(This article will lean heavily upon the preceding one, “A Clinical Analysis…” and will be much more relevant if you have read it. The topics in this article will still be free-standing, but less fleshed out than in the prior article, and I suggest you read it, if you haven’t already, for fullest appreciation of this one.
In the time since writing “A Clinical Analysis…” I have received some complaints about the “barbarity and vulgarity” of Part 1 and, in general, how “misplaced and inappropriate“ it seems in context with the full work, duly noted. It remains, unchanged, because it was intended to call into question what we say we want in our society and what we actually propagate.
And that’s what is shocking…)
As I write this, it is the monsoon season in Arizona: there is a noticeable density to the air, typically so dry and thin about a person, that, as I move through it or it pushes past me, carries with it not only the change in the season but the season’s change upon the environment. In conversation, “Heavy, humid and miserable” creep into usage, oddly juxtaposed to the rare mention of the brutal heat it supplants. We are so inured to the desert’s temperature that the drop of 10-15 degrees seems an intrusion on the continuity of our lives. It appears such a disproportionate trade-off though the discomfort level, as the combination of heat and humidity, would remain largely the same.
As odd as the perception of this change is, the change itself is odd: in mid-summer to early fall, the season of growth comes to the desert just as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere turns to harvest and decline. There is a sense of the desert’s contrary nature in this, the rest of the world is wrong and doesn’t matter, but it really goes so much deeper than just opposition: there is an obliviousness to the desert as it focuses on its own growth. With the monsoon rains the desert opens up its defensive nature, and risks all to persist another year, but as a community, turns away from the world and unto itself, to mitigate the risk in that openness.
It seems so odd to me, I feel compelled to explain it. And defend it. What would seem, to the rest of the world, an exercise in futility, amid the sterile nature of the desert, is in fact its work, done on its own schedule and in its unique way. It turns away, and within, to grow.
The botanical world proceeds with its evolutionary deliberated pace, so patterned, communal and durable as to appear self-conscious and wise. It expresses the very essence of logic, of science, of order as a matter of fact: when rain quantity (X) intersects sunlight quantity (Y) among soil acidity (Z) proceeds process (XYZ) for the specified genome (though the subtle nuance inherent in the formative quantities compel the process, uniquely). In this way, I can look upon a field and analyze the topography for rainfall, run-off and soil acidity, the surrounding sunlight and shade from proximate plants and physical impediments, and glimpse into how they will fare, flourish or fail. There are no miracles in a field, no saving graces, no sudden leap of instinct, no mercy, no concern, no pity, no emotion but truth, clear, concise and consistent. They are objects among each other, unaware of themselves and their surroundings, alone with nature.
Why they persist in this way is a mystery. Ultimately, their demise is certain and it is only their genome that compels them.
While being completely true in every logical, scientific and objective way, a fundamental and formative truth of reality, it is simultaneously the most base lie as I stand before a field and am swept into the embrace of its community. Becoming not a separate object, but as similar a subject as they are, a wondrous, persuasive beauty replaces analysis. Analysis and appreciation are impossible for me to hold concurrently: I can shift back and forth between the two but can not manage both processes simultaneously. I can think or I can feel, construct or sense: a neuroscientist could explain this as my focus shifting between hemispheres of my brain, between the “analytic” and “creative” areas of my cognitive function but this explanation does little to resolve the disparity in the perception of the same objects with the same senses. What is the reality here, the truth of the field or the beauty of the field? Why have I evolved to sense both object and subject, what is the purpose of that? How is it analysis and emotion are at cross-purposes to each other? How does that serve my organism as an advantage?
Assuming both objectivity and subjectivity exist as survival instincts, a series of simple axioms could arise: objectivity is the pursuit of truth, subjectivity is the pursuit of beauty, reason the pursuit of objective truth, sensation the pursuit of subjective beauty, truth is the pursuit of dominance over adversity, beauty the pursuit of connection with a community, truth is the means to survival, beauty the reason for survival. When viewed through the prism formed by these ideas, the beginnings of the failings and frailties of reason and logic become apparent as does the one-sidedness of such an approach: in pursuing the objective truth of the field as natural, self-evident and evolutionary, it rejects the subjective beauty of the field as irrational, contradictory and artificial. In the absolute pursuit of survival as an object, we sacrifice the very reason we wish to survive: the perception of our reality as subjective individuals and the pursuit of beauty. We are objects among objects that proceed only according to process, no more than nature: this is the ironic instinct of logic and reason, the most powerful tools of humanity. With this mindset, it is little wonder we’ve become more alienated, distraught, self-destructive, paranoid and self-loathing with each generation: the entire focus of society rewards logic, reason and emotional detachment and skews toward the perpetuation of that detachment. The world is just as beautiful as before, attachment and community as compelling to our senses as to our ancestors, but we have evolved away from a balance between the objective and subjective instincts. The failure of the spirit not only stems from a predisposition towards objectivity as an evolutionary survival instinct but also the human structures created by logic and reason, that reinforce and propagate this predisposition. Objectivity, reason, logic, science, animal instinct for the individual’s survival at any cost: these are accepted to be the Darwinian tools of survival for the individual and, by extension, societies. We succeed as truth, natural animals and objects, as we lose our community and destroy our surroundings.
Against that onslaught, I fear beauty doesn’t stand a chance.
For what is beauty other than a trick played on the mind by our senses? It serves no purpose, distracting the mind from its obligation to the body. Is beauty then, the body’s obligation to the mind: the mind insures the survival of the body and the body’s senses reward the mind with beauty? Is this the virtuous cycle implied by the evolutionary construction of our mind as objective/subjective, analytical/emotional?
*
The monsoon is a seasonal manifestation caused by the mid-summer heating of equatorial waters which, in turn, causes a super-saturation of the surrounding atmosphere. The resultant low pressure systems proceed in perpendicular patterns from the equator in both directions, guided into parabolic paths by prevailing winds. The topography dominated by monsoonal rain patterns are typically arid regions, in terms of annual rainfall, and the adaptation of botanical life, and the animal life dependant on it, ensure that this meager precipitation is harvested and distributed in the most efficient means possible. In this way, these formidable lands are host to diverse, highly evolved forms of life that thrive in these unusual climatic regions. The success of the ecosystem relies on the interrelationship and interdependence of all the life-forms and, in turn, their dependence upon this weather pattern. From this simple, meteorological phenomenon, life in a desert has proliferated: from this truth, life.
Though the desert does cry out to you from the depths of its need: is this the weakness for you to prey upon, you horror? Is it anger at a destiny that sends you howling through the mountain passes, tearing away at every limb, deciding, through force, the meek and the strong? Is this what compels you: for the gift of life, water writhing ecstatic on the barren land, you first measure, ensure, the strength necessary to survive? From the winds, all turn their face away in terror, hide from the lightening, shake with the thunder that leaves a primordial silence in its wake. Then, only, does the rain fall, flowers blossom brilliant with their scent of life held close to the earth in the suddenly still damp air. In days, the dead woods awake, leafing out mesquite, ironwood, cedar leave spices on the wind, the flowers fall away to the cactus fruit that brings forth the haunted wildlife of your lands, cowering and snatching a meager sustenance, and fleeing before your return. Do you feel you are called to return, as lord and master, for the earth has need of you, and is for you alone, for no other could judge?
Or do you arrive, unbidden, that all must bear your savage beauty?
