Essay 8: “Box Dwellers”
The Ken Burns series on Henry David Thoreau (a hero of mine) has me ruminating on our relationship to the natural world. Hence this short essay.
In my “Issues in Ideology” class at the Maine College of Art (which I named as such because I could enjoy the private joke that its acronym was III or “Aye, yie, yie!”), we used to discuss various “axioms” or core beliefs of the Western worldview that are currently in contention. We discussed such notions as human superiority over other species (“We’re the only species that matters!”), patriarchy (“Women belong in the kitchen!”), and the idea that civilization defines a state opposite to nature (“Nature is just untapped resources till developers arrive!”). But I began the course by pointing out that our views of the world, largely shaped by the culture in which we grew up, form an intermediating lens through which we see the world. In short, we do not see the world as it is but rather as we are. To make this clear, I would share with students several tests of perception and cognition, revealing how conditioned is our response to everything. I titled that first lecture “Perception is Not a Passive Process.”
Later, while discussing the fact that we in the West have been trained to distance ourselves from the natural world, because its dangerous, chaotic, and confusing (hence the word “bewildered” derives from the same root as “wilderness”), I shared with students statistics about our relationship to the natural world—including the percentage of time Americans spend outside. What would be your guess about that? We tend to be box dwellers, living in box-shaped rooms placed inside larger boxes—and when we’re driving? Well, those are boxes, too. So how much time do Americans spend outside of all boxes? Less than 8%. The rest of the time, we’re either in our homes or workplaces (87%) or vehicles (6%), and even our 8% of time ‘outside’ is not spent in a national park or wilderness area. And what are—and have been—the consequences of this habit of boxing ourselves in?
All species learn to survive based on knowledge of their surroundings. Animals are constantly needing to attend to the natural environment of their local area to find food—and avoid becoming food. But humans, at least of our cultural variety, are ‘protected’ from the natural world by civilization, and so we adapt mainly to the artificial (literally “handmade”) world humans have created, rather than the default world of nature. To point this out, I asked students to raise their hand if they knew how to use a cell phone, a laptop, an ATM, and a QR code. All hands went up. I then asked if they could drive a car. Most hands went up. But when I asked them questions about the natural world—a world in which all of these other skills were taking place—they were often stymied.
Our college sits on a peninsula situated in a bay on the coast of Maine. Five rivers run into that bay, so I would ask students to name them. I was generally greeted with blank stares. I would then ask students what phase the moon was in, where the water in the sinks in their apartments came from, and what the names were of the trees growing outside our building. They rarely knew any of these things, and yet they were capable of complex skills needed to survive in the ‘handmade world.’ My point had nothing to do with dissing my students (I had awesome students!); it was simply a premise for raising a question: Though we have successfully learned the skills recommended by our host culture, based on our culture’s collective hunches and assumptions, have we learned the skills that best serve our happiness? Related to my last essay in this series (dealing with concepts of time), is the “Someday” you’re moving toward the Someday that’s most beneficial to you, your friends, your family, your society, and the natural world? Such questions made for lively discussions, while also making clear that philosophy is far more than navel gazing. Ideas have consequences and shape people’s minds.
One semester I decided to make my point about cultural relativity clear by inviting a Native American elder of the Maliseet tribe to speak in my class. Two things stood out for me during that lecture. The first was a comment by the elder that, “God did not kick humans out of paradise—as the story of Adam and Eve claims. Humans kicked themselves out of paradise by deciding that the natural world was their enemy. Now they try to save themselves by destroying their true home, the world that gave birth to them.” The second thing that stood out was that when he railed against what Europeans had done to the “New World,” he noticed that students were shaking their heads, not only in agreement with him but with a sense of personal guilt. He began to laugh, commenting, “Wait a minute! You guys didn’t do anything wrong. Even the people who did the wrong didn’t really realize what they were doing. I’m not saying this to blame you—you weren’t even born. I’m saying this to suggest it’s time—now that people are listening— to correct old mistakes based on old views. Time to come home to the paradise that God has given to all creatures. We need to stop exiling ourselves.”
I agreed with that Maliseet elder, and still do. I took away from my students’ sense of guilt that they too were eager to see things in new ways—ways that are not only more sustainable, but far more fulfilling on a personal level than endless box-dwelling in search of “Someday.” The West has made amazing advances in science, mathematics, and medicine, but, in my opinion, we are far behind the Maliseets in terms of cultural markers related to human happiness and our relationships with other species and the planet itself. There’s an old saying that, “Only a new seed will yield a new crop.” It’s time to plant the ‘seeds’ of more beneficial ideas and skill sets—as Thoreau so clearly recommends in his masterpiece Walden. In fact, as I write this, it is April first. What better time to think about planting new seeds?
BTW, all of this reminds me of a folk song by Pete Seeger titled, “Little Boxes,” so I’m adding a link to it here. Also, one of the students in my “Issues” class was Zoe Brown, daughter of the Iowa-based folk singer Greg Brown. I remember thinking she was probably aware of all this critique of box dwelling, given that her dad had written the song “Boom Town.” It’s content relates to how capitalism thrives on processing nature into new products, including new communities that provide the endless promise of “Someday,” so I’m sharing it here also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwUp-D_VV0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG49Fb1zmlg
