There are few things I find as curious as humans running from drizzling rain: it's the purest sad example of our unnatural disconnection from nature.
- Related Content by Tag
- Curiosity
- Disconnection
- Nature
- Unnatural
There are few things I find as curious as humans running from drizzling rain: it's the purest sad example of our unnatural disconnection from nature.
I love this! It places a funny perspective on something very disastrous about our “modern” lifestyle.
Funny perspective indeed! It makes me wonder what else we do on a regular basis that is a result of this modern living.
I like this one. And I concur with the “unnatural disconnection from nature”.
If we say it another way, could it be another way of protecting the institution of materialism that just about every one of us — most acutely perhaps in in richer, developed countries — has come to perform subconsciously?
A drizzle is glorious — nature’s own cold steam bath. Yet most of us will do almost anything to protect our hair gel from ungluing, our makeup from running, our clothing from getting damp, our expensive leather satchels from getting water stains as we rush to seek refuge inside a building or our cars.
Watching people in even light rain is like watching an army of ants scatter when the morsel of food upon which they’ve been feeding is removed. Or the beehive that’s just been smoked out by a forest fire.
I understand and accept it; we live in a world that is rich in vanity/consumption and scare in self-awareness. I think these two qualities in general suffer an inversely proportionate relationship. It is, indeed, curious.
Thank you for sharing these thoughts, Craig! I hadn’t thought of it as “protecting the institution of materialism”, but perhaps that’s exactly what we’re doing. I wonder though, what would make us do that? What is it about such an institution that makes us subconsciously feel the need to protect and defend it? Is it our laziness? Is it our identification with it? Is it because modern materialism serves to define what it means to be us?
I was walking through a market earlier today in St. Petersberg, FL and my two friends mentioned how on previous weekends they may have considered purchasing stuff, but now that they’ve decided to get rid of everything so they can travel a bit, nothing really appeals. I recognized the same thing when I decided to live out of a backpack: it no longer matters what the thing is, I’ve already made up my mind that I don’t need it.
Such a reframing of my own identity has changed the way I view consumerism. Shops and stores and markets are no longer places where I might find something to add to my life (food being the exception), but they are instead spectacles of stuff, art venues where I browse but don’t touch, look but don’t buy. And I do so with complete sense of contentment, not with a sense of loss or longing.
I feel myself living in a world rich in stuff (abundant!), but I’m able to walk through it with a sense of self-awareness around who I am and what I need.
Well, it was just a thought. But I would venture a wild guess that in countries with much less “stuff” at their disposal (let alone the relentless pursuit of more of it) a little rain is the last thing against which people assail themselves. I would surmise that in (materialistically) poorer parts of the world, people enjoy — even welcome — the rain because there isn’t all the stuff to get wrecked by it. The rain is thus never a pain in the rear.
I could be way off the mark here and simply passing summary judgment on a behavior I haven’t fully thought through; maybe people’s response to drizzle/rain is just more of an instinctual response to protection, in this case in the event of inclement weather. After all, we learned to build huts, houses, etc. for that purpose.
But it has in the past struck me that much of what I have observed in people fleeing the rain is that they’re loath to get all their “stuff” wet, for this stuff represents high value. Those who insist on getting their cars washed ASAP after a rain are also good examples.
Meanwhile, I really like your take on consumerism. As a guy who really enjoys buying and using well-made things (I have a profound appreciation of the love, labor and pride that goes into their manufacture and the ultimate buyer’s pride of ownership, and that goes for food, too), I’m probably not as evolved in that area as I’d like. But lack of substantial income in the last few years has helped me move a lot in that direction. When you lack the means, you’re inspired to think about how important most of this stuff is.
Consumption generally rises to meet income. The secret to moving beyond the need to acquire forever more I think lies with learning not to place so much value on it. That obviously means switching focus.
As my favorite bumper sticker of all time read: “WANT WHAT YOU HAVE.”
While it’s quite interpretable at myriad levels, it is of course the last thing that the American economic machine wants to hear!
Oh, and one final thought, because it’s germane to this discussion: If you haven’t already seen it, may I suggest you rent and watch “Happy”. I believe it’s also online at Netflix. I found it quite inspiring. http://www.thehappymovie.com/
Thank you very much for the continued thoughts, Craig, and for the movie link. Lots of food for thought to reflect on. I’m especially interested in what you said about consumption rising to meet income: How do we avoid that? For that matter, how do we define consumption?
Are we not all consuming air and time by the very fact that we exist? And if so, does that mean we need to shift our perspective on what it means to consume so that we can make better consumption choices?
I think of the hours and hours of my life that I now spend “consuming empty time” by reflecting, contemplating, and otherwise just “be-ing”. That consumption, to me, feels far more productive, valuable, and worthwhile than any other type of consumption that I could do with that time. In fact, it feels essential to my existence. But even with other types of consumption, food for example, I find myself more than happy to spend more money if it means higher quality and a better long-term effect.