Wendell Berry On “Camera Eye”

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

Came across the following this morning. Posted for your consideration.

The Vacation
by Wendell Berry

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

(1994)

What Would Thoreau Do?

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 8 Comments

Yesterday, July 12th, was Henry David Thoreau’s 195th birthday, or 195th anniversary of his birth, or however that is best put when the person in question is no longer alive. In any case, Thoreau is best remembered for two things. The first is his experiment in living simply and in greater communion with nature in a cabin on the outskirts of Concord, Massachusetts. The cabin was situated on Walden Pond and Thoreau’s reflections on his “experiment” were later published as Walden.

Thoreau is also remembered for making a better pencil. It seems that Thoreau is actually not generally remembered for this, but it is nonetheless true. His family owned a pencil factory at which Thoreau worked on and off throughout his life. Thanks to his study of German pencil making techniques, Thoreau helped design the best American pencil of its day. Apparently, in the early 19th century, there remained significant technical challenges to the making of a durable pencil, mostly having to do with the sturdiness of the graphite shaft and fitting it into a casing. Among Thoreau’s many accomplishments was the development of a process of manufacturing the pencil that solved these engineering problems.

I thought of Thoreau yesterday not only because it was the anniversary of his birth, but also because I had come across an article titled, “Tweets From the Trail: Technology Can Enhance Your Wilderness Experiences” (h/t to Nathan Jurgenson). The author, novelist Walter Kirn of Montana, had the temerity to suggest that maybe there is something to be gained by brining your technology out into nature with you, rather than venturing into nature in order to escape technology. As you might imagine, many of Kirn’s Montana nature-enthusiast friends were less than pleased.

Now, we should note that these distinctions we make — nature/technology, for example — are a bit complicated. To illustrate here is the opening of a recent, relevant post by Nick Carr:

A couple of cavemen are walking through the woods. One sighs happily and says to the other, “I’m telling you, there’s nothing like being out in nature.” The other pauses and says, “What’s nature?”

It’s 1972. A pair of lovers go camping in a wilderness area in a national park. They’re sitting by a campfire, taking in the evening breezes. “Honey,” says the woman, “I have to confess I really love being offline.” The guy looks at her and says, “What’s offline?”

You see the point. Our idea of “nature” owes something to the advance of technology just as our idea of “offline” necessitates the emergence of online. But back to Kirn’s article. He discovered that his writing flourished when he set up a work station on an old wooden telephone wire spool under the big, blue Montana sky with badgers and gophers scampering all about. Subsequently he made a habit of screening movies on his iPad in “natural” settings such as the seaside or the shores of a river. Finally, he confesses to the manner in which being out in the wilderness inspires fits of creativity that he feels compelled to tweet and post. And here is his eloquent conclusion:

“To sever our experience of wilderness from our use of technology now seems to me an unnatural act, shortsighted and unimaginative. No one appreciates a ringing cell phone while they float on a muddy river through western badlands or stand in the saddle between two massive mountain ranges, but short of such rude interruptions of heavenly moments, technology has a mysterious way, at times, of providing the perfect contrast, the happy counterpoint to scenes and experiences and settings that are easy to take for granted or grow numb to. Along with harmony, contrast is one of the two great rules of art. It wakes the senses, jars the tired mind, breaks up routines that threaten to grow mechanical. If you don’t believe me, try it. Travel to that secluded spot you keep returning to, the one where you go to leave the world behind, and turn on some music, play a movie, capture a passing thought and send it onward, out of the forest, out into society, and then wait, while the wind blows and the treetops sway and the clouds pile up a mile above your head, for someone, some faraway stranger, to reply. Even when we’re alone, we’re not alone, this proves, and in the deepest heart of every wilderness lurks a miracle, often, the human mind.”

I can’t help but wonder, what would Thoreau think? I can’t pretend to know Thoreau well enough to answer that question. I suspect that present day technophile’s would suggest that Thoreau ought to approve, after all he took his pencil to Walden and that was a technology. Well, yes, but he didn’t string a telegraph wire to the cabin.

I wouldn’t discount the dynamic Kirn describes, particularly since it is measured (let’s do without the ringing cell phone) and it still recognizes the contrast. The juxtaposition of unlike things can be creatively stimulating, and if that is what you are after, then Kirn’s formula may indeed yield something for you.

But what if your aims are different? What if you’re seeking only to listen and not to speak? What if your goal is not to be inspired toward yet another act of self-expression? We may carry technology with us into nature, in fact, we may carry it within us. But this does not mean that we ought always to answer to its prerogatives. Nor does it mean that we should always assume the posture toward reality that technology enables and the frame of mind that it encourages. And, of course, different technologies enable and encourage differently. It is the difference between the pencil and the telegraph and the smartphone.

I am not against human civilization (which is a silly thing to have to say), and the human mind, as Kirn puts it, is a “miracle” indeed. But the miracle of the human mind lies not only in its ability to create and to build and to express itself and impose its own symbolic order on the world. The miracle lies also in its ability to listen and to receive and to contemplate and to be itself re-ordered; to be taken in by the world as well as to take the world in. Perceiving the value of such a stance draws us into an awareness of the various ethical or philosophical frames that inform our evaluations. I cannot sort all of those out, but I can acknowledge that for a wide array of people the point would not be to speak, but to be spoken to. Or perhaps, even to find that we are not addressed at all.

An even greater array of people would likely agree that our posture toward this world ought to be more than merely instrumental. Human civilization must advance, but it does so best when it abandons Promethean aspirations and acknowledges its finitude along with its power.

I suppose all of this is a way of saying that beauty resides not only in what we make and say, but also in what we find and encounter. But shouldn’t this found beauty be shared? Maybe. But perhaps not before it has done its work on us. Perhaps not before we have allowed it to speak to us and to transform us. The space in which beauty can do its work is precious, and it would seem that the logic of our technologies would have us collapse that space in the service of sharing, commodification, self-expression, capturing, publicizing, and the like.

I don’t want to speak for Thoreau, but I would venture to guess that he might have us preserve that precious space where beauty has its way.

Knowledge, Love, and Criticism

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 4 Comments

What does the critic love? I keep asking this because I keep getting stimulating feedback. In one instance it was suggested that the critic loves knowledge; in another, soul-searching. There is, no doubt, something to both, and, in fact, to both together. The critic is definitely driven to know and to understand. That much seems clear. And it is certainly true that knowledge in itself can be remarkably rewarding. I’m not sure that I would defend it to the death, but there is something that resonates with me in Housman’s line, “All human knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.” For some critics, then, the answer may be as simple as this, the love of knowledge or the love of knowing.

But those last two phrases are not quite synonymous are they (… I ask the audience that cannot hear me as I type the question)? The love of knowledge and the love of knowing — the former loves the object, the latter loves the state of possessing the object. Consider it the difference between the person who loves to contemplate the work of art, and the one who loves to point guests to the work of art on their wall. The love of knowledge would seem less instrumental, more disinterested. The love of knowing suggests to me the spirit of the pedant. That said, I believe both are recognizable dispositions and we know the difference when we encounter each case.

Setting aside the pedant, I’d readily grant that love of knowledge drives the critic. But more distinctions: what does love of knowledge for the music critic, to take one example, mean? It probably does not only mean loving knowledge about the music. Surely, it involves knowledge as a form of intimate participation with the music. (Save the Leslie Nielsen/Airplane crack.) The love of knowledge is multifaceted, it’s not simply a matter of loving information. This holds, I suspect, for critics not only of music, but also of art, literature, food, film, etc. In each of these cases, the knowledge the critic loves is in part experiential. I’m tempted to say that it is finally not a love of knowledge as we normally think of knowledge, but a love of the thing itself. The critic accumulates knowledge about the object of criticism in order to heighten and deepen the experience of the object.

But all of these instances of criticism strike me as something apart from what we might call social or cultural criticism. The critic who takes society or aspects of society as their object of criticism may also be motivated by a love of knowledge, but of what sort? The knowledge the social critic cultivates seems different than the knowledge cultivated by the music critic. It seems to lack the element of contemplative participation that music or an object of art invite. Perhaps, it is better to say that the knowledge of the social critic does not culminate in an act of contemplation.

With that last phrase I think I’ve brought into view the distinction I was struggling to articulate. For the critic of art, the accumulation of knowledge culminates in an act of contemplation. That is, it has as its goal the enjoyment of beauty. The social critic’s knowledge does not culminate in anything comparable. The culmination of the social critic’s work would seem to be action not contemplation, transformation rather than participation. Perhaps we might say that the social critic aims at goodness enacted while the artistic critic aims at beauty contemplated, and the pursuit of truth is undertaken in the service of both aims.

But there is one more consideration that may draw these two forms of criticism together. Perhaps we might also say that the critic is driven by love of self. There are two ways of construing this that track with the distinction above. The critic might be driven by self-love in the sense that they love nothing more than to see their own values and desires reflected by society. This critic loves nothing so much as their image reflected back to them. Whatever does this is praised, whatever does not is held in contempt. This critic pursues knowledge with contemplation as its aim and it is the contemplation of their own image.

Self-love, however, may also drive the critic who seeks not to contemplate their own image, but to transform themselves, to move toward some higher ideal. In this case, we may speak of a self-love that is animated by the love of something greater than the self and that loves the self in the sense of wanting what is best for the self in light of this higher ideal. Their criticism is aimed at self-knowledge for the sake of self-transformation. Their criticism is, in fact, an act of soul-searching.

“Is the Internet Driving Us Mad?”: Attempting a Sane Response

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 2 Comments

It’s Newsweek’s turn. Perhaps feeling a bit of title envy, the magazine has shamelessly ripped off The Atlantic’s formula with a new cover story alternatively titled “Is the Internet Driving Us Mad?” or “Is the Internet Making Us Crazy?”

You can probably guess what follows already. Start with a rather dramatic and telltale anecdote — in this case Jason Russell’s “reactive psychosis” in the wake of his “Kony 2012” fame — and proceed to cite a number of studies and further anecdotes painting a worrisome picture that appears somehow correlated to heavy Internet use. You’re also likely to guess that Sherry Turkle is featured prominently. For the record, I intend no slight by that last observation, I rather appreciate Turkle’s work.

Before the day is out, this article will be “Liked” and tweeted thousands of times I’m sure. It will also be torn apart relentlessly and ridiculed. Unfortunately, the title will be responsible for both responses. A more measured title would likely have elicited a more sympathetic reading, but also less traffic.

There is much in the article that strikes an alarmist note and many of the anecdotes, while no doubt instances of real human suffering, seem to describe behaviors that are not characteristic of most people using the Internet. I’m also not one to go in for explanations that localize this or that behavior in this or that region of the brain. I’m not qualified to evaluate such conclusions, but they strike me as a tad reductionistic. That said, this does ring true:

“We may appear to be choosing to use this technology, but in fact we are being dragged to it by the potential of short-term rewards. Every ping could be social, sexual, or professional opportunity, and we get a mini-reward, a squirt of dopamine, for answering the bell. “These rewards serve as jolts of energy that recharge the compulsion engine, much like the frisson a gambler receives as a new card hits the table,” MIT media scholar Judith Donath recently told Scientific American. “Cumulatively, the effect is potent and hard to resist.”

Of course, it all hinges on correlation and causation. The article itself suggests as much right at the end. “So what do we do about it?” the author, Tony Dokoupil, asks. “Some would say nothing,” he continues, “since even the best research is tangled in the timeless conundrum of what comes first.” He adds:

“Does the medium break normal people with its unrelenting presence, endless distractions, and threat of public ridicule for missteps? Or does it attract broken souls?

But in a way, it doesn’t matter whether our digital intensity is causing mental illness, or simply encouraging it along, as long as people are suffering.”

Dokoupil concludes on a note of fateful optimism: “The Internet is still ours to shape. Our minds are in the balance.” In truth, whatever we make of the neuroscience involved, there is something to be said for the acknowledgement that we have choices to make about our relationship to the Internet.

After we cut through the hype and debates about causation, it would seem that there is a rather commonsensical way of approaching all of this.

If the article resonates with you because it seems to describe your experience, then it is probably worth taking it as a warning of sorts and an invitation to make some changes. So, for example, if you are sitting down to play video games for multiple hours without interruption and thus putting yourself in danger of developing a fatal blood clot … you may want to rethink your gaming habits.

If you are immediately reaching for your Internet device of choice before you have so much as opened your eyes in the morning, you may want to consider allowing yourself a little time before diving into the stream. Pour some coffee, have a nice breakfast. Give yourself a little time with your thoughts, or your loved ones. If you find that your thoughts are all incessantly begging you to get online and your loved one’s faces are turning disconcertingly into Facebook icons, then perhaps you have all the more reason to restore a little a balance to your Internet use.

If you take an honest inventory of your emotions and feelings, and you find that you’re anchoring a great deal of your self-worth on the replies you get to your status updates, tweets, or blog posts, then perhaps, just maybe, you might want to consider doing a little soul searching and re-prioritizing.

If “‘the computer is like electronic cocaine,’ fueling cycles of mania followed by depressive stretches” somehow resonates with your own experience, then it may be time to talk to your friends about getting a better grip on the way you’re ordering your life.

None of this is rocket science (or neuroscience). I’d like to think that most of us have a pretty good sense of when certain activities are tending toward the counterproductive and unhealthy end of the spectrum. There’s no need to get all apocalyptic about it, we can leave that to the media. Instead, take inventory of what is truly important — you know, the same old sappy but precious and indispensable stuff — and then ask yourself how your Internet use relates to these and take action accordingly. If you find that you are unable to implement the action you know you need to take, then certainly get some help.