Our separation as humans from the natural world / natural processes is an illusion. We humans are an integral part of the natural world and the processes which animate it, or to put that another way, from natural processes and their appearance as a steady state called the natural world. I have read I can’t remember who said it that in a way humans are the way that nature knows about itself, the way nature has self-awareness.
The wild-eyed pigeon, the gull, and the brown pelican that you encounter at the Marina breakwater in San Francisco are not primitive creatures, they are your contemporaries and our lives (their lives and our human lives) are bound up together. Their lives may be short but so is a human life, relatively speaking.
In constructing or renovating landscapes all sorts of measures for sustainability, like using native plant species or conserving irrigation water, are good but not because ecological systems provide ecosystem services to us humans, such as providing shade or purifying water, but because they extend our connection to the natural world, enable us to live more fully integrated. “Resourcism”, the identification of the natural world/natural processes only as an assembly of useful resources, of materials and operations, for human benefit is what got us into trouble in the first place – a utilitarian approach to the world. Resourcism is an “I-It” relationship rather than and “I-You” relationship, in the words of philosopher MartinBuber.
Our human connection with the world is spiritual. If our relationship to the world is “I-It” then not all the food, sex, money, hybrid Camelias, or recycled water irrigation systems in the world will fulfill us, there would always be more that is needed. But rather by a relationship of “I-You” where we let go of attachment to these things, letting the inconsistencies of life have their moment, yet participating and seeing the perfection which includes the imperfection may give us the opportunity to connect and heal, heal our bodies, heal our minds and spirit, and bring healing to others, human and non human who can only communicate with us when we set ourselves to listen.
“Sustainability” is not for the future. Yes we want the next generation those who are now children to have all the benefits and a good life as we do and we can be conscious to not use up everything so that they have nothing. But really sustainability is always about now, about being present, present in the world, present in our lives, present with a reality that has transformed the image of “America the beautiful” to an America that includes large urban parks built on old landfills like Fresh Kills on Staten Island, New York – a constant presence of what we may have thought we were “throwing out” – out of sight out of mind – but in the end thrown only as far as the other side of the river.
In creating landscapes practical measures are necessary because we do not live only as spiritual beings. In creating landscapes sometimes we turn surface run off into storm sewers and sometimes we use bioswales to recharge groundwater systems; it is important to know when each of these is the really sustainable measure. There are different levels to our existence: we still have to eat and put out the garbage. It is how we do it, how we eat and put out the garbage, that counts; it is the intention with which we do things.
(Thanks to Zoketsu Norman Fischer and to Gloria Justen for helping to crystallize some of these thoughts.)
