na’vi world. Most of us would prefer that to our current existence. And yet here we still are, clearcutting and blasting and spraying and bulldozing our way toward a “greener” future. I want to explore why that is, and how it could change – not from the top down through policies and treaties but from the ground up through consciousness and community.
I should make note here of my own evolution. I was an immersive child, spending hours on end playing in creeks and making paths through snow and basking on sun-warmed ancient stone. I felt that I belonged, that I was truly a part of that world, as it was a part of me. In the traumas of adolescence a deeply embodied part of my being left, to watch from a distance as I developed the sort of mind-based identity that is shared by most modern humans. I still loved the natural world and now sought to study it, to build and integrate and share knowledge such that we might foster love and protection for willows and warblers.
After pursuing that path through college and spending a summer doing conservation research in the fracking fields of Wyoming, I felt that our ongoing destruction and exploitation was not for lack of knowledge but rather due largely to our dependence on extractive energy and technology, so I applied my biology and genetics background in graduate school toward re-engineering photosynthesis to produce hydrogen from sunlight: what seemed like the ultimate green energy breakthrough.
After a few years in that world I came to some additional realizations: namely that modern science was based on a faith in perpetual and unbounded technological progress that was often contradicted by reality, and that working against nearly three billion years of evolution to re-engineer cyanobacteria from growth toward hydrogen production was a hubristic exercise. I also came to realize that all of the “silver bullet” energy technologies had significant environmental costs and practical limitations, from cobalt and lithium mines to wildlife impacts to embodied energy and limited lifespans. I came to accept that we would all necessarily be existing with less energy as fossil fuels were depleted, and furthermore that no breakthrough would ultimately solve our problems as long as we remained committed to a trajectory of perpetual growth and perpetual progress on a finite planet.
So I left the world of “green” energy and science behind and found my way into the world of seeds, nurturing and selecting plants and harvesting these wondrous packaged potentialities to share with others, to grow nourishment on home and community scales. This led to developing a simple winnowing machine that is now in use across the US and Canada, and ultimately into my current involvement with local food systems.
At the same time, through the political polarizations and tribal divides of the Trump and covid years, I found myself on a journey of self-discovery that led to a disconnection from all of the competing rigid ideologies and a weakening of my fragile mind-centered identity, ultimately culminating in a powerful “spiritual re-birthing” process last December that restored much of my childlike immersiveness and left me feeling more grounded, more embodied, and less anxious and fearful.
As with all of my writings, I can only speak from my own experience, my own perspective. We are each on our own path of unfolding and I don’t wish to proclaim “the truth” or “the way”.
The cinematic conflict on Pandora can be viewed as good vs. evil, which elucidates very little, or as love vs. greed, which is only slightly better - because all of us, all of our societies, have within us those polarities. To me, it is fundamentally a conflict of connection vs. separation. It is a conflict between those who honor all life, who feel rooted and belonging in their biosphere, and those for whom that life is merely resources or barriers in the way of resources. It is telling that the only moral dilemma that some of the invading humans feel is in killing the giant whale-like creatures with more-than-human intelligence – a perspective that assigns value based on sentience and has parallels on Earth in special protections for apes and dolphins.
This divide goes back a very long way in human history. It is reflected in the difference between cultures that regard wolves as kin, as spirit animals, and those that regard wolves as devils that stalk the wild night. It is, in a sense, reflected in a shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settlements, and yet I would not say that is the cause, or that agriculture is inconsistent with a sense of connection.
Separation is reflected in our nature documentaries, which inevitably focus on this desert tortoise or that bowerbird, following a single creature or a single colony in its endeavors and struggles. Contrast this with the cinematography of Avatar on Pandora, highlighting the entire ecosystem. It would not be so hard to create the same sense of wonder filming the forests of lichen and mosses on tree branches, the diversity of prairie flowers, the morning chorus of birdsong, the iridescent dragonflies and darting water striders in every wetland, and yet that is seldom what is chosen.
Separation comes in various forms. Many religious perspectives would claim that humans are uniquely spiritually alive, possessing of souls, and that all other life is inferior in its lack. Modern scientific materialism would claim that nothing is spiritually alive, ourselves included, and that the only ethics that therefore apply are a sort of pain minimization, functional ecology, and aesthetics. The great conflict between science and religion is in fact united in its commitment to separation. The connection perspective, the one not often given a voice, is that everything is spiritually alive, that all life and matter and energy is a manifestation of universal consciousness.
Separation does not automatically lead to destruction, but that is a very easy path to follow. That which we believe to be separate from us is no longer our kin. We have no emotional connection, no bond. It can be merely passive – our “environment” – but as soon as we have reason to regard it as a threat or as a resource then the guns and bulldozers come out.
Separation is difficult, perhaps even impossible, for minds to escape. My father spent his life trying, spiritually seeking, reading books on connection, attempting to educate and reason and will himself into the connection that he craved. His poem below was one written, with his characteristic humor, in frustration with this pattern.
A mighty fortress is my garden, not so hidden in our yard. Built to tell the native critters: you’re forbidden; skip the chard. Like a fortress round the garden, wire mesh and ‘lectric fence. After years of observations, this seemed simple common sense. Coon and possum, rabbit, deer, squirrels, woodchucks everywhere. If you plant ‘em, they will come. Assume that they are welcome here. So a fortress is my garden; sends a message to the foe: Sure I love you; one condition: there’s a place you just don’t go. Sure you smell the fresh leafed lettuce. Deer, you’d love the blossom’d peas. So I built this grand illusion, to preserve some peas for me. So a fortress is my garden. I must open gates to go Plant the seeds or pick the produce. Pull the weeds and hoe, hoe, hoe. Every evening check the voltage: seven grand a pumpin’ through. Check the spark-pops in the darkness: executed snake or two. A mighty fortress is my garden! Alas my life has come to this: Separation in my lifestyle. Separately, we co-exist. --Ed Stone, 2006
The path from separation to connection is not, I believe, a journey that the mind can undertake, and I do not as of yet have a recipe for releasing the mind. Perhaps there is no such recipe – at least not one that the mind can follow. In essence, I might say, the mind-identity can release when it can no longer justify its existence, and the three explorations that follow over the next months will delve into shifts in perspective that just might move us – individually and collectively – in that direction.
On Battle, Boundaries, and Balance
Many of us are fighting something. We are fighting the dandelions in our lawn or the gophers in our garden or the mice in our house. We are fighting family members who would steal our energy or colleagues who would judge us harshly. We are filing lawsuits or dropping bombs in the hopes of warding off threats and making our lives safer.
That which we fight, fights back. Whoever had the bright idea that bombing terrorists would make us safer does not understand basic psychology. Nature does not fight back so much as persist, fill the voids, chafe against our controls. My father once shot thirty squirrels to protect his nut tree; each one he thought would be the last.
So long as we are fighting, we must maintain separation. So long as we are dehumanizing or othering our opponents, they will be hard pressed to avoid doing the same to us. And yet we live in a world that is not safe: a world with viruses and mosquitoes and sociopaths and ideologues who would impose their beliefs upon all. Perhaps we envision that some day, when we all move beyond separation, our world will be safer, and yet we must exist in this world, and if we wish to move into connection we must do so in this world as well.
As I see it, the alternative to battle – and this can be a subtle distinction – is a boundary. Battle says you have harmed or angered me so I must harm you, or lash out, or retreat to a place of safety. A boundary says I respect you but I will not allow you to do that to me. A boundary says that a mosquito’s rights end at my skin, enforced by repellents and long sleeves and an occasional firm slap. Battle says that all mosquitoes in the city must be sprayed into oblivion, along with most of the other insect life. A boundary says “all of us will simply not follow this unjust law, we dare you to enforce it.” Battle says “we will riot in the streets and burn your buildings until the law changes.”
To set boundaries is to let go of the goal of ultimate safety, that which can only be achieved by destroying our adversary: to recognize that such safety is imperfect at best and entirely illusory at worst. To set boundaries is not to entirely renounce violence, but to reserve it for limited use, as a last resort. To set boundaries is to let go of the adversarial language, the “foes” and “opposition”.
An electric fence is a violent sort of boundary. It does not appear substantial but enforces its message with pain. Boundaries will not prevent battle if they are invisible until crossed, or excessively prickly, or porous such that they are too easily permeated leading to conflict on the inside. A good boundary is solid but unobtrusive: a beautiful seven-foot fence covered with climbing vines will exclude deer. There are emotional and organizational equivalents.
I tend to see boundaries as extensions of self, within which we have extended immune systems. My own body has a layer of skin and an extraordinarily fine-tuned immune system. Bacteria and viruses outside are not enemies. Once inside they are only destroyed if they are causing harm. Declaring war, whether internally with antibiotics or externally with disinfectants, upsets the balance and decreases overall health.
I do not see my garden as a mighty fortress. It is a space, within a boundary. Within that space, I maintain an immune system which includes slug baits and gopher traps. I don’t hate gophers. I respect them, but I also know that once they find the garlic they will eat all of it, and I haven’t yet found a barrier that works well for them. I also seek to maintain a balance within. Balance, like a boundary, reduces the need for battle.
Balance is perhaps best described as a combination of harmony and surrender. Harmony, in a garden, means healthy soil, a diversity of plants, abundant insect and bird life that keeps munching insects in check. Surrender means accepting that there will be some aphids and flea beetles and wireworms and weeds, and letting go of the need to control them all, only taking action when truly necessary to protect a crop. Harmony, in a pasture, might mean employing dogs to protect animals from predators that cross the boundaries. Surrender means accepting that our animals are still part of a larger food web, and occasionally a hawk will eat a chicken or a wolf will eat a lamb, which does not need to make the hawks and wolves our adversaries.
Battle keeps the mind engaged in maintaining separation. It is necessary to remain vigilant, to strategize, to consciously hold an identity apart from that which we are fighting. It gives the mind a reason to maintain dominance, to block that part of us which simply wishes to be present, to be embodied, to honor the common spark of life in all people and all beings. Boundaries allow us to relax that vigilance, to ignore what is going on outside except when there is an incursion. And aiming for balance, seeking to participate rather than control, further allows us to soften our minds.
“This all sounds great”, our minds might say, “but I am afraid. I am afraid of surrender. I am afraid of death. I am afraid that if I let go of my identity, there will be nothing left.”
Fear will have to wait until next month. Until then, embrace the upswing!