Human Iterations

(#5: Individuals flourish with increase of dynamic connections.)

An Anti-Primitivist Essay

When our relationships to external material structures become poorly integrated, brittle and characterized by rigid control we become imprisoned.

A starving child, trapped alone, say, on a seemingly endless expanse of clay left by sudden drought, is obviously overwhelmed and overpowered by the change of integration with environment. We can even imagine such a doomed child perhaps only finding extended survival by listlessly licking up mud for nutrients. Not exactly a free mode of life, most would agree. And so too is the villager who simply follows the same processes in life endlessly with no real deviation or exploration --even in times of plenty when such chores are unneeded-- pretty far from a liberated life. Furthermore, such internalized repetition of behavior might prove more than unnecessary, and, in fact, destructive to the whole community's relation with their surroundings.

On the flip side, it's clear that fluid contact with our environment helps us positively spread and grow. At heart, we like to touch. We like to see, feel and know our world.

We like to reach out and explore.

That's not to say that locking ourselves out of the world can't be useful in situations of oppressive tactile structures. When our environment strays into systems of behavior we can't integrate with, limited strength and intensity of contact is often a positive survival method.

We might flee a hurricane for a concrete bunker or, when struggling through a winter, slow our bodies down in degrees of hibernation. The villager who mechanizes repetition of the same task in order to survive a bad period withdraws from sensory engagement in a similar manner.

But again with the mechanized villager we see how locking ourselves away can sometimes provide its own powerful form of role-filling. The classic caricature of a suburban businessman might come to mind, someone who locks himself away behind sterile, contact depriving doors, striving progressively to do away with any manner of fluid interaction. Replacing contact and engagement with air conditioned SUVs and neatly packaged television shows. ('Contact' here being different from plain stimuli. Stimuli alone can be random, repetitive or empty and convey no significant connection or interaction.)

There are stronger and weaker degrees (and of course forms or directions) of such contact possible with the world. Certain examples are obvious. The hunter who embraces the wilderness and, though more fluidly integrated sensation, feels interactions spreading out from the brushed fern to the owl fluttering off in the distance. The same villager considered before, who just washes clothes in the river and doesn't stray much beyond the functioning of established processes, has internalized a greater barrier to contact, interaction, connection, and integration with the external environment. And, of course, the much lamented World of Warcraft addict, stereotypically isolated in dark room, may perhaps enjoy great social contact but still little more than faint stimuli in matters of material reality.

It's no coincidence that the examples given are characterized by decreasingly dynamic connections as the ostensible trappings of civilization are more pronounced. Modern civilization has acquired layers of structural blanketing that encompasses and confines our everyday lives. In every conceivable realm we have taken to throwing down fences and slinking into set patterns and channels of behavior. We still interact with the world, but the dynamics are greatly confined.

How often do we sit quietly and feel the trees move? How often do we pay attention to what exactly is in the room with us, rather than reducing our reality into crudely simplified concepts of functional relationship? How often do we touch the world rather than ignoring or itemizing it? When was the last time you turned your head up and actually looked at the stars?

No wonder our minds and bodies rot today We function within set patterns because they can be useful. But we only truly flourish with deeper contact.

It's no secret that such brittle structures and role-filling are unstable and corrosive, but in the other direction, when we approach our connections dynamically we can spread channels of stronger, more fluidic and organic tactile contact.

There is no fundamental limit to this contact.

Certain local realities provide a bunch of pragmatic limitations, but they can be worked around. In much the same way that the hunter can feel the dancing wind patterns far stronger than his skin or the rustling foliage might otherwise reveal by choosing to throw up some downy feathers and watch their interaction with the twisting air currents. Or a apple-gatherer use stilts to stride between tree branches. Or an ancient lens crafter build a telescope. Or a geneticist hack the human genome to give his skin stronger light-awareness.

We want stronger and more versatile contact, and thus we've built technology.

Rather than from a drive to rigidly control and master, technology has always been, at root, formed by the desire for greater dynamic contact. Not the divorced-from-the-world laziness that sometimes emerges from later abdications once the tools have been acquired. But from the desire to touch, feel and explore. Because the primal creation involved is necessarily rooted in an act of ingenuity and imagination.

The systems engineer who designs and builds a bridge across a ravine with her own hands applies herself in a deeply connected fashion. The world is felt and worked with smoothly. Rock is shifted. A new channel of contact becomes stronger. It's easier to move from place to place. To engage with a wider swath of the world.

The onset of our hierarchical methods of industry, though they facilitated greater and greater power and exploitation, partially stem from the human desire for deeper and more dynamic contact with the world. We don't like being confined. Or that is to say, we rot when limited or relegated to some removed subspace. We flourish with the intensity and immediacy of our more dynamic connections to the world.

Moving beyond the same socially perpetuated processes of behavior, we strive to understand and deepen our relationship, our interaction with the seeds and bushes we gather from. We try for greater contact, attempt a more fluid integration. Help put the bushes we need closer to us...

Symbolic structures can facilitate greater fluidity. So long as they, themselves, are treated fluidly. The moment they become rigid, when we remove or replace ourselves with mechanization, our interactions with the world grow rigid and brittle.