June 2024 PhotoBox

by

Seeing Trees

In a slow moment of a long day of shooting a charity golf tournament, I chatted with Simon who works in food and beverage. He was serving drinks for an outdoor reception following the golfing. He had a moment. I mentioned how beautiful the trees are on the golf course. Simon concurred. He said that while he does enjoy playing golf on the course, what he really enjoys is walking the course and just admiring the trees.

So, I asked Simon how many golfers he thought take in the trees as he does. He understood. I wasn’t asking if they had seen them, but if they had paid attention to the trees, felt somehow to be in their presence. After a moment, with a shrug, he guessed: likely few if any.

Though only just meeting him, my impression of Simon was not that he felt superior to the golfers. Afterall, he was a low-wage earner serving the golfers drinks, each one who had paid a couple of thousand dollars for a round of golf on a Monday afternoon. I took that Simon felt regret for what the golfers missed being in the valley of trees with their focus on the game, the score, how well they addressed the ball, how precisely they hit the ball, how they hoped to beat out the other foursomes, come out on top, top dog. They would have missed the rich experience Simon finds there in the valley, sensitive to the trees, feeling their presence as he walks among them.

The golfers spent their day for a good cause. Most of the money they contributed would help people in need. To speak to them, they are very considerate, well-intentioned people. 

While the golfers wouldn’t think of being in the presence of the trees as Simon does, they wouldn’t expect any less than a beautiful fairway, enhanced with gorgeous trees. Their expectation for their lives is to have nothing but the best. These are accomplished people, top of their game. Arriving on the day of the tournament, the golfers drive down a private, tree-lined lane to the clubhouse, many of them in cars that can speed at 200km/hr without a shimmer; are welcomed by enthusiastic staff on the club house steps, so glad to see them; are given a boatload of swag such as new golf shoes, their measurement taken for a custom shirt to be shipped to them; are treated to a fine lunch; get treats on course, beer sampling on the back nine, ice cream half-way through; finish the day with a superb dinner, crab legs and prime beef, silverware and pristine white tablecloths. Nothing but the best. They’d expect nothing less than excellence from themselves, and for that, expect nothing less of their accoutrements, the best of everything for which they are able to pay well. It’s how each day passes for them from a cappuccino to start the day made in a thousand-dollar brushed stainless steel espresso machine, one of the exquisite appliances in their designer-appointed kitchen; an office with views across the lake; an exquisitely prepared lunch at the finest of the city’s restaurants; to close the workday,  cocktails at a favourite marble-ensconced lounge bar. The finest of everything, and at this private golf course, exquisite mature trees lining the fairway.

I’m going to ask you to stop here, to notice something about your own thoughts right now, notice your reaction to the above description.

Some of you will readily see this description as a justifiable indictment of the well-healed golfers who expect nothing less than a day catering to their self-indulgence in exchange for their charity. Carrying on, you would judge, a bit too full of their own importance, no sympathy for the hardships of making a buck in this life, taking more than they deserve from the pot of gold, so self-concerned to be blind to the plight of the world, maybe even responsible for the plight of the world.

How different would be your response if you belonged to or sympathized with the well-healed golfer clan. If you were a golfer on that day, you’d be upset with me for this unbalanced, generalized depiction -nothing like your life at all. You, in the well-healed clan, would counter this depiction of you with reasonable justifications. You could point to many examples of very fine people with wealth who hold to high values and act on those values to make a better world with their generous philanthropy.

Here’s an observation: we see things from within our clan. We all live in the same world, but we don’t all hold the same perspective. This goes back time immemorial, to our hominem ancestors, resides deep in our evolutionary brain. We are born into clans, join clans, live in their shadows, adopt their values as our beliefs, defend those beliefs of the clan at all costs. Any of us, whatever our clan. 

 This writing offers a context for the photo Seeing the Trees. Shall we begin with considering the nature of our seeing, that is, how we see. How we see, in fact, determines what we see. 

By extension, how we see becomes the beliefs we hold so dear, even defend fervently. How then do we see? You may hold to some misconceptions. As did I, as to how we see.

Just so you don’t gloss over this point too quickly: how we see is what we see.

The most complex object in the universe by far, including bosons and gluons, fusion and dark energy, more complex than any of these, is the 1-1.5kg organ floating in our skull. The best of our scientific minds have little idea what’s going on with the trillions upon trillions of synaptic reactions, billions occurring within nanoseconds of each other, all this constituting our brain activity. That is, our thinking, our judging, our perspective, along with all of the monitoring of our bodily functions. Most all of this is unconscious activity, including a lot of our thinking. What?  Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist at Stanford, in his book Determined, shows how any choice we make is at the end of a process, most of it unconscious. Deep influences -the particular structure of the brain we inherited and all circumstances unique to each of us leading up to the choice, from one second before the choice to hundreds of years before the choice – deep unconscious neural pathways determining what appears in our conscious mind as a thought. 1.

While major breakthroughs in understanding the human brain have come in the last 15 or so years, the best of our neuroscientists know little how the brain functions. We have only to appreciate how astoundingly complex is the simple blink of an eye to appreciate how far from our grasp is understanding what determines our social behaviour, let alone what incredibly complex brain activity goes into falling in love.

It is enough for us to consider what is known about ‘seeing’ and from that take some insight for how human beings have so many perspectives and how then the life we experience, what we know of life, is based on that perspective, which is the result of deep evolutionary neural wiring in our heads.

When its said our humanity is defined by our big brain, the biggest on the planet, what does that mean? It seems to mean that we have a lot of capacity for neural firing, many neural connections, where a neural cell either firing or not firing takes us along one path and not the other. The particular path followed ends up somewhere at the end of the process, at the end of all this neural activity, all done in nanoseconds, billions of calculations, weighing all the data; and at the end of the process, we have a thought, make a move, turn our head, sneeze, fall in love.

In the human brain, the number of possibilities of neural connections, which is the ability to think in more complex ways, is staggering. Messages from one neuron to another is passed through electrochemically. However, it’s not one neuron firing to the next one and on up the line. When a neuron fires, there are from one hundred to a thousand receptors possible to receive the signal. Now multiply out the possibilities: one receptor activated is one possibility of a message; if two are activated by the impulse, a different message; three, fifty. And then all the different permutations of the fifty: which fifty.; so many combinations. The number is staggering for possibilities of this message or that. Why it’s billions and trillions. Now that’s one neuron. There are 86 billion neurons in the brain. What is the number for all those various combinations of 86 billion with the combinations possible for each neuron. Why it’s gazillions and gazillions. There’s more: in that gap between the neuron firing and the receptor being activated, there are 50,000 proteins that add more possible combinations adding complexity to the equation of how a thought or emotion or action is constructed in the brain. Oh yes, there are different strengths of electricity. 

All of this is conditioned on the brain we inherited. All of it is subject to the influences around us that our body sensors are picking up: that sound we hear, what someone says to us, the tone they use, how hungry we are. Once inside our body’s neural system, the data is subject to an extruder, conditioned by was said to us a month ago, how often our mother said she loved us, what happened to our grandmother when she was 16…all influences impeding on the firing of neurons inside our body, a mostly unconscious to us, become what we think and know and believe: appear to our consciousness, is what we call reality. 

But reality isn’t out there, some truth. Reality is a perspective, our perspective, which, for all the complexity and variation of our brain processing – unique to each of us – is just ourperspective.

Those various combinations of firings in the brain, unique to each of us, gives human life its great diversity from the highest Olympian achievement to the most degrading of violence and depravation. All these possible combinations of electrochemical activity in our brains end up being our thought and behaviour, our joy and our depression, collectively, our human history, that is, what we call reality, what we ‘see,’ what we say is how things are.

Our perspective is this thing we call ‘me,’ and ‘me’ -it’s becoming more evident- is the end product of a lot of unconscious activity outside our control. 

How does this prepare us for considering the activity of seeing? I had this idea, and I think most of us would have this idea, that we spend our days peering out two portals in our head observing through our eyes a world carrying on about us. Neural science points out how wrong that notion is. The eyes aren’t seeing out but seeing in. Eyes are actually sensors taking in data along with other body sensors. The brain takes that electromagnetic information, processes it in the unconscious and presents the conscious mind with an image. Colour isn’t in the black and white paper you are holding. It’s electromagnetic waves striking the eye sensor, converted by the brain; inside your brain is where you see black and white, or any other colour. The eyes take in data. Eyes don’t look out and see something out there. What we see is the end-product of a process, governed by unconscious influences and factors; our brain creates an image inside our brain. Whew!!

Remarkable enough for seeing physical properties of objects. Seeing though also refers to perspective, how we judge the world, what sense we make of it. That too is a process inside our nervous system; we call it the way things are, but it’s also our particular fabrication. Whew! Even Robert Sapolsky has a difficult time accepting the evidence of his own and others research, how much what we see is at the end of a process, not the beginning. How we see is what we see.

It’s not just data in/data out. Our brain selects data from the stream of data. Our brain selects data without us being aware of the selection. In fact, the brain spends most of its energy disposing of data. The sensors take in all the data out there, but all the data streaming to us are too much for the capacity of our brains, so the brain culls out most of that data. What we actually see is a selection curated by our brain. Something presented to us, not what we decide to see.

But even that’s not even the most telling part when looking at perspective and thinking about clans. We’re not just seeing curated data as it comes to us. The brain imposes its own interpretation on the data, unconsciously, before we are conscious of it. We might think of the brain to be like an extruder that takes the curated data but manipulates that into a shape of its own determining. The point to note: unconsciously.

The extruder is peculiar to each of us, that is particular to each of us, that gives shape to our particular perspective. Recall that is unconscious brain activity. Our unique extruder is determined by the particular brain composition with which we are born, blended together with all our unique life experiences so intertwined as to be indivisible. It is this custom extruder for each of us, interpreting the data flowing from the sensors, that is our perspective, our outlook on the world.

In so many ways: taste, sense of time, well…everything; everything of what we call character and personality and being is subject to what comes before, all the shaping that goes on before we have that conscious image, thought, emotion. Our perspective and judgement. Those with whom we feel we share more common ground become our life partners, our friends, our clans.3.

I’m doing the best I can with this, to understand something so beyond me and you, but I think reflecting on this matters. I think it might help us with how to get on better in society than we are right now. Yes, it’s a lot to grasp.

Each of our perspectives, then, is not based on some objective analytical judgment as we might think (our rational, detached self, observing the world objectively), but is determined by a subjective, self-affirming, self-serving expectation, passing through a personal extruder that gives a particular shape to what we see – kind of like thinking we are looking at the world out there when in fact all we are doing is living in our imagination, looking through a self-affirming mirror, seeing a world that looks just like us.

We understand this by the phrase ‘one sees what one wants to see.’

Even though our perspective is a subjective construct within our brain, we take our perspective to be an objective truth, often one we are keen to defend. Contrary to how the brain sees, we believe how we see the world is exactly how the world is; we even have trouble understanding how someone could hold a different perspective to our own.

This is true for all of us, but again, on a continuum. One of the differences in perspective is how narrow or expansive perspective should be.

It seems our views of the world isn’t simply descriptive. We add value to our views of the world. Here’s the part that messes us up as a species: in varying measures, we believe our view of the world is right, whether a narrow or an expansive worldview, or any worldview between. 

And by the same measure, believing ourselves right, we are convinced, some more committed in their perspective than others, that anyone not of our view is wrong. Even people holding a broad, encompassing view of the world, feel those with a narrow view are wrong. It’s a bit of a game in which our human brains get caught up.

Consider a critique of religion that also applies to all our human institutions. Members of a religion when speaking about their own religion will identify its principled virtues. When asked to speak about another religion, especially one that seems to compete with the authority of their own religion, those members invariably highlight the failures in behaviour of that other religion. 

As Karen Armstrong, noted writer of comparative religion, points out: at the heart of every religious faith is one single virtue above all others, extolled in each’s sacred writings. That core virtue shared by all of them is compassion. And what is just as true, as Karen Armstrong documents, every institutionalized, magisterial religion, every one of them, has been responsible for the most horrific violence committed in its name, in its honour, at its inspiration. But members of the various religions don’t see the virtue written into the other religions, only see the violent behaviour of those other religions; won’t admit to the violence inspired by their own religious belief, only ‘see’ the virtues of their own religion. Justified war, the adherent might admit to. It’s hard to justify the Fourth Crusade and the…. it’s a long list. 

So, the religious clans don’t see the principled virtues of another clan. Only their own. They are quick to point to the questionable behaviour of other religions, but never their own. And for that, what? They feel good about themselves. We seem to need to feel we act in the right, need to feel we do right. Living rightly, seems to help us feel that life matters, our life matters.

Psychologically, or is it logically, to feel right, someone else of a different clan must be wrong. We feel our perspective has to matter. The hook: our perspective is our identity. 

Being right gives us a confidence to move forward, to act in the world, to feel competent, capable, to take on challenges, and so feeling we are in the right, do right, helps us to navigate a messy, demanding, threatening world of emotional highs and lows, inspirations and betrayals. Day in and out. To navigate the world and keep sane, we need to feel secure. Hence, feeling we are good people, acting in the right, reassures us, gives us a bulwark from which to weather the storms, and sing our songs. Our belief in being right becomes our identity and protects our identity.

To substantiate this idea, we have only to see what happens when one loses confidence and loses one’s identity. As much as we aspire to it, we do not live in a utopia, nor is it seemingly around the corner (well, at least in my perspective!). Nothing out there is perfect or ensured: not the reliable functioning of our brain systems; not ideal life circumstances. The messy contingencies and demands of life attack our confidence; we stand up to it or we don’t. It’s possible, at some point, if the pressure is severe and constant enough, our defenses weaken; that belief in our self, our identity, is overwhelmed. When we lose confidence in our identity, we fall apart, collapse along a spectrum of what we call mental health issues. This plays out in our body, in our behaviour, in our consciousness and in our perspective. When the sense of who we are breaks down – either internal brain dysfunction or external stressors impinging on the brain – we feel at a loss. When the breakdown is complete, we are lost, to our self, and lost to others, unable to function.

Our brain will avoid as much as possible any breakdown in our identity. What protects us from breakdown, of course, is care for our physical bodies such as having the basics of good food, exercise, sleep, companionship, and living in a secure environment. But more existentially, we are protected from losing our identity by perspective itself, protected by a conviction we are in the right.

The brain will even fool itself in order to protect its conviction of being right. A weight of psychological, political science and social science research supports the tricks our brain plays on us, to make sure we feel good about ourselves, that we don’t doubt ourselves, don’t feel lost inside. That protection seems to come down to holding on at all costs to being in the right. And our little mental tricks to ensure that.

One phenomena of the brain is simple enough with many experiments demonstrating its use.  Generally, if any of us don’t have an answer for a question, we will make up an answer rather than say we don’t know. This is especially true if our integrity is at stake or we are expected to have an answer. As the research shows, we will readily invent answers and think nothing of doing it.

A second phenomenon of our working brain is that even if we know an answer, we will give a wrong answer in its place, especially when the wrong answer is more favourable to our self-image. For example, research shows that people seeking therapeutic counselling who have an unhelpful counselling session will self-report that the session went well. The reason for misrepresenting the success of the session or sessions is not to avoid offending the counsellor: the counsellors never see the reports. The researchers, to explain this phenomenon of the counselees misrepresenting their experiences, conclude that because the counselee chose the counsellor, then the counselee feels that to self-report a poor counselling experience would be to admit to their own failure for having chosen that counsellor. Bottom line for the research is any of us quite readily will misrepresent the truth to avoid looking incompetent. And we’ll think nothing of doing it.

A third psychological phenomenon shows how humans will hold to a perspective, even if one is untenable, even if the evidence weighs heavily against the perspective. An irrational belief will be defended when by evidence is indefensible rather than having to admit to a personal misjudgement. We’re quite good at justifying a personal choice, defending it blindly, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence.

For example, a supporter of Donald Trump when Trump was seeking the office of the president of the United States in 2016 was interviewed shortly after the news broke that candidate Trump had often groped unsuspecting women in public. The supporter interviewed was a religious woman of an ethnic origin whose ethnicity Mr. Trump had recently derided and condemned as depraved. Asked about her continued support for Trump, the woman explained that ‘once president, he would change.’

And so we don’t start feeling too smug pointing to those deluded Trump supporters, we all play these games, fool others, and ourselves, any way we can, just to feel in control, right by ourselves. It’s just our brain, you’ll recall, that has us see only our virtue and their failing behaviour, not see our own failings.

Sigmund Freud, and many following him, have described in detail defence mechanisms we use to keep thinking ourselves in the right when we’re not: denial, projection, displacement, sublimation, rationalization, oppression, suppression, reaction formation, regression, intellectualization. 

Oh boy, are we good at fudging the facts just to feel ourselves competent, ourselves capable in playing this game of life – top notch, we are (our brain is). Our inventiveness is incredible. And how well we can convince ourselves despite the evidence, is remarkable. 

I feel taking the time to acknowledge this human quirk in our nature is critical. It has a lot to do, I feel, with how well we humans get along, how well we humans do for each other. What we avoid at all cost is to say we got it wrong. To admit we were duped. Or worse that we caused harm. We have to believe we are in the right; somehow this being in the right gives us meaning, that our life matters. We will make things up, lie, hold to a belief, even if irrational, anything, to keep us in our minds, feeling we are on top of it all, can manage. To protect our integrity. We defend our beliefs without question, in particular, those entrenched over time, those that define us, beliefs that secure a quality of life we enjoy. Nearly impossible for any of us to step away, say we messed up. Can’t admit to that. Not with all that historical, psychological commitment at stake.

Our reluctance to admit anything but that we are right is not just evident in the scientific literature; we see it every day in the news.

In first week of June, the state of Vermont passed legislation that would allow the state to extract costs of climate change from the oil industry. The Republican governor was expected to veto the legislation as he has always in the past, vetoed any action to combat climate change. However, the severe damage (and cost to the government) in Vermont caused by climate change last year (flooding) is hard to ignore for a small state. Phil Scott, the governor, let the legislation through, but he did without his signature. He couldn’t bring himself to sign the legislation. Clearly, he’s feeling under pressure to pay for the huge costs of climate damage flooding in his state, so he let the legislation go through. But he hemmed and hawed around it, raised all kinds of qualifications and doubts, just to show he was still the man he was before. No way was he signing the bill because no way was he going to say to the democratic legislature forcing his hand, or admit to his electorate, no way would he be saying, ‘oh I got it wrong, folks. Sorry. I’m not as smart a guy as I made myself out to be. What a blind fool I was. Disastrous flooding – climate change. A mess. You were so right.’ Nope. No way he’s doing that, not while he’s wearing a suit and looking all dressed up.

Our clan is a group of similar-minded people with whom we find common currency in our ways of seeing the world. We live in many clans crisscrossing our public and private lives. Human society does well when the clans choose to work together to a common purpose, to weigh different perspectives, respect differences, adapt beliefs, attune behaviours toward a collective wisdom – in this way to find the best way forward.

We’re not living in a world like that, unfortunately. Social media company agendas are now driving civil society, by design, to put us in silos and set us against each other., More and more it seems, people are drawn to spend time on their phones directing their attention, their consciousness, to new media company agendas; people are spending less time in meeting places that bring people of different values together, where individual perspectives can be tempered, and consensus promoted. 

There’s always been a lot riding on how well human beings can work together on common interests, how well human beings communicate, how generous human beings are with each other, how willing each person is to recognize one’s own failings and honour another’s strengths. 

At the heart of our current civic discourse is a competition for being right, making the other pay for being wrong, fashionably being called the culture wars. A lot of contentious and serious issues face us all now. None is so pressing as the changing climate, a climate becoming more extreme and unpredictable, a problem of our own making. But we can’t get together to resolve it. How is that?

This again seems to go back time immemorial because something of it seems locked into our evolutionary brain. Researchers tell us the developing capacity of the human brain turned us humans from prey – slow-moving, toothless animals cowering in caves- into the top predator of all wildlife. Our ability to invent, imagine, create realities out of nothing, imagine and build for ourselves fortifications and armaments, gave us dominance over the planet, to do as we will. 

It follows that deep in our evolutionary brain is the love for the security our brain affords us; we who don’t have claws or fangs or body armour or poisonous stings but we have the fortifications we can build. In the same respect, deep in our evolutionary brain is our fear of uncertainty, our reluctance to step into a frightening unknown. We huddle as a clan, construct our walls and ramparts, arm our defences. We protect what we know, stay away from we don’t know. It’s wild and dangerous ‘out there’ for the thin-skinned homo sapiens. Embedded in our thousands-of-years-old evolutionary brain is a love for the status quo.

These deep evolutionary impulses translate into our defense of the status quo, our reluctance to change from what we know, to trade what we know for the unknown, for the uncertain. Even when the world we know is harming others, and even, strangely and tellingly, when the world we know is harming ourselves.

Of course, this reluctance to change from the status quo only applies to those who benefit by their status quo, for whom the power of one’s status quo offers security, comfort, stability, and most cherished, offers abundance. If one belongs to such a status quo, one will defend that status quo at all costs. 

Others on the outside of a powerful, entrenched status quo, whose status quo is diminished by another’s status quo, or who sees in another’s status quo an injustice or harm, will call on the entrenched status quo to change. Any change to the status quo is so hard to effect -I think we all know that it’s hard to change one (or our) perspective- usually only happens when compellingly forced to by circumstance – shock or inevitability. Losing a job, death of a loved one…only then.

We only have to look at the stories we hear every day on the news to witness the harm caused by immutable status quo. Consider the cries of First Nations and Indigenous peoples to the powerful Canadian clan over all kinds of legitimate claims to injustices, how persistent they have had to appeal over decades with little result. How long -decades and decades- have the First Nations and Indigenous peoples spoken of the abuses at Canadian residential schools, to little serious attention of the more powerful status quo of Canada and its citizens? And to the point above about how it takes something dramatic to effect change, even a little: to our shame – it was only with discovery of mass graves of innocent children, spoken of for so long by native peoples, it was only finding those graves on school property, that finally, for a moment, got the Canadian public to turn its head.

Beginning of June, Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, reported that after five years only two of the more than 150 calls to action in the report on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls have been fully implemented. 4.

Now we can see how all those neural pathways in our deep evolutionary brain play out, how our extruder shapes identity and how hard it is to let go of that identity and the status quo that protects it. Our insistence on being right, which is also to say that we cannot be wrong – is what protects the status quo from being questioned, from having to consider change. Adhering to the status quo at all costs shelters us from contemplating the unknown. Maintaining our status quo, defended by our being right, protects our very integrity from losing our sense of integrity – keeps us from madness, existential and personal madness.

Ironically, in protecting a status quo by which we feel safe, we are causing the very safe ecosystem we depend on to collapse into chaos. That stable, predictable ecosystem serving humankind for millennia – that provides us amenable climates, regularity of seasons, consistent cycles for agriculture – is being lost with our inaction to address the climate crisis – we protecting our status quo. We carry on as we have; meanwhile, a wildness, an unpredictability is taking over the atmosphere, bringing on turbulent atmospheric rivers above us, creating heat domes, causing unexpected drought and flooding,  giving rise to never-before-seen forest fires, uncapping exploding methane sinkholes as the Siberian permafrost melts.

Fires last year were the worst in recorded history. The prediction is they will be even worse this year. They are so wild and intense in heat, the very air explodes. We are no match for them. Twenty-first century fires are different and far worse than any fire known before. The Fort McMurray fire was so intense it vaporized riding lawnmowers.6. With the extreme fires, drought, flood, and storms increasing in number and intensity throughout the world, climate change is hard to ignore, but we are ignoring it. How is that?

Even now, the damage is too far along for the future to be anything like the past. Not even 40-year-olds can look forward to a pleasant retirement such as the current generation does -no chance to enjoy a relaxing and stimulating boat cruise down the Danube for those 40-year olds, no matter how rich they are. Our unrelenting use of fossil fuels, despite many warnings, has put the planet on a course of warming oceans that is irreversible. Only the severity of the effects is in our hands to modify. But we aren’t. How is that?

‘Oh but that can’t be,’ we say. There’s this to consider, and that. See. Truth is we don’t want to change the status quo, face the unknown future without fossil fuels. Electric cars. OK. Kind of like the status quo.

A friend lives in Edmonton. He told me that going outside under the sun during the heat dome was like being under a magnifying glass. He said picnic tables in the parks were melting. I repeated what he told me to people here, to start a conversation. The replies I got were similar. ‘That’s out there. Those Albertans,’ a pause, ‘you know what they’re like. All about oil. Destroying our planet.’

What about our neighbourhood? Anywhere in Toronto, in fact: Torontonians drive cars without any thought to a climate crisis. Look at our streets and highways. Full of cars. Torontonians driving wherever Torontonians feel like driving. Torontonians driving whenever Torontonians want to drive, with no thought to the crisis. Alberta oil in our tanks. Those Albertans, the problem, we say. Never, us, the problem, we don’t say.

The world put more hydrocarbons into the atmosphere last year than any year before. How is that? No please. Don’t want to hear that. It gets too much. Don’t want to hear it anymore. Tell me about scrubbing or sails in the atmosphere. But we need to hear the bad news, face up to it, I’m afraid. And I’m afraid, whaat some of our neighbours have said to me a couple of years ago, that we’re not going to make it, not going to do it. Face up to it.

Again, the daily news is revealing if we can read it for the subtext: protecting the status quo by believing we are right. Riley Finn, a researcher at UBC’s Conservation Decisions Lab, led a study responding to the devastating flooding of the Abbotsford agricultural area, created on a floodplain by draining Lake Sumas. The report made the case of financial prudence for turning the floodplain back into a lake at a cost of only a billion dollars, much lower than costs to keep it as it is. In fervent response, the mayor of Abbotsford rejected the idea pointing to the loss of 17,000 jobs and billions in revenue currently generated by the area. The mayor confirmed instead to be investing in bigger and more expensive dikes and larger pumps. While he admits to more flooding -no one on the floodplain can get insurance- the mayor ignores the climate modelling showing the increase and severity of floodwaters to come, how there will never be infrastructure capacity or money enough to push away the intensifying flooding set to return over and over and more severely. 7.

The proposed plan makes sense logically, in weighing the evidence, in the inevitability of doomed businesses and unsustainable jobs. The restored lake would solve all the problems draining the inflowing rivers. Mr. Mayor can only see the safe status quo, the way it has been, is unable to see that those jobs and the farm revenue have no future – just wants things to carry on as they have. Can’t see the writing on the wall, so to speak. Won’t see it. Denial is so hard to argue against. The Mayor has the power to make change. Can’t let go of the status quo. No courage. Can’t admit to being wrong; no courage. ‘No I want things to go on as they have, just like it has been, good times,’ says the mayor’s sub-text,  but the problem is, Mr. Mayor, all those nice things you want to preserve, conceived without any thought to nature’s ways, have led to a disaster in the ecosystem. Got too greedy Mr. Mayor, bought too many votes by selling out the future. But not what he or Abbotsford residents believe in, fervently.

No matter what we do now, our young people will be struggling for the rest of their lives to deal with the instability of the planet’s climate. All their energy will be directed to paying for the damage of extreme weather; managing the migrations of millions of peoples out of the central areas of the globe that will be uninhabitable; adapting housing, food availability, and work to an atmosphere less hospitable to human habitation and sustenance.

‘Please, we don’t want to know this. What we want is our status quo.’  (at least for those of us lucky enough to have an affirming, comfortable status quo). We ignore the groups on our fringes – in the Pacific islands, in the polar regions, marching with Greta Thunberg, the climate scientists. We ignore the evidence. How is that?

The May 17 (Vol. 220. No. 20) Guardian Weekly cover story is a survey of each of the climate scientists (843) in the world who was the lead researcher or editor for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has been the senior publication reporting on climate risk for the past 35 years. A high number of scientists (380) responded to the Guardian newspaper survey. The paper claims a large number of scientists responded because the scientists have been concerned and are now despairing over the lack of progress, now going back decades, to deal with warnings in their findings on the damage of climate collapse. 

Some scientists have given up research having had dozens of their reports ignored. In a last-ditch effort to get people to take them seriously, the researchers are turning instead to advocacy. One scientist reports being glad not to have had children: her years of ignored research tells her clearly what is ahead for today’s children; it’s not pretty. As the article surmised, “From experts in the atmosphere and oceans, energy and agriculture, economics and politics, the mood of almost all those the Guardian heard from was grim.” 8.

Camille Parmesan, at the CNRS ecology centre in France is quoted as saying about the reception of the latest IPCC report: “all of the scientists I worked with were incredibly frustrated. Everyone was at the end of their rope asking what the fuck do we have to do to get through to people how bad this really is.8.

That’s the question this photo, Seeing the Trees, has taken for a context. How do we get through to ourselves that this is really bad?

The IPCC experts, according to the article, overwhelmingly identify two causes for our human clan ignoring the existential threat of climate change. The reasons aren’t having enough money, nor the availability of solutions. We have those. One reason they believe why we are ignoring their dire predictions is lack of political will. The other reason is ‘vested corporate interests’ fudging the game and thwarting any effort to diminish the corporations’ drive to continue reaping profit.

These reasons make sense, but I’m wondering if we don’t have to look deeper. Look into the brain itself. It’s people who elect politicians. It’s people who are not electing politicians advocating a strong position on climate change, a change from the status quo. Even green-minded parties are quite aware voters will elect the politician that promises to maintain the status quo, not make radical change to the course of the voters’ daily lives. Yes, was the promise, you can keep driving those SUVs. Yes, we’ll give you back your coal-mining jobs. ‘Got my vote.’ is the chorus. And they elected a president. 

Clearly, we can’t look to the politicians, even the most committed of politicians, even though the government has the means and power, and even though the government promises to make change happen. They don’t. Status quo. Afraid of the people, of losing their elected jobs. In the week that the 2022 IPCC report came out, devastating in its conclusions, the Canadian Environment Minister, himself a former radical climate activist, approved the Bay du Nord oil and gas project. Said the minister, “I do want to make one point on oil and gas. So, it’s easy to attack the oil and gas industry. And I really think the Bay du Nord is a really, really good investment.” 9.

Ask anyone from inside Ottawa: any of them are confident to say the next government will be the party now complaining about high fuel costs, promising to get rid of the carbon tax, has even said there isn’t a serious environmental crisis. What voters want to hear. Elect them. Same in Ontario. The government elected to a majority twice by Ontarians won by promising not to raise the hydro cost for homeowners, by promising beer for a buck. Got my vote rang from the chorus of the Ontario electorate. Don’t change a thing. The government willed by the people came in and immediately cancelled all the funding for the green initiatives that had made Ontario the leading jurisdiction in the world for innovative technology development to fight climate change. Elected to a majority government, they were. Says the voter, don’t touch anything, just give me more money in my pocket to do what I want.

The solution is not, clearly, the politicians. Similarly, the solution won’t come from the ‘greedy investors’ who are making all the money driving the capitalist steamroller. Are they going to show restraint if their competition doesn’t, and for that lose their competitive advantage. Hardly. With any call for restraint by regulation, corporate public relations departments quickly fill the airwaves with how well they can self-regulate. Uh huh! 

Those ‘greedy investors’ were in Fairy Creek and the Central Walbran areas of southern Vancouver Island cutting down old-growth trees. 10. We’ll plant new trees. But they know -they have to know because it is their industry- that it takes a tree 30 years before it is a negative carbon sink.11. We don’t have thirty years. We don’t have ten. 

Reported some time ago, investigators exposed 40-year-old research conducted by the oil and gas industry that predicted the severe results we face today of unbridled extraction of fossil fuels. The industry knew for decades the negative consequences of their industry production, but that didn’t stop any of them from full steam ahead. Curious isn’t it, how corporate executives -forestry, oil and gas, plastics, fashion, etc- can put their knowledge out of mind (see Freud), and knowingly will sacrifice their children and grandchildren’s futures; shocking how readily they put immediate profits, protecting their jobs, paying off their mortgages, planning for the ease of retirement, when their business choices ensure their children won’t have any kind of easy retirement, no matter how wealthy they are. 

Each year passes ignoring the obvious effects of unlimited growth and increasing consumption. 

I guess we could blame the corporations for deluding us. But really, we, the people have to know. If we didn’t support businesses, they wouldn’t be in business. The smart businesses would adapt their business models to accommodate the market. The problem isn’t the corporations as much as us. People today are buying 60% more clothes than they did twenty years ago.10. Do we need more clothes than we did? No. Not at all. Do corporations selling clothes want us to buy more clothes? Yes. Will they do all in their brilliant marketing to get us to buy more of their clothes? Yes. Convince us we need more clothes? Yes. Is textile waste a major contributor to the climate crisis? Yes.10. Will we continue to buy more clothes than we need?  _____.

It’s remarkable how well we are all sidestepping the obvious climate crisis.

How is that, we ask? Is there something more going on than just inept political leadership and greedy stock investors?

I’m asking us to consider our human psychology as another important reason we can’t address the climate crisis seriously, a psychology that has become so obsessed with being right, others wrong, not wrong oneself. The hope is that, maybe, if we could be honest about our psychology, we would see things differently, perhaps want to elect different politicians, boycott business causing the planet harm, support those initiatives struggling to make a difference, listen to the experts who know the solutions at hand. Maybe turn to each other rather than combatting with each other.

Climate scientists are despairing at the cataclysmic effects caused by our lifestyles, the refusal of the population to pay any attention to the dire warnings, and societal toleration of a social media communication that is full of lies and misinformation, tolerated by all who passively give it free reign. How is that? 

It’s not ‘them,’ out there, the bad guys, I’d like to suggest. That only exacerbates the conditions for our ignoring the threat in our own backyards. I suggest we turn to see what’s going on in our heads and work on that as first principle. Our biggest and most fundamental hurdle.

The contention here is our hoping in externals such as new technology or climate conferences, or global political initiatives, or a lot more Gretas will not get us past our evolutionary bias for holding on to what we know and have, deluding ourselves, lying to ourselves to avoid facing the unknown, thinking less of ourselves by admitting to a failed experiment of endless growth and consumption beyond the capacity of a stable earth to withstand. By changing the lens we see by, everything else changes. By working on the lens, on reorienting our internal selves, becoming something else of ourselves, we can then see differently and act differently. It’s a journey within. 

The photo is asking us to see the trees. 

That’s the question this photo is given for a context. How do we get through to ourselves that ignoring the experts about the climate emergency is really bad? How do we do a workaround of our evolutionary brain locked into this social organization build around consumer and consumption sovereignty. I suggest we listen to the indigenous peoples who have survived for thousands of years, and survived against great odds, survived our capitalist steamroller, didn’t lose the memory of their values.

There was another story in the Guardian Weekly about forest fires.12. While around the world forest fires are increasing in number and intensity, in Mexico the fires have not, despite Mexico’s severe drought conditions. Those forests have had no change in fire frequency or intensity since 2012. As the article proffers, what accounts for this is that more than half of the forests are owned and managed by indigenous populations. To be clear, the indigenous people aren’t living in some idyllic past; they are using the forests for their livelihood and employing modern technology in tis management. However, it’s their management approach, coming from a very different mind-set than ours, one based on indigenous values, that is making the difference.

Another mind-set – that is, another way of seeing; a differently formed extruder.  If we could go inside our brains, effect that extruder by which we see and act in the world, if we could shape our perspective with a different value system, then, let us consider: the world could be a different and better place. If we can get ourselves off the tack we’re on, protecting our status quo with the need to be right, obsessively ranting and railing against each other, ‘them the bad guys and just look how bad they are’ we harangue on about, a tack leading us over the cliff; instead, if we might find our way along another tack, another way of seeing, we might find a way to come together, do better for ourselves, do something as a society other than ignore what’s looming on the horizon.

I don’t know. It’s taken me some time to order these thoughts, why the June photo didn’t appear at the beginning of June. Truth is, words make for a poor accounting. My words for sure, trying to use a feeble brain to write about the subject of the brain, the most complex object in the universe. How delusional is that! So many out there better equipped than I for this. We have to do what we can. Share what we see.

I just feel, we can’t pass off the responsibility. At the same time, a few individuals aren’t enough to manage this. We have to come together as a human clan, or we won’t be together in any kind of stable society. That’s what hit me reading the Guardian Weekly survey of the climate scientists. I trust the Guardian reporting. I trust this is what the experts are saying. So what now? 

The suggestion is to go inside, walk among the trees, listen to the trees – it’s an old idea. As old as the Indigenous peoples. As old as mystics and seers. 

It’s complicated. What do I know? Lots of perspectives. Bishop Anna Greenwood-Lee speaking to the We Together May 2024 Conference, also talking extensively about trees, says that turning inward is a retreat, abandoning a call to make the world better. We need to step up she says. 13.

On a personal note, taking this journey within taught me how I am to shoot photographs, helped me to make images is my attempt to make the world better, trying to setp up. I could only do it by going within and listening. 

If I go out to take a photo, wanting to take a great photo, go right at it, I get nothing. If instead I take my camera and I say I may get nothing today, then I change my way of being out there in the world. My thinking is a trick to eliminate my ego desire from the exercise. It’s easy for us to do things to get attention for ourselves, do it to secure compliments, do it to help me feel better about myself. Consider what taking photos has become on social media, at least from this perspective: not about the image but about wanting to be liked. Desperately crying out, speed scrolling like mad – I want you to like me, we say, over and over to the screen, post after post. If I go out to take pictures to prove something about myself then I get nothing. Nothing. If instead, I say I may not get a picture, then am I open to what is out there, I am able to listen to what the world out there wants to show me, and what it wants me to know. And that is the photo that has a life, the photo coming to me as a gift.

It’s a different way, to be a student and a companion of the world, learn from its wisdom. The indigenous speak of wholeness, being connected to this place we live in, speak of how to live within the bosom of mother earth. Note the difference. We might want to pursue wholeness; To do that we acquire self-improvement, take classes, buy books on mindfulness, adopt a lifestyle; we do things to make ourselves better. Think of it: our approach is another form of consumerism. We want to take on wholeness, acquire mindfulness. Living in the present becomes a kind of object we work at getting, possessing for ourselves. That’s not what the wisdom practice teaches. Wholeness is not something to get and have for ourselves, as if a product. Wholeness is all around us. Wholeness is everything, all that is. It is for us to let go, abandon our need to control and possess; instead, it is for us to let go of trying to be somebody, and give ourselves over to the self that we are, to the wholeness that is there always, relax into the greater presence that is wholeness, and find there our wisdom.

If I take my camera, and take myself, out into the world with an open mind, not about me, I am in a place to see what the world wants to show me of itself, what the world wants me to know about things, for the world to tell me when to press the shutter, in that moment revealing itself to me. And there, letting myself fall into its presence, I find my Self, a part of a wholeness that embraces me and loves me.

By listening for what the world wants me to know, I feel more my own self, I can see others, and meet them one as to the other. Not me wanting to prove something to them, not me wanting to get something from them, not me being annoyed at them, raging mad at them…what our public discourse has become. All about me.

In my feeble and failing ways, I struggle to be in that whole place. Day by day.

The mystics teach us this. To go inside and find Self – be open, listen – allow the world to be a teacher, others to be a teacher. By this we come to see ourselves one among others, see ourselves one with them, ourselves one with nature. It’s a different mind-set. If we put ourselves in that way, our perspective changes. We abandon our need to be right. In its place we seek wisdom, not to possess wisdom, but let wisdom possess us – so say the mystics. A new mindset, new extruder shaped differently; sees each other as companions along the way, sees each of us as fragments, not gods, fragments, each of us part of a whole. 

Find yourself first, the wise ones teach, and with finding yourself, you find compassion for all things. Our world, I feel, needs to begin here, find our compassion, our kindness, our humility seeing the other generously, no matter the hurt. It’s a big ask. Why we have to go to the valley of the trees, to seek counsel there, seek the source of our wisdom, the world itself, find what is right in each other, the earth, finding there, our home.

As mystics teach us, the journey within reveals to us the true nature of the world, doesn’t hide us from the world. What we see is the whole of the world in a different light. A different extruder emerges, protected not by being right, but by being wise.

To get serious for what the climate scientists tell us is a climate emergency, we need to change our perspective, realign that extruder to see differently, to have the courage to reimagine our status quo. To head down into the valley of the trees, is to journey where indigenous wisdom has been calling us. The indigenous peoples suffered under the great industrial steamroller but never gave in to its injunctions. They survived. Held fast to what they have known for thousands of years about living in harmony with the earth. Unlike our indiscriminate building on floodplains, that ran rough-shod over the ways of nature, the indigenous wisdom sees themselves as companions with the natural world, to live in the body of the natural world, its ways, how its rivers flow, to consult the natural world they know so well, to live gracefully with it.

Can we let go of our perspective of proclaiming ourselves the best, the ones who have it right, know best, can’t have got it wrong.

Are we in the industrialized West, the perpetrators and beneficiaries of a fly-by-night enterprise, going to get down on our hands and knees and say to the indigenous peoples of Mexico that ‘our industrial steam roller that bulldozed your culture and ignored your wisdom was a mistake? Are we going to admit we got it wrong? Confess we weren’t as smart as we thought we were? Are we going to say we messed up: our forests are burning.’ No, we aren’t going to say that; we’re going to say we’ll put sails into the atmosphere or scrub our toxic exhaust, concoct any kind of answer to keep feeling ourselves in the right. What chance is there the fancy dressed, slick-haired authorities, surrounding themselves with every indication of their importance and competence, peering out from their glass towers, our spokespeople, would ever admit to the successful forest managers in Mexico that they know better than our stupid ideas. No we aren’t going to say to the Inuit how much better is their way than ours which sustained a whale population for thousands of years in the north that we, the western civilization, destroyed in a generation; no, we aren’t going to say to the Native Peoples how we screwed up by scraping bare the Grand Banks, the richest fishing grounds in the world, gone in less than a few generations which the Native Peoples had kept bountiful for hundreds of years.

Are we, the developed nations, going to be able to admit how our great enterprise is flawed, we who enslaved, raped and pillage sovereign peoples -and continue to do so taking from them what we want, without a thought to them, feeling ourselves so righteous and clever.14 Critical as we are of the top hats and tailcoats strutting about the empire, are not we, the people of the developed countries, the modern tailcoats and top hats strutting around the world, overconsuming fossil fuels in our madness, driving wherever we want whenever we want, buying little delicacies  in our precious boutique markets, special for us, delivered to us from the far reaches of the planet, enjoying dining out on whatever food we like, buying whatever bobble we choose, wrapping it all in plastic, bottling our water in tiny plastic bottles that we throw out after a few gulps…. point is: are we going to get down on our hands and knees and say to the rest of the world, sorry, our excess has destroyed your lives and ours; are we -the 20% of the planet using 80% of its resources to cater to our lifestyle- are we going to say ‘we got it wrong, your values are so much wiser and enlightened than our stupid ideas, this consumer capitalist culture that hasn’t even sustained itself for 300 years and is destroying everything? You who manage earth so much better than we.’ No, our brain is designed to protect our self-image and the status quo we all enjoy. We will come up with all kinds of tidy responses. Cute responses while the forests burn…

On our hands and knees asking for help. Look at the great virtue of our civilization, the science of health, and economics and reduction of poverty, we point out…Doesn’t count for much in the face of the climate scientists’ warnings where we lose it all. We’re going to say it’s not that bad. We can do this. We have a plan for 2050. (Of course, we have missed all our targets.) No, we’re going to do this. We’ll come up with climate disaster survival policies. Keep voting for us. Well, well. The only politicians crass enough in the face of a clear climate crisis to deny the climate crisis and promise us the status quo happen to be rather extreme and anti-democratic in their views. Yes, say the young people of Europe: ‘We want homes.’ The Extreme Right promises them homes and they are lining up behind the extremists; anything to keep the status quo going. A leader of the free world, convicted of a crime, and promising a dictatorship, Donald Trump, now has for the first time garnered more than 50% support of the American population. 15. No, we’re going to put sails in space to block the sun. Plant trees. Scrub our poison emitting pipes. On with the same. Right?

Those despairing ICPP scientists are asking how can we get ourselves out of this trap, admit to our failure, we, beneficiaries of a failed experiment, capitalism run mad? How do we get past our delusions of our being right, to replace it with another better self, a way of seeing that allows for different perspectives, admits failure, respects others for their peculiarities, can let go of ego control, take its truth and the others’ truth, good and bad, and together, generously with each other, find common ground, give what we have rather than take more than we need, to find a way together? How do we do that?

‘We’re not going to make it’ say a number of our intelligent and thoughtful neighbours. 

The Mahabharata, an epic Sanskrit poem compiled over 700 years beginning in the 3rd century BCE, and to this day an inspiration for Hindu culture, is a poem about a war. Two sets of cousins are contending for the kingship. Finally, there is a great battle, anticipated for 200,000 verses. Both sides seem to have some legitimate claim to kingship, but one side seems the foil for the other, to show how the preferred side overcame olympic odds and won the day. The one side, the one expected to win, wins; the other side is vanquished, annihilated, in a cosmic, cataclysmic battle.

How wise is this poem? At the end of the lives of the victors, those gaining the diamond encrusted thrones and palaces of endless opulent rooms, vast reaches of land and wealth, these victors process to their final, glorious reward, we might call heaven, and arriving there, to their great shock, find the vanquished, their enemies, already in paradise, enjoying immortality.

We live in a hall of mirrors say the post-modernists, and maybe so say the ancients. It’s not what we think, it is, this life. Not what we think. Winning it all. At any cost. As the Mahabharata victors discovered about the endgame: it’s not being champions and taking all the spoils that defines us. That is but a dream reflected in a mirror. “We are such stuff/ as dreams are made on, and our little life/ is rounded with a sleep.” 16.

Is Simon just a monk communing with nature, doing his thing? We aren’t all made to be monks, surely? We have our Juno Beaches. We have our reasons to fight. 

Maybe we accept our fate, the world is now as it always has been: full of monks and warriors, seducers and healers, scribes and conquerors. Nothing more than this. Human history follows a pattern: opulent displays of culture, and mass graves -over and over -history- millions die, some survive. Thomas Homer-Dixon, a leading scholar of systems analysis applied to the climate crisis, 17. gives us a 20% chance (generously he says) that we won’t end up in a Mad Max world. Not the first time over the course of history that chaos and anarchy replace order and good government. Why should the 21st century Western civilization be any different? Archaeology is strewn with many accounts of unsuspecting civilizations collapsing and rather suddenly. Trump wins in November. Authoritarianism takes hold in a world of disenchanted nations. Collapse of what we know. More fires and flooding and heat domes. Maybe that’s all it is, a human history: millions die and suffer. Some survive living it out in a Mad Max world until the next opulent civilization emerges.

Is there another way forward? Do monks matter? 

There’s another view about all those archetypes of  king and trickster, hero and tyrant, mother and seducer. Different to the view that each of us plays one of these roles. Instead the suggestion is all of the roles exist within each of us, in our brains. As psychiatrist C. G. Jung describes it, within our psyche are a bunch of archetypes sitting around a table. Distress and breakdown, Jung says, comes when one or more of those archetypes gets out-of-balance with the others. 

We seem to be out-of-balance right now. Got ourselves into a fix. Too much warrior, scavenger, usurper, contender, resistor, maniac in charge, running the big show. Perhaps we can restore some balance, search out the monk who is being outvoted at the archetypes’ table. 

Maybe that is what it is to ‘see the trees.’ Maybe if we learn to see the trees, see the trees as alive as ourselves, be in communion with them, find in them our wisdom, learn from them, then might we find communion with each other; might we find within us that primary clan to which we all belong, a clan defined by our humanity.

What if we went within, to examine the lens, to reshape the lens inside us, that sees the world out there? What if we become more balanced within, more our true selves, living by our human values, not off-kilter? Might we then do better by each other? See the trees. See them. Healers will say to us that reorienting the lens within changes the way we see ourselves; reorienting the lens within changes the way we see the world; reorienting the lens within changes the way we see each other.

The suggestion is that we can find our true human selves, return to some place of belonging which indigenous peoples speak of. Indigenous peoples are survivors of the capitalist system, never giving in to its delusions, out there, managing forests, telling stories that are about communion with all of life, showing as best they can how to live at one with nature and with each other: restoring the buffalo to the open plain, allowing Lake Sumas to return, managing the forests…..

Maybe it’s time to let go of the need to always be in the right. Maybe we need to join Simon finding our way into the valley of the trees. There, seeing the trees, connecting with our longing for wisdom, wisdom that is our joy, and thereby, seeing the world differently, acting differently in the world than we do now. Not to be right, but to be wise.

Simon isn’t a philosopher, a theologian, a scientist, a genius. Hard for Simon to say what any tree’s voice is, except as he might say, for a feeling in his heart, some sense of the presence of the trees, some feeling of companionship with trees, that they are for him a companion in life, that the trees care for him, have a lot to teach him, that out there among the trees, attentive to the trees and to nature herself, he finds his Self, he feels at home, awakened among their spirits.

If we can but see a tree for what it is, this remarkable expression of life, listen for it calling out to us, hear it tell of deeper things -of mystery; if we would but stop for a moment from our relentless effort to control everything, prove how right we are, dominate this life, consume and possess more this year than last year, pursue only the finest of things, to be winners of the game. And instead, if we could but see ourselves among the trees, feel ourselves beholden to their wisdom, reverential of their ways, so then might we find our own deep presence and connection with life, find common companionship with each other.

Shamans teach that mystery is not to be defined as a problem waiting for a solution. Mystery, they extol, is the essence of Earth, how Earth and Life is. Life is not a problem to solve and control, but a mystery to acknowledge, wisdom hidden in mystery, revealed in a bit of light reflecting off a petal, light seeping in under some bit of forest cover, if we could but see, see life as more than we can ever know but for what it reveals to us. To be in mystery’s shadow, to behold its presence, is to stand silent, head bowed with respect, knowing our place and knowing who we are. “We are such stuff/ as dreams are made on, and our little life/ is rounded with a sleep.” 15.

Philosopher Immanuel Kant says that the response to mystery is not pleasure but awe. 

Standing before a single tree, might we notice how it moves with the wind, how it forms a unique shape, expresses colour, exhibits a line and presence. To stand before the tree in silence is to stand there in awe. As we behold the tree with awe, the tree speaks to us: ‘behold, your life.’ 

Line shape colour tone pitch movement rhythm – all constituting the Earth- correspond to the very structures of our mind, the right harmonies of our minds and bodies. It is how art speaks to us, as does nature, takes us to a place beyond the surface of appearance, to a home, where we belong.

Sages, whose spirits reach out to the centre of mystery, come back to say there is but one truth, a truth by which every molecule of life exists. Heard in the wind, felt in the warmth of the sun on our face, what the spirits of the world ask of us, a mystery, calling to our deepest humanity, rooted in soul, the one thing to save us, that does save us, that one thing: compassion. In that felt experience of the deep place of our self, mystery, at times awakened in us, we sense how we are bound to each other, not in judgement, but unconditional acceptance 18. …….To look about the bus or along the street, each person passing us by, all of us, finding our way, making something of life however we can, in our tanktop, our hoody, our designer label, all of us; in our shortness or our height; in our striding about or our scuffling along; puffy hair, slick hair, coloured hair, no hair. All of us, a bit of something, part of a whole. To learn compassion is to find ourselves overcome with a deep gratitude for the life given us, shared with others, life imbued in all of earth: to be wise in our generosity with each other, to see each other, to act generously.

In the end it’s not the trees, not the religions, not the games we play but we ourselves, how we are in the world our seeing the world through a certain lens which makes for the world we live in.

We are in crisis now.

Writer and photographer Freeman Patterson quotes physician and teacher Rachel Remen: “Crisis, suffering, loss, the unexpected encounter with the unknown -all this has the potential to initiate a shift in perspective. A way of seeing the familiar with new eyes, a way of seeing the self in a completely new way. It shuffles a person’s values like a deck of cards. A value that’s been on the bottom of the deck for many years turns out to be the top card.” Freeman continues, “Such an experience often causes a person to surrender an old identity, almost like a snake sheds a skin, and a larger and expanded identity comes into being.” 19.

The suggestion is we begin here. Get ourselves in order, find our wisdom and our joy, and then care of the world and each other will follow.

Simon isn’t a philosopher, a theologian, a scientist, a genius. He surrenders to what he cannot explain. And grace is his. 

He walks to the valley, to be among the trees, to notice how they move, how they reflect the light, how they flourish. Simon walks the course, not bothering with the golf, but absorbed in the beauty of the trees, loving the trees he walks among, loving that walk, going out, waiting upon the trees and the leaves and the grasses and the birds to lead him to his joy and his wisdom. 

  • 1. Robert Sapolsky Determined. Robert Sapolsky on the New York Times Best Seller list writes about his work as a primatologist and neural scientist. The writing is accessible for the layperson but the ideas are challenging, turn our notion of choice and responsibility inside out and upside down. He is at Stanford University.
  • 2.  Callara, A.L., Greco, A., Scilingo, E.P. et al. Neuronal correlates of eyeblinks are an expression of primary consciousness phenomena. Sci Rep 13, 12617 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39500-z
  • https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39500-z
  • 3. For a thought-provoking introduction to the academic field of biopolitics, how evolution and inheritance condition our preferences, written for a lay-person, see Marc Hetherington & Jonathan Weller, Prius or Pickup: How four simple questions explain American’s great divide.
  • 4. https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/trudeau-government-shows-little-progress-on-murdered-and-missing-indigenous-women-and-girls-recommendations-critics/article_afbc4ef4-21bb-11ef-ae89-ff77768cb48f.html
  • 5.  Tim Wu. The Attention Merchants.
  • 6. Roger McNamee. Zucked.
  • J7. aron Lanier. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.
  • 8. James Williams. Stand Out of Our Light.
  • 9. Franklin Foer. World Without Mind: The existential threat of big tech.
  • 10. Neil Eryal. Hooked.
  • 11. Green Blood Documentary https://boxoffice.hotdocs.ca/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=125098~741853d5-bf72-40a5-a015-09aded779383&ep=1
  • 12. Influence Documentary https://boxoffice.hotdocs.ca/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=125111~741853d5-bf72-40a5-a015-09aded779383&epguid=8096360b-ce32-4b75-868d-893fb4337e9d&
  • 13. The Social Dilemma https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/81254224
  • 14 Vanity Fair article on The Social Dilemma https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/08/the-social-dilemma-deactivate-twitter-facebook-instagram
  • 15. Oil and Water Documentary https://boxoffice.hotdocs.ca/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=125256~741853d5-bf72-40a5-a015-09aded779383&epguid=8096360b-ce32-4b75-868d-893fb4337e9d&
  • 16. A Thousand Cuts Documentary https://boxoffice.hotdocs.ca/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=125182~741853d5-bf72-40a5-a015-09aded779383&epguid=8096360b-ce32-4b75-868d-893fb4337e9d&
  • 17. Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies Documentary https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/propaganda-the-art-of-selling-lies
  • 18. Active Measures Documentary https://www.activemeasures.com
  • 19. Coded Bias Documentary https://boxoffice.hotdocs.ca/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=125068~741853d5-bf72-40a5-a015-09aded779383&epguid=8096360b-ce32-4b75-868d-893fb4337e9d&
  • 20. iHuman Documentary https://boxoffice.hotdocs.ca/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=125108~741853d5-bf72-40a5-a015-09aded779383&epguid=8096360b-ce32-4b75-868d-893fb4337e9d&
  • And going back to the television age for the same warnings:
  • 21. Jerry Mander: Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
  • 22. Joyce Nelson. The Perfect Machine.
  • 23. Joyce Nelson. Sultans of Sleaze.
  • 24. Neil Postman. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public discourse in the age of show business.
  • 25. CBC Ideas. May 29. John Vaillant. The Making of a Beast: Entering a new world of fire. Also a book: Fire Weather: The making of a beast.
  • 26 . Stefan Labbé. June 3, 2024 Cost to return flooded B.C. community to nature nears $1 billion
  • https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/highlights/cost-to-return-flooded-bc-community-to-nature-nears-1-billion-8961976
  • 27. . Damian Carrington. The Guardian Weekly. May 17, 2024. pp34-39. (Vol.210.No.20)
  • 28. . CBC The Current, April 8, 2022 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-april-8-2022-1.6413034
  • 29. . Bridgette Watson.Vancouver Island First Nations call for deferral of old-growth logging at protest sites :Request made by Huu-ay-aht, Pacheedaht and Ditidaht First Nations requires provincial approval June 7 2021 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/old-growth-deferral-1.6056278
  • 30.. Rob Liddell (Director) Greta Thunberg: A year to change the world. https://www.pbs.org/show/greta-thunberg-year-change-world/
  • 31. . Linda Farthing. The Community Forests Resisting Climate Change. The Guardian Weekly. May 10, 2024. (Vol.210.No.19)
  •       See also: Jimmy Thomson. Eyes & Ears of the First Nations. Guardian Weekly. June 7, 2024 (Vol 210. No. 23.) P22.
  • 32. . Anna Greenwood Lee. Planted in the Earth. June 2024. https://faithtides.ca/planted-in-the-earth-itself/
  • 33. . Siddarth Kara. Cobalt Red: How the blood of the Congo powers our lives.
  • 34. .  Rachel Leingang. Civil War & Bloodshed? Conviction Infuriates Trump’s Base. Guardian Weekly. June 7, 2024 (Vol 210. No. 23.) P15.
  • 35. William Shakespeare. The Tempest. Act 4.
  • 36. Thomas Homer-Dixon. John Albert Hall Lecture Series: Values for a New World. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f-8yyLrrV4&list=PLFRMIrYRHZiwJul5tm97FIgRGKhTDXJ7D&index=15
  • 37. For more information: https://www.uvic.ca/research/centres/globalstudies/people/alumni/alumni2018-2019/homer-dixonthomas-.php
  • 38. See psychotherapist Carl Rogers’ principle of Unconditional Positive Regard.
  • 39. Freeman Patterson. Embracing Creation. p185