"It appears to me that humans have almost no perception of their surroundings" This is the line that exits my mouth as I look at the horizon in mild shock from half way up this very tall building. We don’t seem to have a grasp of what is truly means to create a landscape. There is obviously no comparison to be drawn with the way in which we create and the beauty of nature but is there not at least some kind of happy middle ground?
It’s evident that even with the greatest will in the world functionality will always seem to get the better of originality, beauty or form. The endless concrete jungles in which we live seem to have desecrated the lands around us. The act of paving our way through the lush green has absolutely no end point and there is also no turning back. The removal of each tiny blade of grass seems as irrelevant in the face of our almost viral concrete insurgence as the very thought of what has been lost. As a race we’ve no sense of our surroundings. Humans will occupy whatever four metre squared space they can find and quickly fill it with all the luscious furniture the Swedish manufacturing trade can invent. I suppose this disproves my theory that we are unaware of our surroundings entirely then. Astonishing.
I have little in the way of defence for my own behaviours when it comes to this. I spend longer in the IKEA kitchen utensil department than any other man on earth.. of course that’s only once I have already purchased my 5th and 6th bedside table at what can only be seen as an irresistible £9.99. How could I possibly live without them! The point I’m getting round to making here is that I don’t feel any more of a sense of duty to be the driver of this change than you do. It seems like it would take an effort of purely monumental proportions to get each of us into the mindset that we truly are destroying the worlds beauty with no way back. Soon we will all be buying what remaining 4 species of tree there are in our garden centres to fill our roof terraces with. Perhaps we’ll do this with the sole intention of meeting council regulations to be involved in the production of oxygen. The one objective of this being that we provide enough so that we might continue our relentless consumption of this planet.
I would therefore like to make a pact with all future occupiers of planets capable of supporting human life. Lets not get the next one so badly wrong eh.
It’s evident that even with the greatest will in the world functionality will always seem to get the better of originality, beauty or form. The endless concrete jungles in which we live seem to have desecrated the lands around us. The act of paving our way through the lush green has absolutely no end point and there is also no turning back. The removal of each tiny blade of grass seems as irrelevant in the face of our almost viral concrete insurgence as the very thought of what has been lost. As a race we’ve no sense of our surroundings. Humans will occupy whatever four metre squared space they can find and quickly fill it with all the luscious furniture the Swedish manufacturing trade can invent. I suppose this disproves my theory that we are unaware of our surroundings entirely then. Astonishing.
I have little in the way of defence for my own behaviours when it comes to this. I spend longer in the IKEA kitchen utensil department than any other man on earth.. of course that’s only once I have already purchased my 5th and 6th bedside table at what can only be seen as an irresistible £9.99. How could I possibly live without them! The point I’m getting round to making here is that I don’t feel any more of a sense of duty to be the driver of this change than you do. It seems like it would take an effort of purely monumental proportions to get each of us into the mindset that we truly are destroying the worlds beauty with no way back. Soon we will all be buying what remaining 4 species of tree there are in our garden centres to fill our roof terraces with. Perhaps we’ll do this with the sole intention of meeting council regulations to be involved in the production of oxygen. The one objective of this being that we provide enough so that we might continue our relentless consumption of this planet.
I would therefore like to make a pact with all future occupiers of planets capable of supporting human life. Lets not get the next one so badly wrong eh.
So true, my friend. I used to live in upstate New York, and I would spend hours taking photographs in the Black Rock Forest. The first time I entered it I was awestruck by the fact that you can't make another one; it's irreplaceable. Indeed, once nature is gone, it's gone, at least on a large scale, and that's probably the scale that matters the most, isn't it? Good thoughts; keep it up.
ReplyDelete