Since I’ve been reading a lot of C.S. Lewis lately, I figured I could use (and abuse?) a couple quotes from him in suggesting a philosophy of responsible waste management. The Discarded Image is a piece that brings to light our modern misconceptions about the “Dark Ages.” A testimony of medieval literature, for example, is how systematized their view of the universe was. This organization grew out of classical authors such as Apuleius of Numidia, from whom Lewis draws two principles: the Triad (the idea that two entities – such as soul and body – can only meet each other through a third medium – in this case, the spirit) and Plentitude. Lewis summarizes Plentitude in stating: “The universe must be fully exploited. Nothing must go to waste.” In other words, if something had the capacity to be useful, the medieval mind found a use for it.
Yesterday, I read in The Four Loves about what Lewis calls “Appreciative” pleasures, which he identifies as: “…the starting point for our whole experience of beauty…It is the feeling which would make a man unwilling to deface a great picture even if he were the last man left alive and himself about to die; which makes us glad of unspoiled forests that we shall never see; which makes us anxious that the garden or bean-field should continue to exist. We do not merely like the things; we pronounce them, in a momentary God-like sense, ‘very good.’”
Have you ever wondered why there are three arrows in the recycling logo? I’ll tell you anyway. Each arrow represents one of the three key components – the three R’s – of effective waste management: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. These are fairly self-explanatory concepts, but they don’t happen by themselves. In like fashion, those who don’t recycle fall into three categories: the preoccupied, the reactionary, and the capitalist. While the lazy non-recycler may grant the theoretical merit of sorting his trash, he has better things to do with his time. The reactionary fears that he would return from a trip to the recycling center wearing a tie-dyed shirt and listening to the Dave Matthews Band. The capitalist refuses on principle, waiting for the day when he can get more than thirty cents a pound for his dispatched cans of Bud Light.
I regard each of these as a superficial defense, though not always unfounded – certainly there are those who truly do have better things to do with their time. But in most cases, I believe these excuses would fade away in the presence of a coherent philosophy in favor of a moderate yet responsible approach. The principle of Plentitude would seem to argue for purchasing reusable items instead of those which are “disposable.” A good example is Paula’s experiment with cloth diapers, which the capitalist would appreciate, since reusing items often saves money in the long run, and we all know that “a penny saved is a penny earned.” Her experiment did not work out in the end, but from what I understand, it has for many others. (On the same note, it is not without substantial economic incentive that corporations across the country are moving toward a “zero waste” strategy.) Another fitting example at this time of year is plastic leaf sacks. Since Moscow’s recycling center includes a yard waste drop-off, a trick I learned from my father is getting multiple uses out of a Hefty garbage bag. They’re “Hefty” for a reason, after all. The recycling center’s website features a link to something called the Latah Free Exchange, which is a mailing list one can post and subscribe to when offering or searching for free second-hand items: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Finally, institutions like Washington State University frequently hold surplus sales where quality equipment and materials are sold at reduced prices. Their next auction will be one week from today. Many more ideas for waste reduction and reuse can be found on sites like this one from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Speaking of the EPA, let’s return to the second Lewis quote, where he praises the admiration of “unspoiled forests that we shall never see.” While the reasons for reducing and recycling are not limited to their environmental benefits, those benefits are real. Landfills inhibit the natural decomposition of organic materials and release frightening amounts of methane gas. Energy that could be saved or reduced by reusing and recycling is expended on harvesting and processing raw materials, including the unseen forest that could remain unspoiled simply by recycling our corrugated cardboard and low-grade paper products.
Before I close this rant, I must say three things. First, I want you to know that I’m not a nut. I don’t wear tie-dyed shirts; I do listen to the Dave Matthews Band. I believe this is important, but not as important as a lot of people try to make it. I simply believe that with a little up-front organization, it becomes easy to put some or many of these practices into place, that these practices make a difference, and that they can even save you money. Last week, I initiated a recycling system here at the Big Haus. It took some forethought, is far from perfect, but it’s working. Second, as great of an author as C.S. Lewis was, and as much as I like to imagine him hauling a recycling bin to the curb in his pajamas on a bright Thursday morning, I have no idea if he really would have. Finally, I want to remind you that this Sunday is America Recycles Day. On Saturday, Moscow Recycling will be handing out refreshments, holding a raffle for prizes of the reusable kind, and offering forty-five cents per pound for aluminum cans. Swing by if you can, or at least take a few minutes to learn more about the three arrows on the bottom of your 2-liter.
Last Spring, before returning from Norway, I got started on a book that I had intended to read for some time. It had come along with me from the States, though I could have just as easily purchased a copy in the original language while abroad. When he published Sophie’s World in 1994, Jostein Gaarder, a former philosophy teacher, was already an award-winning Norwegian author. Since then, his book has been translated into over fifty languages, become a New York Times Bestseller, and achieved the top spot on bestseller lists throughout Europe.
The book is subtitled “A Novel About the History of Philosophy.” Oddly enough, the story takes place in a small Norwegian town and centers around the philosophical escapades of a young teenager named Sophie, who begins to question the nature of her existence when she receives an anonymous letter posing two questions: “Who are you?” and “Where does the world come from?” While it is difficult for Sophie to decide which is more mysterious – the unidentified sender or the questions themselves – she soon finds herself attempting to answer the age-old questions of the universe with the help of a new philosophy teacher.
Sophie and her teacher begin in the Garden of Eden and continue through the Norse myths until they meet the great philosophers of ancient Greece: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Next comes the clash of Hellenism with the rapid rise and radical propositions of Christianity, followed by the Middle Ages, the Rennaissance, and the Baroque periods. As they enter the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the modern era, Sophie’s lessons become directly focused on thinkers of the day like Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Kierkrgaard, Marx, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, and Sartre.
While interacting with her philosophy teacher, Sophie also starts to receive a series of curious postcards addressed to a girl named Hilde, whose existence increasingly seems to mirror her own in some sort of parallel universe. As Sophie applies her lessons in philosophy, she closes in on the true identity, not only of Hilde, but also herself and the world in which she lives.
Because I am a slow reader, what initially deterred me from reading the book was it’s sheer size: five hundred pages that lasted me through most of the Summer. But because Gaarder takes the brilliant approach of telling his story through the mind of a young student, the broad progression of philosophical thought is presented in a way that makes it both entertaining and easy to follow. Granted, I appreciate the novel’s setting more than the average reader and concede that a more academic survey of philosophy may harmlessly omit specific Scandinavian influences. As this is the limit to Gaarder’s personal bias, however, he is to be applauded. One notable exception is his assumption of evolutionary theory in the final chapters, but this is not enough to detract from the utility of his book as an accessible reference manual of philosophical history. In fact, I have already revisited chapters of the book to recall a particular subject, and I look forward to rereading Sophie’s World in full.
There has been little time for blogging since I returned to Moscow a month ago. When not in the office, I have been spending evenings with family and friends and using weekends to work with my dad on several overdue landscaping projects. On the other hand, since my travels have been reduced to the daily thirteen-mile commute, I find myself with fewer adventures to tell of. Settling back into a familiar daily routine has not only sidelined my artistic creativity, it has robbed me of inspiration.
Of course, that is not quite fair. To everything there is a season, and even if this is not the season for blogging, I have no shortage of things to keep me awed, occupied and entertained. “Entertaining,” for instance, would be a good word to describe a couple of conversations I overheard at work last week. First there was the woman who, when asked if she had Vista, replied “Oh no, we use Clearwire!,” demonstrating that not all Schweitzer Engineering employees are computer geeks, or even computer literate. Then there was the Chinese woman who was told that the hardware for her project would be ready in a month, to which she skeptically retorted, “I’ll see it when I believe it,” (which I have since adopted as my modus operandi).
In family news, Josh has arrived in Moscow for the Summer so that Kristen doesn’t have to keep me up at night while Skyping with a boyfriend in California; and Heather has purchased a new laptop with some help from the in-house expert. I think we were equally excited when it arrived in the mail:
I wish I had thought ahead to take some “before” and “after” shots of the yard work we’ve been getting done around here. Some of these projects have been on hold since I was in college – or even high school – when my dad was too picky and I was too lazy to be any good to each other. A few years have done a lot of good, and now that Summer is here, we are bringing our cursed acres of earth into subjection, shoulder to shoulder. The weather has been cooperating, and the sunsets in Moscow still live up to their reputation, especially when the occasional storm does blow through.
Since I first read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard a couple of years ago, I have always imagined it would be the first book I would assign to my students if I were a biology teacher. Any who failed to be simultaneously mystified and terrified at the natural world by the end of the first chapter could feel free to transfer to economics while the rest of us unpacked the incredible masterpiece Dillard created from simply taking time to watch the small world around her. An excerpt from Publisher’s Weekly printed on the cover of my early copy from 1975 describes “This book of wonder [as] one of the truly beautiful books of this or any other season… which, on any page, offers a passage one can scarcely wait to share with a friend.” This is what I will do as a preface for the remaining photos I have taken around the mosquito haven that has been our backyard for the past couple of weeks. The following is an excerpt from one of the gruesome passages in her chapter titled “The Horns of the Altar,” yet the book contains equally beautiful passages with power to amaze and frighten any brave reader. In discussing parasites, Dillard provides this happy description:
“Parasitic two-winged insects, such as flies and mosquitos, abound. It is these that cause hippos to live in the mud and frenzied caribou to trample their young. Twenty thousand head of domestic livestock died in Europe from a host of black flies that swarmed from the banks of the Danube in 1923. Some parasitic flies live in the stomachs of horses, zebras, and elephants; others live in the nostrils and eyes of frogs. Some feed on earthworms, snails, and slugs; others attack and successfully pierce mosquitos already engorged on stolen blood. Still others live on such delicate fare as the brains of ants, the blood of nestling songbirds, or the fluid in the wings of lacewings and butterflies.”
I am up early. I could hardly doze off last night because I was afraid I would sleep in, but prayer number one has been answered. It will be a long day, so please keep the prayers coming. It has been great staying at the Marlborough Hostel, and yesterday was another beautiful day in Dublin. I hopped on a bus tour of the city and visited Trinity College, Christ Church Cathedral, and the Guinness and Jameson museums. My camera battery was exhausted by lunchtime, though I did have my backup along. I have been having too much fun with still compositions to shoot much video, but since the camcorder also takes (unbelievably lousy) photos, I was able to document the rest of the day. You’ll have to wait to see that until I get back to the States, but I will say that one day exploring Dublin only made me want to see more. For example, I could imagine at least another day on a literary tour through the city that produced authors like W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw. Yesterday, however, was for sampling the brewing and distilling heritage of Ireland. I was going to leave you with a video of our whiskey tasting, but time is awastin’, and I must catch my bus. Good-bye Ireland. It’s Moscow or bust.
I am paging through Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) and stumble upon his discussion of viruses:
“They also have an unnerving capacity to burst upon the world in some new and startling form and then to vanish again as quickly as they came…
“It is sometimes called the Great Swine Flu epidemic and sometimes the Great Spanish Flu epidemic, but in either case it was ferocious. The First World War killed 21 million people in four years; swine flu did the same in its first four months. Almost 80 per cent of American casualties in the First World War came not from enemy fire, but from flu…
“Swine flu arose as a normal, non-lethal flu in the spring of 1918, but somehow, over the following months – no-one knows how or where – it mutated into something more severe. A fifth of victims suffered only mild symptoms, but the rest became gravely ill and many died. Some succombed within hours; others held on for a few days.
“In the United States, the first deaths were recorded among sailors in Boston in late August 1918, but the epidemic quickly spread to all parts of the country. Schools closed, public entertainments were shut down, people everywhere wore masks. It did little good. Between autumn 1918 and spring the following year, 548,452 people died of the flu in America. The toll in Britain was 220,000, with similar numbers in France and Germany. No-one knows the global toll, as records in the third world were often poor, but it was not less than twenty million and probably more like fifty million. Some estimates have put the global total as high as a hundred million.
“In an attempt to devise a vaccine, medical authorities conducted experiments on volunteers at a military prison on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. The prisoners were promised pardons if they survived a battery of tests. These tests were rigorous to say the least. First, the subjects were injected with infected lung tissue taken from the dead and then sprayed in the eyes, nose and mouth with infectious aerosols. If they still failed to succumb, they had their throats swabbed with discharges taken straight from the sick and dying. If all else failed, they were required to sit open-mouthed while a gravely ill victim was sat up slightly and made to cough into their faces.
“Out of – somewhat amazingly – three hundred men who volunteered, the doctors chose sixty-two for the tests. None contracted the flu – not one. The only person who did grow ill was the ward doctor, who swiftly died. The probable explanation for this is that the epidemic had passed through the prison a few weeks earlier and the volunteers, all of whom had survived the visitation, had a natural immunity.
“Much about the 1918 flu epidemic is understood poorly or not at all. One mystery is how it erupted suddenly, all over, in places separated by oceans, mountain ranges and other earthly impediments. A virus can survive for no more than a few hours outside a host body, so how could it appear in Madrid, Bombay and Philadelphia all in the same week?
“The probable answer is that it was incubated and spread by people who had only slight symptoms or none at all. Even in normal outbreaks, about 10 per cent of people in any given population have the flu but are unaware of it because they experience no ill effects. And because they remain in circulation they tend to be the great spreaders of the disease.
“That would account for the 1918 outbreak’s widespread distribution, but it still doesn’t explain how it managed to lie low for several months before erupting so explosively at more or less the same time all over. Even more mysterious is that it was most devastating to people in the prime of life. Flu normally is hardest on infants and the elderly, but in the 1918 outbreak deaths were overwhelmingly among people in their twenties and thirties. Older people may have benefited from resistance gained from an earlier exposure to the same strain, but why the very young were similarly spared is unknown. The greatest mystery of all is why the 1918 flu was so ferociously deadly when most flus are not. We still have no idea.”
Spoiler Alert: I am going to write a bit about my favorite book/movie, Into the Wild. If you don’t know the story but intend to read/watch it, go here instead.
It is no secret how inspired I am by the story of Christopher McCandless. By now, some of you have read the book or watched the movie, and there is a good chance your reaction is described by the Rolling Stone review: either you “pegged Chris as a wacko narcissist who died out of arrogance and stupidity,” or “you mourn Chris’ tragedy and his judgment errors but also exult in his journey and its spirit of moral inquiry.” A friend of mine who recently read the book was torn between the two and wanted to know why I was so taken by it. With my friend’s permission, I am recording my thoughts here as an open post. I have neither the book nor the DVD at hand, so references will be made as memory serves. Let me first say that the kind of movies I like most are those based on true stories. It follows, naturally, that I enjoyed this film. Regardless of whether you care about the true story, Into the Wild is a well made, highly acclaimed masterpiece that is worth watching for its compelling character development, beautiful imagery and artistic creativity.
In 1993, Jon Krakauer published an article in Outside Magazine about an obscure death that was discovered by moose hunters the previous summer in the backwoods of Alaska’s Denali National Park. The article generated a large amount of reader feedback sharply divided between praise and disdain for the perished wilderness man. Krakauer himself became enthralled with the details of the story he began to uncover, which led to a book being published in 1996.
Reactions have continued in the same vein ever since. Many are of the opinion that McCandless got what he deserved as a reckless and irresponsible runaway. Others point out – like Krakauers’ original article – that “[Chris] didn’t strike Gallien as your typical misfit. He was congenial, seemed well educated, and peppered Gallien with sensible questions about ‘what kind of small game lived in the country, what kind of berries he could eat, that kind of thing.’” Indeed, McCandless was an intelligent thinker, a diligent reader, an industrious worker, and had graduated with honors from Emory University before embarking on the journey of a lifetime.
I first read about that journey after a friend gifted me with Krakauer’s book as I was making plans for a trip of my own. Needless to say, I was hooked from page one: the story added fuel to the fire that was already burning inside me to get out and see the world. It is a fire that burns deep in the soul of every man, and the story of Into the Wild, if only on a superficial level, appeals to that adventurous allure of wanderlust we men are drawn to. Any piece of good fiction will invite you to vicariously experience some unfulfilled inner yearning; but this story really happened, making the conceivable seem that much more attainable.
There were personal aspects of Chris’ escape that are easy to relate to as well: a troubled childhood and the artificial expectations that come along with a college degree. Instead of appeasing the detached ambitions of his parents or becoming ensnared under the pressures of conventional professionalism, he found liberation on the open road, through new experiences and in the friendships he made along the way. The lasting impression he left on the people he met speaks for itself.
Without ignoring that Chris had ample reason to desire something more than a new car and a ticket to Harvard Law, one could reasonably argue that Chris avoided real community and deep relationship. Of course, this was the case as much before his disappearance as during his spiritual odyssey. Chris perceived himself as the noble savage trapped by western civilization under illegitimate authority. As a result, he reacted fiercely against anything that threatened to compromise his self-made identity (à la Alexander Supertramp), including personal bonds that would own him. At the same time, he cared about other people, and when he tried to convince them of his radical opinions, it was with their best interest in mind. One of my favorite parts of the book is the letter Chris wrote to Ron Franz. (The movie converts the letter into a conversation the two engage in while hiking up a mountain. Since I don’t have the book, I encourage you to look it up.)
It is certain that the story of Chris’ life would have never been told had it not ended like it did. Because he died prematurely, however, his became a story of someone who turned his back on society never to return, and this offends. Yet, all signs indicate that his trek into the wild was never intended as a quest toward suicide. Instead, Chris planned to return from the North and nearly succeeded in doing so. It is regrettable and ironic that he escaped his psychological prison only to become trapped in a magic bus. After surviving for months on his own, he succumbed just weeks before help would have arrived. But it is the short entries that Chris left during those months in the bus that redeem his story. While Chris’ impulsive decisions sometimes hurt others and likely cost him his life, his journal confesses “…henceforth will learn to accept my errors, however great they be…” The lone adventurer also admits to the understanding that “happiness is not real unless shared.” Before crawling into his sleeping bag for the last time, he signed off: “I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all!” It is clear that he learned a few lessons over his two years as a leathertramp, and if he had made it out alive, he would have returned home a better man. Do I worship Christopher McCandless? Of course not, but I admire his courage, his sense of purpose, and his passion for life.
I finished reading the book last weekend and watched the movie this afternoon. The book was a little difficult for me, since without chapters it is more of a short story, and I’m not used to reading short stories. But that was my fault, not the book’s. I had heard of the movie before, but had somehow gotten the impression it was a chick flick. Then Chris recommended the book, which I didn’t know existed, while assuring me that it wasn’t a sappy read.
Chris was right. Norman Maclean, a professor of literature at the University of Chicago, wrote the book in retirement. It is an autobiographical account of his childhood and early adult years in Missoula, Montana. The title alludes to the bond of fly fishing between the author, his brother, and their Scotch Presbyterian minister father, and how that bond served as an analogy for life. The movie was produced and directed by Robert Redford, released in 1992, and stars a young Brad Pitt, which helped to erase my fear of it being a soft movie. On the other hand, it is not an action movie, but it stayed close enough to the original to be worth seeing, even if I hadn’t read the book first.
Filed under: Literature
My time in Norway turned me into a reader. I was always too slow of a reader to enjoy it, free pizza or not. Until I got my hands on the right books, starting last summer with Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I don’t remember who told me about it. It could have been anybody, considering how popular the book was. I liked it so much, I read it twice.
When I told my friend, Chris Pike, about my plan for Norway, he informed me of a book about another Chris – Christopher McCandless, a.k.a. “Alexander Supertramp” – the madman/adventurer/inspirational genius whose story would have never been told were it not for its tragic end. Instead, author Jon Krakauer penned Into the Wild, and when I heard that Sean Penn had adapted it to the big screen, it became my favorite movie before seeing it.
As I prepared to leave, three more books were gifted to me. The first, from Resonators Drew, Kim and Megan, was a pocket copy of Inside Out by Dr. Larry Crabb. His tutorial on personal psychology served as a mirror for why I was leaving in the first place. The second was from Josh Gibbs while we were shooting the breeze over Chinese in Spokane. When he suggested I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, we walked across the street, and he bought me a used copy. Although I would eventually regret the added weight of a small library, Annie Dillard provided the perfect perspective on my own secluded habitation between Kvitfjell and the river. Finally, in Seattle, Cassie McDermott gave me her copy of North to the Night by Alvah Simon, a lifelong sailor who in the winter of 1992, froze his boat into Talbot Bay on the northwest corner of Bylot Island far above the Arctic Circle. Though my adventure would not be nearly so dramatic, Simon’s spiritual odyssey pulled my own spirit even farther north and made me determined to one day set foot on Greenland.
Now I am on the threshold of a new journey, and since Pike started me off on my last adventure, it is only appropriate that he do so again with a recommendation he left on this blog months ago. Today, out of place in the Barnes & Noble of a Minneapolis suburb, I bought a copy of another book that has, coincidentally, also been made into a movie (though I have not seen it). I have only read the foreword and acknowledgements of Norman Maclean’s A River Runs through It, and I am already hooked. Annie Proulx, who purchased her first copy while traveling, describes the experience like this:
It was late summer. I had been out west and on the way back, at O’Hare, I picked up a copy of A River Runs through It. The flight was two-thirds over when I started reading. When the plane landed…I had to put the book away as there was a long drive to the farmhouse. When I got there…I went to the porch to finish reading the story…When I read the famous last line, “I am haunted by waters,” I sighed and looked up. It was deepening twilight. In the long grass at the end of the porch, perhaps twenty feet distant, stood an uncommonly large bobcat, staring at me. It made no movement except for a slight twitching of its upward curved tail. Such was the power of the story that I was still in the “Arctic half-light of the canyon” and the bobcat seemed on the bank of the river that runs through all things, and there it has stayed, forever joined in my mind to Maclean’s story.
Chris Pike and I have experienced bears together, and if I have to experience a bobcat to get through this book, something tells me it will be worth it. Then maybe we can split a pizza.
