-
Identifier
-
Thesis_MES_2020_DotsonJ
-
Title
-
Remember, Remember: A hero's journey through the decomposing fields of human ecology
-
Date
-
January 2020
-
Creator
-
Dotson, Jesse
-
extracted text
-
REMEMBER, REMEMBER:
A HERO’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE
DECOMPOSING FIELDS OF HUMAN ECOLOGY
by
JESSE PAUL DOTSON
A Thesis
Submitted in partial fulfillment
Of the requirements for the degree
Master of Environmental Studies
The Evergreen State College
January 2020
©2021 by Jesse Paul Dotson. All rights reserved.
This Thesis for the Master of Environmental Studies Degree
by
Jesse Dotson
has been approved for
The Evergreen State College
by
_______________________________
Kathleen Saul, MS, MES, Ph.D.
Member of Faculty
_______________________________
Date
ABSTRACT
Remember, Remember: A Hero’s Journey Through the Decomposing Fields of Human Ecology.
Jesse Paul Dotson.
This is a story about a millennial student of sustainability struggling to find meaningful sense of
identity after coming of age in the shadow of the Anthropocene. The protagonist –Hero– is
confronted with an overwhelming sensation that the environmental movement is operating in a
state of high-functional denial, insisting we can win a war that we may well have already lost. In
moment of desperate alienation, Hero asks a higher power ‘for help?’ What follows is an epic
journey in search of ‘the circles of life’ in which Hero traverses the human ecology of everyday
life. The search becomes less about new solutions, or even correct actions, and more about
discovering the power of interpretation to shape our relationships to the world around us. The
decomposers become a main theme, as Hero is advised that ‘applying compost is feeding the
earth,’ and comes to understand that in a trophic sense, ‘feeding the decomposers’ is an
ecosystem service that we (consumers) have provided for a very very long time. What’s more,
our bodily wastes feed the decomposer too, and discussion of the microbiome leads to the
realization that with every bite ‘we are feeding us, and the decomposers in our gut.’ Nutrient
cycling and human composting bring up questions of ‘life after death.’ Hero begins to see that
the biological decomposers offer a profound model element in any system that has both
production and consumption and wonders about a variety of systems that might benefit from
including the decomposers–– from economics, to the arts, to social media and more.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ v
A Fall to Action .............................................................................................................................. 2
Crossing Thresholds .................................................................................................................... 18
Waste(ed.) Home.......................................................................................................................... 70
Feeding Whom ........................................................................................................................... 126
Reunderstanding........................................................................................................................ 171
The End. ..................................................................................................................................... 209
Semantography Key .................................................................................................................. 210
A Hero’s Gender ........................................................................................................................ 214
On Mushrooms .......................................................................................................................... 215
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 217
Illustration Key .......................................................................................................................... 225
iv
Acknowledgements
To Kathleen Saul, for being exactly who she is while supporting me through this process.
To Gloria Marie, for modeling the work ethic I aspire too, listening to me rant endlessly, and
telling me when I’m wrong.
To Skateboarding, for showing me how to play in the exact same environment from a completely
different perspective.
v
1
A Fall to Action
Day 1
We’ve got five Years, stuck on my eyes.
Five Years, what a Surprise.
We’ve got five years; my brain hurts a lot.
Five years; that’s all we got.
-David Bowie1
We are naming this Uncertainty
as the pivotal psychological reality
of our time.
-Macy & Johnstone2
I know. But I do not approve,
And I am not resigned.
-Edna St Vincent Millay3
1 David Bowie (1972) “Five Years” The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Song.
2 Macy and Johnstone (2012) Active Hope: How to Survive the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy. Book. p.1-2
3 Edna St. Vincent Millay (1955) “Dirge Without Music” Collected Poems. Poem.
2
He stood there; fourth in line. Waiting. He was going to ask the same question he’d been
asking every speaker on climate change over the last few years. It always came out a little
different, but the point was the same. Only once before had he received a satisfying answer…
About a year ago the head of climate change research at a major university answered his question
in a very honest way: “You know, as a scientist I was trained to distance my emotional reactions
from my work. I always try to stay objective, and I don’t want to scare people… That’s why I
skipped over this slide earlier.” Flipping back through power point slides she arrived at the one
she had skipped. It showed the curve of increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, a
Keeling curve4, complete with projections into the future. Unlike the one she had spent some
time explaining that projected 100 years, the graph on this slide projected 500 years into the
future. This one was really scary. It showed a runaway greenhouse effect for four out of five of
the predictive models. “It’s really hard to look at it objectively” she’d said, “and yea, I try to
keep emotions out of my presentations, but I have been at a conference where a room full of
scientists just burst into tears at the end of the presentation… it was quite the experience.”
Another person down; he was third in line.
It was that image of a bunch of climate scientists just sobbing in some nondescript
conference room somewhere in the world. It didn’t really matter where they were. Some Hilton,
maybe a Marriott, or even a big convention center. Those conference rooms all felt the same.
A keeling curve is a graph showing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere over time. It has been named after Charles David Keeling the
scientist who first began regularly measuring CO2 PPM at Mauna Loa Observatory in 1958.
4
3
Some patterned carpet that masked stains, a bunch of uniform chairs, crappy fluorescent lighting,
free coffee in the corner if they were lucky. The thought of everyone just crying about climate
change––that was powerful. For all the years he had been following climate change, that was
something he’d never seen. He’d listened to so many speeches, attended so many events, but
had never seen everyone cry. For years now he hadn’t quite been able to understand this. These
events, and the conversations surrounding them were always filled with so many passionate
emotions—fear, anger, blame, hope, and inspiration… They reminded him of the image in that
one song about the end of the world,
News guy wept and told us,
earth was really dying.
he cried so much his face was wet.
I knew he was not lying.5
Bowie wasn’t a prophet, but damn those lines felt prophetic. The whole song really. But
especially that image. Grief, sadness, and despair are transparent emotions. Contagious. Like
laughter or yawning, they spread through bodies without asking permission. Mirror neurons
make it very hard to watch real grief and feel nothing (unless you’re a sociopath). He’d often
wondered what would have happened if Al Gore had just burst into tears and cried unconsolably
while testifying to Congress. Or how the 350.org climate marches would have been received if
the millions of people marching wept openly for what had already been lost after we crossed the
movement’s namesake of 350 part per million CO2 in the atmosphere…
His mind wandered ‘How do you know when you’ve lost a war?’
5
David Bowie (1972). “Five Years” The Rise and Fall of Ziggy stardust. Song.
4
That’s a wicked question he thought…We don’t talk about stopping climate change that
was possible thirty years ago. Today we are at 414 ppm6 CO2 and our language has shifted to
building resilience, mitigating effects, and preparing our children for a different world. We have
already lost what we originally set out to defend. There is no earthly territory untouched by the
effects of climate change. Now we talk about climate change as if it’s an occupying force that
will be here for the foreseeable future. Again, mild applause momentarily drowned out his
thoughts, another question down; he was second in line now.
It always seemed like grief was the elephant in the room at events like this. Or maybe the
collective ‘shadow’ in the Jungian sense. There’s almost a palpable stoicism in discussions like
this–'crying is weakness’–and right now we need to be strong to defeat climate change. Stoic. If
we don’t control our emotions, we lose. But, at what point have we already lost?
He was up next; he should probably stop daydreaming. Focus yourself. You're about to
be the center of attention in front of a few hundred people. You’re about to ask Naomi Klein a
question. Someone’s going to hand you a microphone. His knees felt weak and his palms were
sweaty, but on the surface, he probably looked calm and ready… he kept on forgetting7…
‘Here we go’ he thought as the microphone came to him.
As the women handed over the microphone, she held onto it for an extra second as it
passed between their hands and whispered, “Remember to introduce yourself.”
The first draft of this sentence was written in January of 2018, with a global average of 410ppm Atmospheric CO2, and the final draft was
written in December of 2020, with a global average of 414 ppm Atmospheric CO2. Sourced from: www.co2.earth
7 Eminem (2002) “Lose Yourself” 8 Mile: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture. Song
6
5
He looked up, and their eyes met, and he gave the slightest of nods acknowledging that
he would oblige. As he raised the mic up to his mouth it shook a little as he started to speak:8
“Hello, my name is Hero, so I guess I read This Changes
Everything9, as a student, a couple years ago, and honestly it felt to
me like the appropriate emotional response was to cry, it felt really
heavy. You sort of made a joke when you first came up, that you
could give the whole diagnosis of the problem and then we could
all go get real drunk later, and I’ve definitely done that, but I’m
also really curious about the role of sadness and crying… and…
moving forward. Specifically, in asking you, if that’s something
that happens in private conversations that you have… I feel like
there’s a really big shyness to do that in any sort of public way…
but… I don’t know.”
She coughed for a second, and took a moment to get a lozenge before answering looking like the
question had taken her back a bit,
“That’s a great question…um… That’s a really great question…
We’ve been talking about this with our LEAP group about whether
we should be building ‘Primal Scream’ sections into our
gatherings. Because like I do… I don’t think you can build a
healthy movement on repression… you know, um, and this is,,,
this is… There’s nothing scarier than talking about that core loss
of safety of our collective home, right? Just kind of powering
through that and not acknowledging the grief is a really big
problem… Because that’s actually how most people respond to
it… And there’s this weird kind of activist idea, “we’re gonna
scare people like hell and that’s gonna turn them into activists” and
in fact, most people just want to curl up into a ball after you scare
the hell out of them right?
There’s a network… Some of you probably know about the
Transition Town network10, and they have a stream within their
tool kit, called Inner Transition, which is exactly what you’re
talking about, where people have the space to grieve, and to deal
with loss… Because the losses are happening and I think any
healthy movement dealing with life and death issues, will create
This is almost direct transcription of the back and forth between Naomi Klein and I that took place at the Evergreen state college in 2017. I
cleaned it up a little for readability and changed “Jesse” to “Hero” I have a lot of respect for Klein, and I think it is important to note that while
she gave a 600+ word answer–which in hindsight I think is pretty good––I walked away only having heard a few of those words, and well,
obsessing over them, to the exclusion of all the others. I think this is a good example of the complicated nature of human communication; the
inability to listen when triggered and the fallibility on one’s memory.
9 Naomi Klein (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate. Book.
10 The Transition Town Network is something like a decentralized global network of community level think tanks and case studies that embody a
whole range of sustainable living. If you’re not already familiar with them, the movement is well worth exploration, and much can be found at:
transitionnetwork.org/
8
6
space for people in that movement to express their grief, or it will
come out in all kinds of other ways right?
So yea, I think it’s something we have to get a lot better at. You
know, it’s funny you say that about This Changes Everything,
because, in fact, there are about two pages of scary climate science
in This Changes Everything, and I toyed with having none because
I don’t want to have that impact, and I ended up going with what
was the absolute bare minimum of ‘these are the stakes if we don’t
get off this road’… it’s just a little part of the book and then I
move on…. and I've been trying to figure out how to do it in my
work, in my writing… I don’t really like getting up in front of
rooms full of people and crying, it’s not who I am but, you know I
did make a little documentary film about taking my five year old
son to go see the great barrier reef in the midst of a mass
bleaching11, and umm, the reason I made that decision was because
I felt like, you know, just the incredible injustice that kids today
are growing up in this era of mass extinction, not only are we
creating this very unsafe future for them, but we’re depriving them
of the some of the great wonders of the world. I’m looking for
ways to talk about it, and address it that gets at that grief, and the
more personal side of it, because I think that if we don’t find ways
to talk about this in a way that (sic) reflects the grief, then we’re
sending a mixed signal, like, ‘It's the end of the world… but I feel
fine’ and that doesn’t make sense….so we have to somehow get
our message in line with the emotions it evokes.”
She didn’t understand why people thought This Changes Everything was so sad… What?
That’s crazy! He thought, as he returned to his seat. He remembered all those years ago when
An Inconvenient Truth12 ended and he sat in the dark theater thinking “This is my calling. This is
the war I will enlist to fight in. This is the struggle that will bring meaning to my life…” But all
these years later, after the tours of activist duty, he sat in a folding chair in a half-full gymnasium
reflecting on this interaction with one of the preeminent climate change journalists in the world,
who seemed to not understand why her work inspired such sadness.
11
12
Michon and Lindsey. (2018) “Unprecedented 3 Years of Global Coral Bleaching, 2014–2017.” NOAA. Article.
Davis Guggenheim (2007) An Inconvenient Truth (staring Al Gore). Documentary Film.
7
The real ‘inconvenient truth’ was the five stages of grief13 manifesting within the
populations who understood global environmental problems. “Scientists are talking about an
intense mix of emotions right now.”14 We’re all asking, ‘Why am I doing this?’15 just as the
physical processes of climate change are complex and multifaceted, so too, are the emotional
effects. Professionals in the related fields are becoming intimately aware of the costly
ramifications of both…”
Hero didn’t really know what it meant to reach acceptance of climate change and thus,
couldn’t blame anyone for being stuck in denial, anger, bargaining, or depression…that last stage
was scary.
Of course, denial was easier. We see this in Them all the time. ‘The climate denier’ is a
well-established character, and an all-too-common caricature. The strain of overt denial seems
less like a psychological coping mechanism, and more like a rhetorical tactic, used to win the ‘Us
versus Them’ cultural battle…. But there was an insidious form of denial found among his own
people, a high-functioning denial that positioned itself in counter distinction to the overt climate
change denier. The climate change believer is thus by definition imagined not to be in denial.
To Hero it always seemed affluence was a much stronger predictor of your ecological footprint
than whether you believed climate change was a serious problem. If you learn that the glaciers
are disappearing because of climate change, and your response is to go see them before they
disappear completely, you’re sort of missing the connection between your own behavior and the
reason the glaciers are melting in the first place.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1969) On Death and Dying. Book.
David Corn (2019) “It’s the End of the World as They Know It: The Distinct Burden of Being a Climate Scientist.” Mother Jones. Article.
15 Madeleine Thomas (2014) “Climate Depression Is for Real. Just Ask a Scientist.” Grist. Article.
13
14
8
Anger feels good he thought. Hero had been angry, so angry… but it didn’t seem to lead
anywhere helpful. He used to think that anger was the goal, if you got angry enough, and got
everyone else angry enough, got a million people in the streets who were all angry, it would
undoubtedly lead to change… but it inevitably seemed misdirected. Us vs. Them. Hero
remembered the absurdity of the animal rights activists protesting the Makah whale hunt.16 In
retrospect, it seemed almost satirical. The Makah people had probably been hunting whales
during the roman empire, and although thousands of acres on the Olympic Peninsula were ceded
in an 1855 treaty, the tribe had retained their rights to fishing and whaling. After observing
significant population decline, the Makah stopped hunting gray whales in the 1920s—decades
before others did. They became active in conservation efforts protecting the gray whale. Some
seventy years later, in the late 1990’s the gray whale population had recovered, and tribal
members decided to do a whale hunt. Soon Neah Bay was flooded with activists who seemed so
flooded by anger that they were unable to see anything beyond ‘They’re going to kill a whale’
which was unfortunate and ultimately made the activists look like assholes.
Maybe anger was counter-effective too. If we wanted CEOs to take our concerns
seriously, maybe we shouldn't have branded them as sociopathic self-interested capitalists. With
anger came a relentless misdirection, a reliable absence of self-reflection, and a rather polarizing
self-fulfilling prophecy. Starting a conversation with some version of ‘You’re evil’ rarely leads
to a productive conversation.
I went back and forth about whether or not to include this story because I don’t speak for Makah, and am hesitant to write about them… but
I’m including this, because it’s a story about my people –– I am a proponent of animal rights and an activist–– acting in ways that are perhaps
well intentioned but ultimately ignorant, arrogant, and self-defeating. The risk of becoming blinded by anger, and lashing out at the wrong
people, is likely to actually alienate people from your cause… sometimes the people best positioned to help. Read about the Makah in their own
words here: www.Makah.com
16
9
Bargaining was how all the literature kept extending the date for decisive action against
climate change. First it was 2000, then 2010, 2020, and now the latest IPCC17 report says we
have until 2030 to cut our emission by 40% if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C.18
Although this is the current stated goal of the Paris Climate Accord and 1.5° degrees of warming
doesn’t sound like much, the effects of 1.5° warming are going to be devastating. It only looks
like a worthy goal because a 2° rise starts to look considerably worse. We keep making deals
with ourselves, failing to make good on our promises, and making new deals. It keeps getting
worse every year, and yet every year we make more and more deals with ourselves… ten more
years, ten more years.
The whole eco-product response to environmental problems also really plays on
bargaining as a psychological coping mechanism—selling us ‘personal choices’ as a way of
saving the world. If I buy this, then that problem will disappear— that’s bargaining Capitalism
style.
Depression Hero knows well. He gets stuck in this stage. Depression has come and gone
in waves for many years. After that first bargain, ‘I’m going to enlist!’— Hero bounced around
between anger, bargaining, high-functioning denial, but almost always ended up back at
depression. He’s analytical, systematic and critical, and every time he sees some hope, he looks
closer, and ends up in depression. Just numb. Sometimes going through the motions.
Sometimes in bed for days. That feeling was coming on… He started to wonder if this is the
beginning of another cycle. Shit. No!
How could Naomi Klein not understand why This Changes Everything was so sad?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988 through the United Nations, and still today is one of the
foremost institutional authorities on climate change.
18 IPCC (2019) SPECIAL REPORT: GLOBAL WARMING OF 1.5 oC. Report.
17
10
What would acceptance even…
Applause filled the air and moments later people stood to leave. The Q & A was over.
Hero missed the last few questions, busy caught up in his own head. He wondered if everyone
did that, or it was just him… A room full of people with eyes open, but minds racing off
somewhere else completely.
“Lost” he thought as he walked out of the auditorium…Walking to the parking lot he felt
himself spiraling down again thinking about This Changes Everything and Klein’s comment
about putting only two pages of scary climate science in the book… It wasn’t the climate
science that was so sad. He’d been a student of sustainability for years; he felt pretty
desensitized to the scientific reality of climate change. No, it was something else about the book
that was so sad. It was, well, the loss of his childhood innocence, the way her story lined up so
perfectly with his own life. He was born the year Time Magazine named ‘The Endangered
Earth’ as their person of the year19. He’d read the whole article; it articulated the clear and
present danger posed by the myriad of ecological crises facing modern civilization. The line
“This year, the Earth spoke; like God, warning Noah of the deluge” always stuck in his mind.
The nerve of his parents to bring a child into the world that year and name him ‘Hero’ as
if he was actually going to be able to do something. They always told him that it was going to be
up to his generation to save the Earth. They admitted to screwing it up but acted as if the fix was
something for the next generation. Klein had talked about her son, how he both motivated and
devastated her… Hero had imagined this too, thinking of his children, the ones he desperately
wanted, but was altogether too responsible to have. Too aware of the impact a human life made
19
Thomas Sancton (1989) “Planet of The Year: What on EARTH Are We Doing?” Time Magazine. Article.
11
on the environment, and the fragility of his own economic situation… He had often thought
about that next generation, his nieces and nephews, born into a culture that was simultaneously
victim and perpetrator of ecological crisis. Self-aware but unable to collectively change
direction, like the addict who is both the cause and consequence of his own addiction… He
always thought about that next generation, but This Changes Everything, like no other text, put
into context the reality that Hero was that generation. He was the one in preschool during the era
when climate change could have been avoided. He was the one watching Captain Planet20
snuggled on the couch while government subsidized industrial globalization and propagandized
environmental stewardship.
Hero hadn’t quite understood why his mother cried so much when the Supreme Court
stopped the recounts, and the Texas oil man was elected instead of the Tennessee
environmentalist… It was while reading Klein’s work he learned that Gore initiated the first
congressional hearings on climate change in 1976, as a freshman senator. It was these stories,
and the realization that Hero should have been sobbing too, but that at 11, he really didn’t
understand how that day would shape his future. If the Supreme Court hadn’t stopped the
recount, we might have spent trillions fighting a war against climate change instead of fighting
the war on terror (for oil?)— as if climate change wasn’t terrifying enough to justify a warlike
effort. It seemed to Hero like a warlike effort was exactly what we needed. The precedent for
change was there, three days after Pearl Harbor the auto-industry’s manufacturing lines were
“Captain Planet and the Planeteers” is an animated children’s series based on the premise of environmentalist
superhero’s saving the world from toxic pollution.
20
12
being retooled to produce weapons… If Climate change wasn’t a big enough threat to invoke the
Defense Production Act again, it was hard to imagine what would be.
Hero had taken his keys out of his pocket but walked right past his car. A strange
impulse. He couldn’t sit in a metal box right now; the thought of turning the key and firing up
the engine made him feel sick to his stomach… He headed for the tree line at the end of the
parking lot, thinking about Richard White describing Bill McKibben as “a man who lives far
more deeply in his own head than in the natural world he writes about.”21 Maybe that was
Hero’s problem too. He spent too much time in his own head… but where else? Was there a
better way to examine a problem? It did seem like the more time he spent trying to understand
the problems, building complex and dynamic models in his head, the more wicked they became,
and more hopeless and depressed he felt. Everywhere he looked all he could see was the impact.
Upstream and downstream. Those were real places, and he couldn’t help but project them in the
present tense. It was just bad.
The ‘Declared Fuel Reserves’ too, he thought as the forest approached, that’s why we
haven’t moved on climate change… It’ll crash the global economy the moment we decide that
we can’t burn any more fossil fuels. It’s really a simple problem. A wicked coupling of the
global economy and fossil fuel industry: ‘Four trillion dollars’ he thought, that’s an absurd
amount of money. Something like the GDP of Canada and Brazil combined would just
disappear, Poof! Gone from the global financial markets. The 2008 financial crisis showed how
21
Richard White (1995) “Are you an Environmentalist, or do you Work for a Living?” Book Section.
13
money disappearing from one part of the world can have drastic effects somewhere else. People
stopped paying their mortgages in Florida and Arizona, and Iceland’s economy crashed. What a
twisted system. Four trillion dollars’ worth of fossil fuels still below ground, but already valued
above ground. That’s why we can’t act… But at the same time not acting is a commitment to a
suicide attempt. We’re going to overdose on fossil fuels far before we run out of our supply…
People fear ‘peak oil’, but that’s sort of an economic and technological problem, not an
ecological one. We might be halfway through our stash of fossil fuels today, but new equipment
and sensors might find more. It’s already a bit unclear whether or not our burning of those fossil
fuels has already set-in motion positive feedback loops that could create a runaway greenhouse
effect. There’s methane trapped in the arctic ice sheets. The oceans currently act as a giant
carbon sink, absorbing a lot of CO2, but there’s a tipping point where the balancing reaction
starts moving the other way. Ocean acidification could lead to massive die off of oysters,
shrimp, and corals, and huge releases of GHG back into the atmosphere… Every wildfire
releases a whole bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere. So many ecological disasters just lurking in
the shadows.
Just like an addict, we face the decision between short-term and long- term effects.
Taking the easy road—getting high again—will undoubtedly lead to a worse outcome in the
long-term, but it means we don’t have to deal with a painful withdrawal now. It takes courage to
admit you have a problem, and to face withdrawal head-on. Unfortunately, we seem susceptible
to get stuck in this pattern. This was what This Changes Everything documented so well. How
over and over again short-term economic stability came up against long-term ecological
catastrophe… and over and over again the leaders of the free world choose to take just one more
14
hit of capital, while they ‘set the intention’ to one day choose environmental stability… just…
maybe tomorrow, or next year.
There was a sensation as he crossed the threshold between parking lot and forest. It was
like a switch flipping. In the parking lot his body was subdued and passive while his mind raced,
but now all of a sudden, his body was racing, and his mind was calm. He started running once
he hit the tree line. Moving fast. He didn’t have a reason. Just an overwhelming urge. He felt
like Crash Bandicoot or Indiana Jones: as if there was a giant boulder chasing him. Of course,
there was no boulder, just the crushing weight of his situation. The fear of repeating the past.
The fear of returning. The fear of another cycle on the hamster wheel on industrial civilization.
He came to a stop. Panting and hunched over, out of breath momentarily, he let out a
yell. A scream. Something. It was loud. It scared him at first, a sound he didn’t really know
could come out of his body. Maybe, this was the 'Primal Scream.’
He didn’t know what to make of it in his head, what logic or function it had, but it felt
good in his body. He kept going. The screams turned to sobs, and he fell to the ground. It felt
like that temper tantrum a young child would have. That inconsolable fit of emotion every child
felt expressed… and every parent countered with force, or neglect. In Hero’s culture, this was
the most embarrassing thing a five-year-old could do to their parents. He remembered his
father’s anger at his tearful refusal to sit for a picture with the giant Easter Bunny at the mall all
those years ago. But there was no one trying to stop him here. And, perhaps for the first time in
his adult life, Hero was not trying to stop himself from crying.
15
He let it all out. Sobbing uncontrollably, he slumped against a tree and slid to the ground.
He wept for a long time without being really clear exactly why. It was an overwhelming sense
of loss, but for what exactly? Hero wasn’t sure, he just knew he’d lost something he couldn’t get
back. A loss of hope? Of faith? Of safety? Or meaning? Purpose? Direction? … those all felt
somewhat true, but what the hell did that mean moving forward? He just didn’t know what to do
next… and that really seemed the crux of it.
That squirrel knew what to do.
As Hero had been sitting there slumped against the tree trunk, he’d noticed a steady
trickle of little bits of something falling down to the ground a short distance away. As he
followed the stream upward his eye rested on a squirrel voraciously eating a pinecone. He
watched as the squirrel finished, tossed the center of the cone to the forest floor, darted up the
tree, and returned moments later with another pinecone. Over and over again that squirrel
finished a pinecone, darted up the tree, and returned moments later with another.
If I only could make a deal with God, and get them to swap our places, I’d be running up
that tree…22
He caught himself thinking of that narrative trope—making a deal with God. What did it
feel like to have that faith? That ability to ask for and receive guidance. Hero needed that
now… Sometimes he thought life would be so much easier if he was a believer. He was always
a bit envious of people who had such a clear vision of their place in the world. It seemed
healthier. He’d been trying to find his place in the world, but it felt so self-defeating. The closer
he looked at his relationship with the natural world, the more he felt like the villain of the story.
22
Placebo (2003) “Running Up That Hill” Covers. Song.
16
The more he examined the history of his people, the more trapped he felt in this dysfunctional
relationship. It started with the agricultural revolution, got on steroids with the industrial
revolution, and today, he was living through the digital revolution.
Hero knew more about the natural world than he had ever before, and yet, he felt ever
more isolated— and convinced that every place where he was tangibly connected to the
environment, his presence was damaging… but now here he was sitting with his back against a
tree wishing for the life of a squirrel. He thought of a distant childhood memory, lying on his
back and watching the squirrels run through the trees at his grandmother’s house; he’d wanted to
be a squirrel that day too. So much simpler he thought.
What did he have faith in…?
This question muddled around in his thoughts for hours as the sun faded into darkness,
and was replaced by the bright white light of a nearly full moon… Finally, he realized he had
faith in Earth. He believed without a shadow of a doubt that Earth was a network of complex
nested systems far beyond his comprehension. Hero had faith in Life on Earth.
Suddenly he thought, the only thing stopping me from making a deal with God was my
own shadow. He thought for a minute, and then quietly said aloud,
"I don’t know if I believe in God per se, but I do believe in, well, You, Life on Earth and
I need your help. I feel alone. I know we have been intimately connected for billions of
years, and yet, I feel lost. I need more than a less harmful relationship with you. I need a
healthy one. But I have faith that you are here…here, there and everywhere and I am
here, and I will be waiting…”
17
Crossing Thresholds
Day 2
I fear that mass production has come to stay,
both in commerce and education.
A.S. Neil23
The symbols of mythology are not manufactured,
they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed.
They are spontaneous productions of the psych.
Joseph Campbell24
Everything you see here exists in a delicate balance.
As king, you need to understand that balance,
and respect all the creatures,
from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope.
Mufasa25
A.S. Neil (1966) Freedom—Not License! Book. p.47
Joseph Campbell (1949) The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Book.p.2
25 Allers and Minkoff (1994) The Lion King. Animated Film.
23
24
18
Hero’s eyes opened with a start ‘I was in the forest’ –– that much was clear, but the rest
was rather hazy. It felt like the end, or the beginning. Thinking backwards, she smiled. “Yes”
she thought, I was having the most intense dream… one of those dreams that ends with you
finding yourself exactly where you are when you wake up. A moment of synchronicity between
the dream world, and, well, here. I!had been walking through the woods and “I ran across a
monster who was sleeping by a tree, I looked and frowned, and the monster was me” floated
through her mind.26
It wasn’t a scary dream, or really even a happy dream. Strange. Like one of those
natural history specials on PBS.27 Some computer animated rendering of the dinosaurs… Sitting
there listening to the birds sing she tried to make sense of the images that came flooding back. It
had felt like a dream of evolution set to some great rhythm that was now echoing in the distance.
She’d been standing on molten rock, watching fireballs and lightening bolting from the
sky. From below, oceans appeared, first blue, then purple, and finally green. The rocky ground
softened as giant mushrooms came and went, and the lush green of plants spread over the
landscape. There was a dinosaur, eating a tree. A large dragonfly the size of an eagle. A giant
sloth the size of an elephant. It all happened in a blurry rush of movement that only became
clear when Hero focused and something like a photograph would appear momentarily. A forest
David Bowie (1970) “The Width of a Circle” The Man Who Sold The World. Song.
Eons is a series of videos produced by the public broadcasting system (PBS) that explores the deep history of planet Earth. It is well worth
watching and can be found at: pbs.org/shows/eons
26
27
19
arose around her, as if she’d taken a seat and just watched the seasons change. She could have
been staring for a thousand years… Looking around at the forest, a message came through loud
and clear— You wouldn't believe what I've been through.
This triggered a moment of self-reflection, and Hero stopped breathing for second as she
remembered past the dream, past the forest itself. That auditorium, Hero’s question, the
existential crisis, that squirrel, and the teary deal with God, the bargaining for a new creation
narrative… Just something other than being the species destroying the planet.
That was all she wanted. A way to make sense of her identity without being the villain in
the story. She didn’t particularly want to be the Hero anymore either. She really just wanted a
sense of place and purpose. She’d tried taking on the weight of saving the world, but it had
crushed her. She had ended up in pieces on the floor. It was the picking up and reassembling of
those pieces that felt important now. It seemed a paradoxical reaction, but by focusing so much
on trying to fix the world, it appeared that Hero had actually broken something within her. Now
she was trying to save herself.
In hindsight, it all seemed melodramatic, hitting rock bottom, asking for help, hoping she
could be on the receiving end of some divine bit of wisdom. It all seemed childish now.
Nonsensical. And yet, the thought struck her: I had desperately asked Earth for help, and then,
had this lucid natural history dream.
Looking around it was the strangest thing; the plants seemed slow, or, somehow
impermanent. It was as if she could see the forest growing. Ghost-like images of the dream
superimposed themselves over the forest. As if her mind’s eye filled in the past and the future
simultaneously. With unfocused eyes, she saw a time lapse, like those videos of plants growing
from seed. Sort of like seeing time projected onto the whole forest. In the blink of an eye, Hero
20
could see the colors changing from the lush greens of today into the golden yellow and brown of
the winter, the flashes of overwhelming white, and the soft greens that emerge as the spring
returns.
It reminded her of that scene in The Matrix where Neo gets plugged into the computer
and learns Ju Jitsu—all of it—in a matter of minutes. She certainly hadn’t woken up knowing
how to fight, but there was something new, something that felt like it wasn’t there before. ‘As if
I had terabytes of vision downloaded into my consciousness,’ she thought, ‘Neo got the data
from the rebellion’s computer network, but I’m not hooked up to any networks… where did all
this vision come from?’
That existential doomsday clock moved a little further into the periphery as her vision
filled with these GIF’s of life. There was something very calming about this new set of visions.
A nice respite from the doomsday clocks that had been haunting Hero.
She thought about Captain Hook and the alligator who swallowed the clock… oh how
that alligator had plagued Hook.28 Laughing a bit as she saw the parallel, it was funny somehow-picturing that haunting voice of climate change as an alligator who swallowed a clock. Hook
was triggered by the sound of a clock, reminded of the looming threat of the alligator who had
already bitten off his forearm and was determined to eat the rest of him… This was what It felt
like, in some sense, she had been traumatized by an awareness of the socio-planetary crisis. A
flood of images, narratives and understandings about the direct consequences of her life for the
rest of the natural world’s population were never far from mind. Like the association for Hook
28 J. M. Barrie (1911) Peter and Wendy: The Story of Peter Pan. Book.
21
between the clock and the alligator, she had learned to become triggered by everyday objects.
Almost all of them.
In fact, she’d learned so many bad associations that there was never a time she could look
around the room and not find dozens of ‘clocks’ hauntingly ticking back at her. There were so
damn many of them that navigating through the world became the task of trying to follow the
path of least clocks… Which, sort of by definition means focusing your attention on the
clocks— even if only as a means of attempting to avoid them.
There was just something funny about this thinking back… that she—or anyone else—
could have expected anything other than her own trajectory; feeling alone and crippled under the
emotional weight of knowing her presence on this planet was akin to that of a cancer. There was
some solace in knowing that she— and many of her people— were at the very least, self-aware
of the situation. Cancers ultimately commit suicide by growing to the point that they destroy the
environment they live in. We seem to be on this path self-destruction, while often
simultaneously possessing an earnest desire to save the world.
There’s some serious cognitive dissonance here, she thought, I wonder if we’ll ever
figure out h…
“Interesting, very interesting.”
“Huh?”
She looked around, not able to place the voice but again noticed something falling out of
the tree. She looked up, tracing the path of falling debris, and found yet again the squirrel sitting
on a tree branch staring at her while decimating another pinecone. She made eye contact and
asked,
"What are you looking at?”
“You.” said a voice in her head, “Isn’t that obvious?”
22
Feeling a little stupid she smiled, “I guess it is.”
“You humans can be so ignorant, eye contact is a universal
language, it means— I’m looking at you.”
It was strange. The squirrel wasn’t exactly talking. It was mercilessly devouring a
pinecone. Staring all the while. And yet, somehow, she could hear its voice, or thoughts, or
something. It was probably a hallucination. She’d fallen in the rabbit hole, and some deep part
of her psyche was manifesting this Cheshire Cat like dynamic with a squirrel.29 Maybe she was
actually going crazy. That was definitely possible. She had spent enough time in the big city to
know that people were perfectly capable of having breaks with reality and suddenly occupying
entirely different worlds. She’d watched entire conversations happen between a person and what
appeared to her as empty air or an inanimate object. She remembered, The Man Who Mistook
His Wife for a Hat and grew slightly concerned30 Was this what was happening, was she going
crazy.
“Am I losing my mind?”
“Maybe you have found it.”
‘Oh god.’ she thought. It was happening to her!
“Oh, you can stop me if you really want to… Most of the animals I
know gave up even trying to communicate with your kind
generations ago. It’s mostly pointless. We listen sometimes, but
even that can be painful. You just seemed a little different. I was
29
30
Lewis Carrol (1865) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Book.
Oliver Sacks (1985) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. Book.
23
listening yesterday, and you—unlike any other human I’ve ever
met—seemed to understand that you were already lost. Most of
your species has such a strong superiority complex that you would
never ask for directions because that would mean admitting that
you’re lost. From our perspective the vast majority of you have
been lost for nearly as long as we can remember. There are those
of your kind who still speak with us regularly, but they are
becoming increasingly rare and from what they say increasingly
powerless within your world. I’m pointing out that being able to
hear me, might suggest that you have found a part of your mind,
perhaps it is a part of you that was lost generations ago.”
It was an interesting thought. She certainly did feel lost. It felt very uncomfortable to
allow herself to have a conversation with a squirrel. At the same time, there was something
oddly comforting about it.
“So, you are saying that all humans used to be able to speak with
animals?”
“Yes. There was a time when we all communicated.”
“We used to speak the same language?”
“Not exactly, it’s more like before there was what you call
‘language’—we all just understood each other. The body makes
sense out of the many signs and signals in the world… Like right
now, I’m communicating in my language, and you, are
understanding me in your own. I have always considered this
24
ability a gift from our common ancestor and millions of years of coevolution.”
Ohh, like the universal language translators in Star Trek she thought.
“What happened?”
“We started living in different stories.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your people started telling a story that placed them in the center
of the world. Many of us protested this, pointing out the arrogance
and absurdity of such a claim, but their communications fell on
increasingly numb minds, which continued building a new world
right on top of ours… The story I have heard is that at first, they
would ignore us consciously, but as time passed, generations grew
up in the shadow of their parent’s ignorance. Those children, and
their children’s children, made the major perceptual step from
ignoring us, to not actually understanding that we are here to
ignore in the first place.”
“What’s your story?”
“That’s simple. We live in the circle of life.”
“Will you tell me that story?”
“The story of the circle of life means something a bit different for
every-body. It’s what connects us, but we still have our own little
25
niches. The circle of life is less a story that you tell, and more the
kind of story that you embody.”
“Then how do I embody the circle of life?”
“You just have to find the circle of life and embed yourself within
it.”
As she entertained this vision, thinking about what it meant to find the circle of life, the
squirrel scurried up the tree and out of sight. Hero thought, ‘Find the circle of life and embody
it’ as she waited for the squirrel to return— but it did not. After a while, she got up and left her
spot under the tree and started meandering her way out of the forest.
While walking Hero pondered if talking to a squirrel was all that different than having a
conversation with any number of other cultural objects or institutions.
She thought about shopping; she might spend 20 minutes talking to herself about whether
or not to buy a particular pair of shoes. And in some sense this conversation was all happening
inside her, but this was dialog was also very much occurring between Hero and the shoes. The
process of narrowing down to a particular pair of shoes meant saying ‘no’ in some form of
another to all the other shoes in the store. In some sense, a key to grocery shopping was an
internal dialog that allowed you to walk those isles saying ‘no’ to some forty thousand of the
items and ‘yes’ to maybe twenty-five or thirty. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever bought something
without a little story floating through her head— narrating in the present tense— justifying her
decisions.
26
Social constructions speak to us through inanimate objects all the time, so is it all that
crazy to have other living things speak to us…If she can have an internal dialog with a pair of
shoes, why not a squirrel?
She tried to imagine what it might be like if everything she had committed to memory—
the various street layouts, the movie plots, the brand identities, the rules of grammar, the names
of celebrities— if all of it were replaced by knowledge of the seasons and creatures of this
world.”31 Unfortunately she realized it was probably true that she could identify more corporate
brand logos than common local plants and animals. Looking around she noticed that she had just
a fraction of the language to describe this environment compared to what she could say as she
imagined walking through a grocery store.
This was one of the pernicious side effects of consumer culture; we have redirected much
of our interpretative power away from nature and toward fostering specific interpretations of
particular products and brand identities. A sort of environmental synesthesia— a crossing of our
interpretive wiring that somehow redirected our ever-present capacity for communion with the
world away from active interpretation of natural features and toward passive reaction to human
constructions.
As she kept walking and focused her attention on the plants, and birds and bugs— she
felt better. While she was not able to name all of the different species that she saw, if she tried, it
was actually pretty easy to distinguish them. She realized that when the living thing is
happening in front of you, you don't really need to have a name to appreciate it. There was
31Chellis
Glendinning (1994) My Name Is Chellis & I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization. Book. p.19
27
something in being surrounded with all this life that—when Hero allowed it— triggered in her a
“sense of wonder so indestructible” that it had somehow survived in her all these years.32
After finding a particularly cool looking mushroom and taking a photo of it, she decided
to make it a game and spent the rest of the walk looking for them. She found seven different
mushrooms before she reached the edge of the forest.
Hero emerged from the forest and looked around trying to orient herself— soon realizing
trail she’d started following had brought her our right behind the college’s organic farm. She
walked around the perimeter fence, snacking the on the raspberries growing through it. Hero
loved raspberries—they were usually so expensive, and she could not help but feel like she’d
won the lottery, all you could eat organic raspberries! And Ron Finley’s voice floated through
her head, “Growing your own food is like printing your own Money”33
After eating her fill, she kept walking around the farm, heading back to the main trail
towards campus—but she’s stopped in her tracks as she turned the corner and walked past a big
carved wooden sign on a tree. It read: “The Circle of Life a Community Garden”.
Carson and Kelsh (1998) The Sense of Wonder. Book.
Ron Finley –– I first heard him say this in his Ted Talk, but It’s one of his sayings, he says it a lot, it’s even on merch you can purchase on his
Website: http://ronfinley.com/
32
33
28
Hero was staring at the sign, rather dumfounded, when she heard
someone walking up behind her, “Hello,” the women said, “It’s a nice
sign.”
And after a smile,
“Is there anything in particular I can help you with?”
“Oh no, you just caught me in a serendipitous
moment— I was just walking through the forest
thinking about what it would mean to find the circle
of life, and then low and behold,”
said Hero, gesturing to the sign mounted on the tree.
“Well,” the gardener replied, “this place has a habit of
drawing people in… It’s powerful.”
“Caught my attention” said Hero.
Opening the gate, the gardener said,
"You’re welcome to wonder around. I’m here today for a couple hours to spread
out some compost… and you’re more than welcome to join me with that too,”
adding “I’m Rachel—by the way.”
“I'd be happy to help…and my name is Hero.”
“Nice to meet you Hero,” said Rachel.
“We should go get a couple of rakes, and we might as well grab the other
wheelbarrow and get some more compost too. We’ve got a lot of trees to feed.”
29
A few minutes later Hero was walking behind Rachel as she pushed the wheelbarrow
down the path in between the beds to little orchard at the back. Hero counted 16 trees and a
number of vines crawling along the back wall. The gardener stopped a couple feet from the
trunk of one and tipped over her wheelbarrow and instructed Hero to go to the next tree and do
the same. Once Hero understood the flow of the task at hand, they worked for a while
exchanging small talk now and then, each of them with a wheelbarrow and rake, making trips
back-and-forth to the large compost pile.
The gardener had explained that the goal was to get somewhere around an inch of
compost evenly spread across the ground under the trees. It felt good for Hero to use her
muscles. To have such a clear physical goal, move this stuff from that big pile over there— then
spread it out over here. A different kind of work.
After a while Hero got up the nerve to ask:
“Suppose you were trying to find the circle of life, you know, not this community
garden, but like the big idea… like if you were trying to be part of the circle of
life, what would you do?”
“Oh, I think you're part of the circles of life whether you're aware of them or not.
That's inescapable. I do lots of things that help ground me in the cycles, but
spreading compost is definitely one of them.”
“How so?”
“The nutrient cycle is one of the big complex natural systems that I think of when
I look for the circles of life…The decomposers are the means by which last year's
death becomes building materials for this year’s life. You see, applying compost
30
doesn’t just increase soil fertility—it is a crucial part of the process that gave us
fertile soil in the first place. We are feeding the Earth.”
“I like that.” said Hero, thinking to herself that it couldn’t be that easy. Was
applying compost really a way to act out a circle of life? The critic in her tried to
counter this framing, it seemed too simple. Too focused. Composting might be
good, but she wasn’t going to settle for a simple answer in her quest for the circle
of life. Eventually asking aloud,
“Where else do you find the circle of life?”
“Where don’t you?” Replied Rachel without really giving Hero a chance to
answer before she continued,
“It’s everywhere… So, it’s less about where you look and more about which
lenses you look through, and where you choose to focus.”
“Ok, but what lens? and where do you focus.”
“I think trophic dynamics is a good lens… and lately I’ve been focusing on the
decomposers."
“Trophic dynamics?”
“Yea, that’s a more technical term, basically it describes the sum of all food
chains in a particular ecosystem, which when you actually look at them appear
much more like food web than food chain. If you squint your eyes just right, the
populations of an ecosystem can be divided into three categories: producers,
consumers, and decomposers. Although the species will vary widely, you will
find these three categories in nearly every ecosystem… and yet, if you look
31
around at our culture, we have gotten really good at production, and consumption,
but we remain ignorant of decomposition. In a sense, we have been at war with
the decomposers for generations. I have often thought one of the best things we
can do to rediscover our relationship with the natural world, and its circles of life,
is to make peace with the decomposers.”
“Hum… what do you mean by war with the decomposers?” questioned Hero.
“Think about it, the decomposers are still one of our primary competitors for
food, shelter, and our own deep history. How many loaves of bread or fresh
tomatoes have you lost to them? What percentage of your food has undergone
pasteurization? Or has been frozen? Or dehydrated, or has some form of
preservatives added? These are all, in a sense, effectively weapons we have
developed in our war against the decomposers… How many houses are lost each
year by molds, fungi, or termites?
Part of wood becoming lumber involves a process of infusing it with any number
of chemicals chosen specifically for their toxicity.34 That’s why you should never
burn treated lumber.35 How many creosote-soaked pilings have polluted the very
waters we swim in?36 How much industrial pollution has occurred because there
was no plan or sense of responsibility for the decomposition of their chemical
byproducts? Chlorine bleach, for example, reacts to form dioxin, a known human
hormone disrupter— but its widely used in textile manufacturing, cotton
Schultz, Nicholas, and Preston, (2007), “A Brief Review of the Past, Present and Future of Wood Preservation” Pest Management Science. Journal
Article.
35 Tame, Dlugogorski, and Kennedy (2007) “Formation of Dioxins and Furans During Combustion of Treated Wood.” Progress in Energy and
Combustion Science. Journal Article.
36 Skagit County Marine Resources Committee (2009) “Skagit County Creosote Inventory and Removal Project: Phase III” Report.
34
32
processing, and paper making. I could go on and on, but the point is we’ve
screwed ourselves time and time again because we only account for production
and consumption, and then externalize decomposition— as if that is somebody
else's problem…”
Rachel paused for a second looking off into the distance, eventually continuing,
“You know, in some ways it’s a problem of imagination, or vision—when we
think about the world, we fail to grasp on a conceptual level that decomposition is
an integral part of how our world works. It is not so much that we fail to
understand decomposition when we look directly at it, but more like, when we
look at anything else, we fail to ask ourselves how decomposition applies?”
“Do you have an example of ‘anything else’?”
“Take the pyramids for example, they are unquestionably an outstanding example
of ancient human engineering, are they not?”
“Yea, they are, and other stone structures around the world too,” Hero said, seeing
flashes of Tikal, Mesa Verde, Ayutthaya and any number of others in her mind’s
eye.
“Precisely. There are ancient structures made of stone found all over the world…
How do those that relate to the decomposers?”
Hero thought about the question for a second before answering,
“I guess because stone doesn’t really decompose.”
“Exactly. Stone doesn’t decompose at nearly the same rate and is much harder to
build with than any other number of other organic materials— wood being the
33
most obvious. If we see examples of structures made of stone all over the world,
and account for the decomposers, one can only imagine all the human-made
structures of the past created from wood, grasses, bamboo, and reeds that have
been consumed by the decomposers. We will never know exactly what they built,
but it also seems foolish, not to at least try.”
Hero found herself thinking back to the Ewok Treehouse villages in that galaxy far-far
away37… She had experienced a brief obsession with ancient structures a few years back, and
for all the hours of YouTube documentaries she had watched, she couldn't remember anyone
ever making this point, but now it seemed so obvious,
“I see what you mean, an artifact is an artifact because it escaped total
decomposition… because the vast majority of organic material does decompose,
what remains of our ancestors, is by definition, what didn’t decompose.”
“Yes! exactly” Said Rachel. “We only know of the dinosaurs because some of
their bones didn’t fully decompose for 65 million years!” Adding, “or at least they
decomposed in such a way as to preserve their structure. If I remember correctly,
a fossil is sort of like a bone that has turned to stone.”
And struck with another thought Hero added, “And the way that we know the
dinosaurs are 65 million years old, is through measuring another kind of
decomposition. On a molecular level, some decomposition reliably occurs at a
very steady rate. We say the dinosaurs are 65 million years old because we can
measure the rate of atomic decomposition in those fossils.”
37 Richard Marquand (1983) Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Film.
34
“Yes. Or, in the sediment surrounding them. Radiometric dating has been crucial
in establishing the timeline of natural history… I had never really thought about
atomic decay in that way-as another form of decomposition. Stratigraphy is
important for dating fossils too!”
“What’s that?”
“Stratigraphy is the branch of geology that relates the layering of sediment over
time.” Switching subjects Rachels added,
“I’m getting thirsty—going to go get some water— you?”
“Sounds good,” Hero replied— still lost in thought…
On the walk back over to the shed, hero realized that it had been like sixteen hours since
drinking any water and was thus very thankful when the gardener pulled down a mason jar, filled
it from the tap, and handed it Hero.
After a large gulp Hero said, “Thank you I lost my reusable water bottle
yesterday.” Having realized on the walk over that she’d left it sitting on the floor
next to her seat in the auditorium the night before, after asking that wicked
question and getting lost in her head.
Pulling a lid out from a drawer and handing it over, Rachel said, “You can keep
this one,” adding jokingly, “Just keep track of it, after all, the vessel that contains
water might just be the most use-full invention of our species. It's certainly more
valuable than the wheel and the microchip.”
Hero laughed, realizing that what Rachel said was probably true, “I'll take better
care of this one.”
35
There was something about Rachel that intrigued Hero. She kept saying things that Hero
basically already knew, but she seemed to have a way of rearranging them into a pattern that
Hero had never noticed before, but then once she saw that pattern, Hero couldn’t help but feel
that she wouldn’t be able to unsee it.
Hero knew from personal experience that bugs, bacteria and fungi regularly stole food
from the intimacy of her own kitchen, and of course it made sense that we have been competing
for food with bugs and bacteria and fungi for really long time. She had just never really put it all
together as front line in a war between trophic levels.
Thinking about Ishmael38 she asked, “Have you read Daniel Quinn?”
“Oh yes, my favorite is After Dachau39, but yea, I think I’ve read everything he’s
ever written. Why do you ask?”
“I was just thinking about it, and I was wondering if this war with the
decomposers maybe one of the qualities that distinguish the Takers and the
Leavers?”
Smiling Rachel replied, “You know I've never thought about that, but I think
you're probably right. The Leavers take only what they need and leave the rest
behind as food for everything else. While the Takers take all of the food for
themselves and do their best to guard it from everything else.”
“I like that, I always felt like the Takers metaphor was so clear, but the Leavers
was much harder to visualize… But I see it now, everything that the Leavers
38
39
Daniel Quinn (1992). Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. Book.
Daniel Quinn (2001) After Dachau. Book.
36
leave becomes food for something else, which becomes food for something else,
and so on and so on.”
“Yeah, you could read that story through the lens of soil ecology. It's not just that
the takers took all the food and locked it up away from other people, they were
also taking the food away from the decomposers. Of course, overtime this leads
to decreases in soil fertility, which leads directly to the need for the takers to
continuously expand their territory. I’m happy you thought of that.”
“Me too.” Said Hero.
“Shall we get back to work?” asked Rachel.
Hero agreed, and on the walk back the gardener went on, “I might use that
vocabulary to help encourage people to compost at home, of course it would only
work for people who’ve read Ishmael, but then again, everyone should … I really
like the idea that composting, however small, is a means by which you could
become a ‘Leaver in your own home.’ I’m always looking for ways to talk about
composting in ways that I feel do it justice.”
“Do it justice?”
“Yea, a lot of people have negative associations with composting, and we need to
navigate through that. Composting is, in effect, feeding the soil that feeds us.
You asked about the circles of life earlier, and I think there is no lesson in life that
we need to learn more desperately than awareness that we are intimately
connected to the cycles of life, and that we have the agency to take that
knowledge and re-understand ourselves.”
37
“You really like compost, don’t you?” Hero responded jokingly.
“I do.” Rachel smiled, “I think composting is a way to witness something magical
about how the world works… Follow me I want to show you something.”
Walking, the gardener went on, “For the last eight years I have insisted on
planting these demonstration plots, where I plant the same things into side-by-side
plots, one amended with significant amounts of compost, and one given only
water. You can see some difference now, but by the end of the season it is rather
staggering.”
When they arrived at the plots Hero saw that the gardener was right, she could see the
difference. One of the plots look considerably lusher and more alive than the other. The plants
were significantly bigger, greener, fuller looking… and Rachel went on,
“The lesson is that if you feed your food scraps to the decomposers, they in turn
feed the plants, who eventually feed us. This can be witnessed here on an
experiential level. I dare say, the person who has not seen their watermelon rind
transformed into a lush tomato is missing a key understanding about our world. It
has become fashionable to say things like ‘the world is all connected’ or ‘we are
all one’ but our familiarity with these catchphrases obscures the life-changing
implications that emerge if we take them seriously.40 It’s very challenging to take
a story seriously if you cannot find it tangibly in our own personal life. By story,
I don’t mean a work of fiction, but rather the way that we make sense of events
and process experiences as they unfold around us.41 We all know the story about
40
41
Joanna Macy (2007) World as Self, World as Lover; Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal. Book. p.30 !
Macy and Johnstone (2011) Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy. Book. p.14
38
gravity, but we also all have a sensory experience of gravity. When there’s
integrity between story and sensory experience—well— we can do what would
have previously been assumed to be impossible. We can do magic. We can fly.”
Hero wondered what it would mean to take ‘the world is all connected’ as seriously as we
take the proposition ‘I can separate this part of the world from that part’… In some sense, it
seemed the difference between natural and human constructed laws. You can break our laws;
you can’t really break natural laws.
Rachel kept going, “Most of us know a story about nutrient cycling, but
unfortunately, relatively few of us has had the sensory experience of the nutrient
cycle. This is a problem because the nutrient cycle is as intimately intertwined
with our lives as gravity. For better or worse, the fact is, our actions have a much
bigger influence on nutrient cycling than they do on gravity. That’s why I’m so
into composting, it offers a window through which we can glimpse something
crucial about the way the world works…”
Hero chided back, “You ignore gravity at your own peril.”
“Yes! But this is important, once you understand gravity, you can play with it.
Once you understand the nutrient cycle, you can play with it. We cannot build
satellites or bridges without understanding gravity. We cannot hope to either
understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and
manage the trees and the soil too.”42
42
Freeman Dyson (1992) From Eros To Gaia. Book. p.172
39
“You know, I see what you're saying. Although, I must confess I'm one of those
people you suggest is missing that crucial experience. I have never watched my
watermelon rind transform into a tomato. You're making me wish I could have a
compost bin, but I live in an apartment.”
“You know, you could have a worm-bin.” Apparently reading Hero’s face, she
added, “I have one inside.”
“Really, doesn’t it smell bad? And don’t the worms escape?”
“Nope, not as long as it’s maintained properly; the right bedding materials,
moisture, aeration and food supply are all it takes. Oh, and of course, the worms,
and the bin as well. You can buy the bins, but they’re also pretty easy to make.
There are lots of videos about DIY worm bins on YouTube out of buckets—and
you can almost always get free 5-gallon buckets from the recycling bin outside
the cafeteria. If you would like, I could give you some worms before you go.”
“I’d like that” said Hero, “I'll give worm-bin composting a try.” After pausing for
another moment of reflection, she went on to say, “This all feels very
serendipitous.”
“How so?” asked Rachel
“Yesterday I felt so hopeless and overwhelmed. Our future felt so uncertain. You
know, like we can no longer take it for granted that our civilization will survive,
40
or even that our planet will remain hospitable to complex forms of life.43 I was
really feeling that yesterday.”
“You were really feeling it?” Rachel echoed in a softer voice.
“Yea” Hero agreed, “like I was a cancer upon this planet. We just have so many
problems. I've spent the last many years looking at those problems, and the
pattern I see over and over again is humans —and by extension human systems—
growing indefinitely. If a cell in your body grows indefinitely, we call it cancer–
and yet, we humans celebrate our own continuous growth as the greatest success
story ever.”
Remembering where she’d started, and not wanting to get lost again in the negatives, Hero
pivoted and went on,
“Then this morning walking through the woods I was thinking about finding ‘the
circle of life’ you know, as a juxtaposition to the story of indefinite growth–and
suddenly I walked out of the forest here, met you, and now you’re offering me the
opportunity to compost and grow soil in my apartment. I can feed some of my
food waste to worms, and in turn, feed their waste to my house plants. You just
told me how important you think composting is, and frankly that is a much more
tangible connection than I had expected to find.” Adding hastily, “Although I'm
not really sure what I did expect.”
43
Macy and Johnstone (2011) Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy. Book. p.1-2
41
“I’m so sorry. I fear that fear is my generation’s fault. We made a big mistake
when it came to educating your generation about environmental problems.44 We
started with the catastrophes–teaching children about climate change and melting
ice sheets and the disappearing rainforest first, because we thought it was most
important. And well, how do I say this…the mistake we made was not
understanding the psychology of primary associations. You should have learned
about composting through sensory experience years before we introduced climate
change. We effectively taught millions of children to characterize their
relationship with nature using themes of doom and gloom. We took the world's
biggest problems and brought them to elementary, middle and high schools all
over the world and effectively said ‘You are responsible for this!’ We screwed up
because we failed to understand that for many children —and frankly adults too—
this was actually the first time they really thought about their relationship to the
natural world. Which means their introduction to the fields of human ecology
was through learning about its very worst and most abusive relationships.
But, yea, the circles of life…please know those bad relationships are just a small
part of a much bigger story. We should be helping our children understand that it
is our relationships with the natural world that give us life. We got it exactly
backwards. It’s like introducing sexuality by discussing examples of sexual
violence––before they even reached puberty. We wanted to inspire you, but too
often we just traumatized you.”
44
David Sobel (1996) Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education. Book.
42
Rachel looked solemn, and took a deep breath before continuing, “I think that we
had been traumatized by the situation ourselves and we felt powerless to do
anything about it, so we repeated one of the most dysfunctional, yet persistent
patterns of intergenerational human behavior: We repeated the trauma cycle.
That is to say, we found a population with even less agency than ourselves and
reenacted the traumatic experiences from the power position. Sometimes I fear
that those of you who took us seriously might have gotten the worst of it. At my
age I have come to understand that one of the worst things you can do to someone
is to tell them the story of the world in which they are the villain. I was a part of
that, and I am sorry. There is something particularly dangerous about being so
convinced about the righteousness of your intention that you’re blinded to the
unintended consequences of your actions. But that's a lesson you might have to
learn from personal experience.”
Hero was a little taken aback, “I don't think I have ever heard anyone say
anything like that before…Thank you, I suppose.”
Thinking back on her experience and trying to integrate the gardener’s words she felt some
resistance, perhaps due to a couple of teachers who she both loved and had successfully scared
the shit out of her about the environment.
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to admit you're wrong.” Rachel went on, “although,
personally I find it harder to keep telling myself ‘I’m Right’ once I’ve seen the
unintended consequences of my actions up close. But… environmental education
has grown and developed a lot since then, and I think the importance of
introducing the natural world through sensory experiences and intimate examples
43
of connection are finally breaking through. This foundation of appreciation for
complex interconnectivity of life on Earth is a necessary foundation for being able
to really deal with these global environmental problems. You should’ve
experienced composting long before you were expected to take on the weight of
climate change.” She looked Hero directly in the eyes, and continued, “Your
response-ability is to do the best you can do, with exactly what you have, in the
location you are in. I mean it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is likely
projecting their own sense of insecurity.
The uncertainty of climate change and its impacts a psychological reality of our
time— there is plenty of insecurity in the air. We all feel it, whether we’re
conscious of it or not. By honoring your pain for the world, by really feeling it,
and not running, or hiding, or suppressing that sense of insecurity, our pain can
become one of our most intimate connections.45 But that sense of insecurity must
be faced head on, otherwise we’ll just keep projecting our shadow’s agency onto
others.” Finishing in a much less serious tone, "It’s like an endless game of hot
potato…But you want to catch that potato, cook it, and eat it!”
Laughing a little, Hero added, “When pigs eat wolves46 — that last metaphor
reminded me of the book I read a couple years ago, a retelling of the three little
pigs fairy tale from a Jungian psychoanalytic perspective. The wolf embodies the
pig’s shadow; each pig the attempts to build a shelter from the Wolf. The first
45
Macy and Johnstone (2011) Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy. Book. p.57-81
46
Charles Bates (1991) Pigs Eats Wolves: Going Into Partnership With Your Dark Side. Book.
44
two are destroyed, but the third pig who, learning from the failures of the first
two, is successful in blocking the wolf out. In the final scene, the third pig invites
the wolf in, confronts it, and eats wolf stew for dinner! It's a good book your hot
potato metaphor reminded me of it.”
“Sounds like a good book, I’ll look for a copy of that later,” Rachel said as she
pulled out her phone— presumably making note of the title.
“I definitely recommend it,” said Hero.
Then after reflecting for a moment, she went on,
“You know, yesterday might have been the first time ever really let go and
actually felt all of this pain and anguish and despair, grief for the world that had
been building up inside of me for who knows how many years. I’ve been through
bouts of depression, when my body felt numb and lethargic for weeks or even
months on end. This felt different. Yesterday my body felt alive; distraught and
completely hopeless, but alive. In all honesty, for the first time in my life I asked
for help from a higher power. Like I needed to have faith in something and my
faith in humanity is running out.”
“That resonates, I have had some intense low points. At this moment in history,
we are called upon to admit that we are without hope. Like the alcoholic, we have
hit ’rock bottom.’ We are powerless before the civilization we inhabit, and we are
powerless over the destiny of our lives within this civilization. This statement
45
does not mean that you and I are powerless as individuals.47 Rock bottom is a
powerful place. It is the place where nearly all recovery stories begin.”
After pausing for a second she added, “And it seems to me like you are on the
path towards recovery. After all, the first three steps of a 12-step program are: 1.
We admit we were powerless over alcohol or any of our addictions–that our lives
had become unmanageable; 2. We come to believe that a power greater than
ourselves can restore us to sanity; and 3. We make a decision to turn our will and
our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.48 You might have
crossed a threshold…”
Hero was a little taken aback by the synchronicity with which her experience over the last
24 hours and the first three steps of a 12-step program aligned. Of course, for her it wasn’t drugs
or alcohol that she felt powerless over, but more like industrial civilization, and her position
within it.
“What's the fourth step?” she asked.
“Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
Hero thought about this for a second before saying, “I like the idea of a searching
and fearless ecological inventory.”
“That sounds like a worthy reframe” said Rachel, quickly adding, “Although,
that’s also a very big task, we are so damn interconnected that trying to inventory
all of your earthly relationships is a serious endeavor. Don't expect to have a
47
Chellis Glendinning (1994) My Name is Chellis & I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization. Book. p.128
48
Bill W. (1976) Alcoholics Anonymous; The Big Book 3rd edition. Book. p.59-60
46
whole inventory anytime soon. Just find a thread and follow it. If you are
searching and fearless, you will find yourself crossing the threshold into new
territory.”
Hero let the gardener’s words swim around in her body for a bit, before saying,
“Well, if you’re willing to give me worms, I have found my first thread. I really
liked what you were saying about the decomposers; I had never thought about us
as at ‘war with the decomposers’, but I think you are right, there is something
incredibly interesting there.”
“Wonderful. I'm glad the decomposers grabbed your attention. I’d love to hear
what you discover. Would you want to come back next week? Same time? You
know we could get you set up with a garden plot too if you're interested?”
“I would really like that,” said Hero.
“Okay. It's a plan: 9 o'clock next Sunday. I'm excited. I want to talk about
something else too, an invitation of sorts.”
This last bit peaked Hero’s attention, but before she could even ask about the invitation Rachel
was pulling out her phone again and saying,
“Oh look at the time, it's almost 11:30, and I'm supposed to be downtown at the
food bank at noon! I'll leave a note in the shed so someone else can finish
47
applying the compost this week, or we'll do it next Sunday. Let's get you those
worms!”
Ten minutes later Hero walked along the trail back through the woods holding an old
yogurt container filled with worms. The gardener had punched little holes in the top with a
safety pin. “So the worms can breathe,” she had explained.
What a day she thought—and it was only noon. Words and phrases kept swimming in
and out of focus in her mind. Rock bottom—searching and fearless—war and peace with the
decomposers— feeding the Earth. This last thought jolted Hero into an awareness that she was
really hungry.
She usually didn't eat much on campus; a large multinational corporation had an
exclusive contract to serve the food, and consequently, most of it was pretty bad. The campus
bulletin boards were often littered with flyers describing some atrocity committed by the
company serving that food. But Hero was starving, so she decided to get some nachos from the
cafeteria. On the walk over she decided that after she ate, she would go drop the worms off in
her car, grab her notebook, and then to the library to do some research on the decomposers. She
knew a bit, but it had been years since that environmental studies class, and while she thought
the gardener’s comments were correct, she wanted to explore some more academic sources on
the decomposers.
As she sat eating, she wondered what a searching and fearless inventory of her plate of
nachos would look like? She imagined a map tracing each of the ingredients in her nachos to
48
their source. The sour cream and cheese probably came from industrial dairy farms. The
avocados might be putting money into the pockets of the drug cartels.49 Monocropping,
herbicides, oil-derived pesticides, nitrogen runoff, soil erosion, deforestation, exploitive labor
practices, displaced people, fragmented habitat–– the list could on and on and on–– Fresh fruit,
Broken Bodies50 echoed in her memory.
A fearless and searching socio-ecological inventory of this plate of nachos?
To do it properly, she thought, would be something like a master’s thesis. I could spend
years just trying to fully inventory the ecological impacts of this plate of nachos! And even then,
there would be aspects missing. Perhaps this was what the gardener meant about a lifelong task.
A searching and fearless inventory of human-ecological relationships was something whole
disciplines have been trying to achieve for decades.
She always tried to read the labels and make ethical decisions about the food she ate, but
far too often those decisions were constrained by Hero’s account balance. At the best of times,
she could afford about 75% of her grocery shopping theoretically aligning with her values of
ecological stewardship and ethical labor practices, but at the worst of times almost all
consideration for the integrity of her meals flew out the door—replaced by the simple need to
maximize the ratio of calories ingested per dollar spent. Cheap food–– she always imagined––
had the worst ecological footprint.
Hero tried to imagine finding something positive here, in this plate of nachos, but it
seemed unlikely…
Ruth G. Ornelas (2018) “Organized Crime in Michoacán: Rent‐Seeking Activities in the Avocado Export Market.” Politics and Policy. Journal
Article.
50 Seth M. Holms (2013) Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States. Book.
49
49
She went to the bathroom after she finished, and while washing her hands she noticed a
folded piece of paper with its corner tucked into the mirror. She could see there something
written on it. There was ink bleeding though the back of
lined paper. Pulling it out she read,
“At some point, I became aware that I had
many more choices than I realized, and
gave myself permission to use them.51”
Smiling to herself, imagining the person who
wrote it, she pocketed the little piece of paper and left the bathroom.
At the library, Hero walked up to the research desk and asked the librarian, “for help
finding the decomposers.”
The librarian was looked thoughtful for a moment, and then smiled,
“So, you’re looking for your destiny?”
Hero must've looked puzzled because the librarian quickly followed up with,
“Oh, it’s just an old joke… Let’s see—ecology.”
After some typing and a glance at her computer screen, she said,
51Charles
Bates (1991) Pigs Eats Wolves: Going Into Partnership With Your Dark Side. Book. p.51
50
“I’d go poke around QH.541.”
“Thank you,” said Hero. “I'll go have a look.”
The librarian sent her off with a gracious,
“Feel free to come back if you have any more questions.”
In the appropriate section, Hero scanned the shelves, impulsively pulling out books,
flipping through them and checking the index for ‘decomposition’ or ‘decomposers’. Soon she
had a small stack of books on the floor that felt a bit overly ambitious. As she carried her books
over to her favorite spot on the second floor of the library —underneath the large stained-glass
window— she was reminded a child’s overflowing plate at a breakfast buffet. Hero was good at
taking only what food she could eat, but when it came to all-you-can-read words, she usually
ended up with more words than her brain could possibly process. Some of her earliest memories
were checking out stacks of books from the library. She had spent a lot of time there growing
up, but as a college student it often felt like library was a giant haystack hiding Hero’s needle. It
felt nice to get back a little of that feeling of awe and wonder the library offered as her as a child.
Being a college library, this one was larger and more dynamic than most— something like a Las
Vegas Sunday brunch buffet!
After getting settled, she began flipping through the books. Hero read that all ecosystems,
Require an input of energy, but they also need chemical inputs of water, carbon,
and nutrients…A critical difference exists between the imputes of energy and that
of chemicals. Energy is a one-way process. As energy is used or stored in
changes state and degrades in quality (the second law of thermodynamics).
Unlike energy, nutrients, carbon and water can be used, recycled, and reused time
and again. These chemicals can be stored, transformed into different chemical
configurations, and then returned to their initial state. [this] recycling process [is]
known as a nutrient cycle.52
52
Mark B Bush (2003). Ecology of a changing planet 3rd edition. Book. p.67
51
While reflecting on how energy and chemicals differ on a systemic level in way that they
move through ecosystems, Hero realized that so many of our civilizational level systems were
modeled after the flow of energy. They were unidirectional, linear, and assumed a constant input
and output, a supply chain that started with resources, transformed them into products, and
created waste. This is The Story of Stuff53 she thought. The
difference between cradle to cradle and cradle to grave54. Might
this tension between linear and cyclical systems not just be of
our own creation, but also be found in the relationship between
systems of energy and material? Do we not occupy this
dymaxion place between energy and matter?
She jotted down a couple of diagrams, thinking also about how Spaceship Earth was
fueled by solar energy, but pretty much
everything else was made of chemicals. She
wondered if the story of people could be
understood as those who began to identify
themselves as the embodiment of energy— as
opposed to the material of this Earth. Of course,
she thought, we are both.
But, Hero wondered, what it would look like if we modeled our economy off the flow of
nutrients through an ecosystem? Could it be that our propensity toward linear systems is a
consequence of our understanding the flow of energy before we understood the flows of
53
54
Leonard and Fox (2007) The Story of Stuff. Animated Film.
Braungart and McDonough (2002) Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Book.
52
materials? She didn’t know this history all that well, but it was an interesting thought. Like
learning about climate change before understanding the decomposers. Perhaps economy is a
branch of ecology—and not the other way around. Maybe there was something in the
evolutionary dynamics, like energy was a limiting resource for early human populations, the
populations that adapted to capture and control energy could outcompete everything else, and so
of course those who came to dominate associated that success with energy and began to
reimagine themselves as energy.
Hero also read about both abiotic and biotic forms of decomposition. Abiotic
decomposition occurs without life--exposure to air,
water, light or heat can slowly weather materials
through chemical interactions. This sort of nonbiological interaction frees up nutrients and
minerals in the first place; however, once free,
these materials are taken up by primary producers and sometimes eaten by
consumers, but almost always end up as food for the decomposers. She wrote
down her own definitions for these two categories of decomposition.
She followed an index entry for the ‘decomposers’ and kept reading. She discovered
essentially the same things the gardener had said, but there was something about reading it in a
textbook that was particularly powerful.
53
Without the decomposers life as we know it wouldn’t be possible –– all the dead plants
and animals would just pile up on top of each other and these “accumulations of dead organic
matter would sequester the nutrients required to support plant growth.”55
As the pieces get smaller and smaller the surface area available for the other decomposers
is maximized. She read that, "Fungi and
bacteria are the main initial decomposers of
terrestrial dead plant material, accounting for
about 95% of the total decomposer biomass and
respiration.”56
Hero learned that fungi and bacteria are such great decomposers, not just because of what
they eat, but because of how they eat it. They eat by secreting enzymes that trigger chemical
interactions in the material immediately around their body, making nutrients and minerals bioavailable for absorption. Essentially, bacteria and fungi digest their food outside of their bodies.
As it turns out, digesting outside one's body provides an important ecosystem service by
breaking organic materials back down into bioavailable forms, not only for fellow decomposers,
but also for any primary producers whose roots are within reach.
Hero moved on to a section about trophic dynamics where a big diagram jumped off the
page at her… and so after reading the section and spending a bit of time with the diagram, she
redrew the graphic— adding her own thoughts and using a highlighter to mark the flow of
energy in bright yellow. Just as in the textbook, the diagram took up almost an entire page.
55
56
Chapin, Matson and Vitousek. (2011) Principals of Terrestrial Ecology 2nd edition. Book. p. 11
Chapin, Matson and Vitousek. (2011) Principals of Terrestrial Ecology 2nd edition. Book. p. 186
54
55
She kept going to and reading about differences between plant-based and detritus-based
trophic systems, noting the decomposers tendency toward zero waste. 'One beings’ trash is
another beings’ treasure’ she thought with a smile, in the decomposers world ‘one organisms’
waste is another organisms’ food.’
She learned that fungi form
vast networks of underground
hyphae that allow them to
transport nutrients over
significant distances to where
they are needed… and this
gives fungi a distinct
advantage over bacteria in
nutrient poor environments.
Thinking about bodies
again, she imagined some
oyster mushrooms colonizing
a dead tree in the forest
behind this library, they grow
something like a vascular system the permeates the dead log and sort of turns it back into a living
body. Smiling she thought, ‘When a tree falls in the forest, for how long will its body remain
dead?’
Bacteria, on the other hand, are small and prolific, and they can colonize a rich substrate
incredibly fast…and thus tend to be the dominant decomposer in nutrient dense areas where food
56
is a plenty. She discovered that they could team up with each other, creating ‘biofilms’ in which
many species of bacteria all live together in a “matrix of Polysaccharides secreted by the
bacteria” acting “as a consortium, where each produces only some of the enzymes required to
break down the macromolecule… It’s like an assembly line” and it doesn’t work unless all do
their job.57
Hero thought about how when a building is under construction, a whole team of people
comes together, all with different specialties, each responsible for different aspects of the project:
plumbers, electricians, structural engineers, painters, etc. The list could go on for a building, but
really the analogy could apply to just about any built-thing. We build things as individuals,
groups and societies. We build everywhere we go, sometimes with physical things and others
with linguistic schemes. We built the periodic table of elements, the international space station,
and the alphabet.
This synergy of specialists working together to achieve something they couldn’t manifest
as individuals isn’t just a human thing if bacteria do it too. That’s something
to ponder…Is collaboration a pattern older than hands? Or even hearts?
This reminded her about what the gardener said about humans
and decomposers as symbolic opposites—decomposers are obsessed
with breaking things down while humans obsess over building
things up. For a moment Hero saw it: they were like our other
half. If we are the builders of this Earth, they are the un-builders. We construct while they
57
Chapin, Matson and Vitousek (2011) Principals of Terrestrial Ecology, 2nd ed. Book. p.186
57
deconstruct. We compose while they decompose. They are, in some sense, the yin to our yang,
or vice versa.
But this image was fleeting, as trophic categories came flooding back to mind: Producers,
consumers, and decomposers. There were three roles to play, and while within our civilization
we play both producer and consumer, in the broader context of life on Earth we are just
consumers. To the extent that we produce anything, it’s food for the decomposers.
The circles of life. She reflected back to something
the gardener had said. Circles. There are lots of nutrient
cycles. Water, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus--each has
its own respective biogeochemical cycle which harmonizes
momentarily in the bodies of living things, but each
eventually circulates though environments in a distinct
trajectory. We live in the places where these trajectories
coalesce into bodies.
Sketching a flower of life, Hero imagined each of its circles as representing these
different nutrient cycles. Of course, it was not scaled proportionally, but perhaps that symbol
really did possess some integral bit of wisdom about how the world works.
She had grown wary after seeing it commodified time and time again. The paradox of
the revolutionary artist, she thought, if the revolution is successful, their aesthetics will inevitably
become aesthetics the state.58 She wasn’t religious, but after the seeing something like the
flower of life plastered all over products at the mall, it became much harder to see any
58
Nikolas Haraszti (1987) The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism. Book.
58
enlightened value in the symbol. She remembered seeing an Andy Warhol collection at
Walmart, the giant Curt Cobain portrait in the McDonalds lobby, Chevron/Exxon using the
tagline ‘Human Energy™’ at the end of all their commercials… Any successful bit of
symbology seemed destined to become symbology of the successful. ‘Thou shall not worship
false idols’ — but capital was just so good at appropriating aesthetics. Smiling to herself as she
remembered that the people who took that passage most seriously in an aesthetic sense, also
happened to produce some of the most awe-inspiring geometric imagery.
Catching herself with realization that her mind had wandered off on a tangent, she turned
her attention back to her stack of books and started reading about the carbon cycle. Going back
and forth from textbook to notebook, sketching out carbon cycle. It was a big system, and her
notes quickly filled a whole page.
59
60
During photosynthesis plants capture carbon from the atmosphere in the form of CO2 and
use solar energy to split the C from the O2. The O2 is released back into the atmosphere--this is
where the oxygen we breath comes from! But following the C into the plant, you’ll see it gets
combined with H2O, making any number of carbohydrates: ‘CxHxOx’ she thought, visualizing
the potential chemistry in her head.
Autotrophs (plants) have an ability to capture and store energy through this process of
photosynthesis. With little exception, life forms that can’t produce their own energy this way
(by capturing and storing sunlight) survive by consuming something that has already done the
hard work of securing the carbon into a useful molecule.59 The later are “Heterotrophs”, and
they survive by eating plants, or animals that ate plants, or the dead or digested remains of either
of the former groups. animals contribute to the carbon cycle through respiration. We breath in
O2 and exhale CO2, which reenters atmospheric circulation. Some carbon remains in the organic
materials, and while respiration continues throughout the decomposition process, some carbon is
also stored in the in the topsoil as soil organic matter where it can reside long-term or be taken
back up by plants.
Hero read about the nitrogen cycle too. Nitrogen is everywhere. Our atmosphere is
made of 78% nitrogen, and even though human beings are only 3% nitrogen, it’s really important
for us. And like the carbon in the atmosphere, we only have access to bio-available forms of
nitrogen by eating plants, or animals who ate plants. The interesting part is that even the plants
can’t capture nitrogen directly from the atmosphere. The nitrogen in the air is triple bonded N2,
and thus really hard to separate. The only organisms that can split the N2 bonds of atmospheric
The little exception in this case is organisms making food through chemosynthesis as opposed to photosynthesis. These are generally bacteria
and archaea that live in very extreme environments such as deep-sea hydrothermal vents or inside volcanos.
59
61
nitrogen are bacteria that use an enzyme called ‘nitrogenase’ to create NH3 (ammonia), which,
when mixed with water becomes NH4 (ammonium), which plants can assimilate. Nitrifying bacteria
also turns NH3 into NO3- and NO2- (nitrates and nitrites respectively) which are then taken up by
plants. This process of is called ‘nitrogen fixing’.
Nitrogen fixing plants are species (mostly in the legume family) that have developed
symbiotic relationships with nitrogen fixing bacteria that live on their roots. Other nitrogen
fixing bacteria just like to live in the soil, while cyanobacteria fix nitrogen in the oceans. Once
fixed, nitrogen can cycle up and down though the trophic levels of producers, consumers, and
decomposers, many times. Eventually it will find its way to denitrifying bacteria that will bond
nitrogen atoms back together and rerelease N2 gas back into the atmosphere… The cycle starts
again.
Interestingly, Hero discovered the only other known natural means of splitting
atmospheric nitrogen gas was lightning, which has enough energy to split the triple bonded N2 as
it shoots through the atmosphere. These newly freed nitrogen atoms then bond with water and
eventually fall to earth as rain or snow. Hero had always enjoyed riding out the thunderstorms at
her grandparent’s house in the Midwest, but she never imagined those bolts of lightning that split
the night sky were actually splitting nitrogen on an atomic level…or perhaps more profoundly,
that that nitrogen could be falling down with the rain in her grandmother’s garden, feeding the
plants that would eventually feed her… potentially ending up embodied in Hero. There was
62
something really poetic in the thought and Hero suddenly became aware that she was eagerly
awaiting the next time she would get the chance to experience lighting.
Phosphorus is yet another crucial element humans acquire and incorporate into their
bodies as it cycles through ecosystems. Unlike carbon and nitrogen, phosphorus doesn’t move
through the atmosphere as it cycles, and although our lithosphere (Earth’s crust) is abundant with
the stuff, it’s mostly stored in bio-inaccessible forms—trapped in rocks. When rocks are
exposed ‘chemical weathering’ occurs releasing the phosphates, and many other trace elements
and minerals.
63
Lithotrophs are the class of organisms that can consume inorganic materials through a
biological process. The term "lithotroph" comes from the Greek terms 'lithos' (rock) and 'troph'
(consumer) literally meaning "eaters of rock.” These rock eaters include bacteria and archaea,
and, like the nitrogen fixers, many have evolved into symbiotic relationships with other
organisms. Once phosphorus enters the food chain, it cycles through the tropic levels until it
ends up in a physical location out of reach of the decomposers— for instance becoming buried
underneath sediment on the ocean floor— where it begins that much, much longer journey
transforming back into sediment rock, that will eventually be re-exposed to the elements and
begin cycling again.
Nitrogen and phosphorus are both necessary building blocks for DNA––hard coded into
nearly every cell in the body. Hero imagined the Venn diagram of the two cycles with her
overlapping in the middle, one circle stretching into the sky, while the other moved down deep
below the seas. Remembering her plea for a creation narrative, a story where she wasn’t the
invasive species, the alien invader.
She thought, ‘I am made of Earth and Sky.’ It sounded hokey even in her head. The
kind of statement she would dismiss as so meta that it bordered on meaninglessness or
irrelevance. But for some reason, thinking about it now, in the context of phosphorus and
nitrogen cycles, it set her imagination on fire.
These cycles were not just things that occurred around her, she was actually an embodied
participant. Embodied in the deepest, most dynamic sense of the word. Her body was the
nutrient cycle; both in the sense she was made up of nutrients and that she sustained herself by
continually eating and excreting nutrients. The eating looks inward at the structural elements
functioning to maintain our bodies, while the excreting positions our bodies as one of the
64
structural elements maintaining our ecosystems. In fact, her lineage had been acting as
consumers in the nutrient cycling markets long before anything like a currency or system of
government had been established. For all of human history, we have been eating plants and
other animals, and feeding the decomposers with our death, waste, and defecation.
She sat with that thought for quite a while looking out the window: All organisms are
either consumed or they end up as detritus.60
I am a consumer.
My people are consumers.
We eat producers and other consumers, and in doing so feed the decomposers…
In other words,
Maybe, the gardener was right, and applying composting is our role in the circles of life.
Hero left the library and, remembering her worms in the car, she took a detour so that she
could walk by the dumpsters from the cafeteria where she grabbed a few five-gallon food grade
buckets from the recycling bins. Again, the gardener was right— there was an abundance of
them––so many foods these days came in these big buckets. Reading the labels, she grabbed two
labeled ‘Minestrone Soup’, and two ‘Frying Oil*” (with a little asterisk noting that the ‘oil’
might be a mix of any of the four different kinds of oil).
While walking back to her car she began thinking about the recycling system, and how
the decomposers were kind of like Earth’s built-in recycling system. Except when you looked at
60
Bowman, Hacker and Cain. (2017) Ecology 4th edition. Book. p.472-73
65
effectiveness of the two side by side, the human system was rather pathetic. Human production
is fueled by the extraction of materials, of which a relatively small percentage end up actually
being recycled into the feedstocks for new production or re-placed into the resource pool they
came from.
On the other hand, organic production— anything alive— is mostly built with recycled
nutrients, and it is only because the decomposers are soooo good at finding and eating detritus
that the vast majority of organic production is recycled. Smiling to herself and thinking of the
gardener, ‘it is much harder to stop the decomposers than it is to support them.’ We are sort of at
war with them she thought as she pulled out of the parking lot.
A few minutes later, while stopped at a red light, she glanced over to her right and
noticed two houses next to each other, with drastically different aesthetics––one was clean, with
well-manicured lawn, a few freshly pruned shrubs and a large oak tree in the corner, along the
fence that bordered the neighbors. The neighbor’s property was rather dilapidated looking, with
the yard overgrown. One house was clearly much better than the other, judging by the today's
community standards––in a glance you can make a snap judgment about affluence of the
respective residents, and you'd probably be right. She could just imagine that time-worn trope:
the tension that may arise between neighbors over an unkempt yard. But this time Hero noticed
that giant old oak tree and thought about the situation from its perspective.
Hero knew enough about trees to know that even though its trunk was in the neatly kept
front yard, a large portion of its canopy, and more than likely its roots too, had reached across the
property line into the neighbor’s yard. Hero observed that the ground in unkempt yard was
covered in the decomposing remains of all those oak leaves that must've fallen almost a year ago.
Indeed, it looked like the yard might not have been ‘cleaned’ for many years, the kind that would
66
drive the Dursley’s crazy!61 But from the perspective of that oak tree, these are probably great
neighbors. If I were an oak tree, the people that come and take away all of my leaves each
season after they have fallen would drive me crazy. There goes my supper! There go my
vitamins! Its like…
“Beep!”
Hero was suddenly reminded that she was sitting in traffic as the car behind her honked
to get her attention refocused on the road. She got back into the rhythm of driving but her mind
wandered again as she drove past an upscale hotel and saw a groundskeeping crew working the
landscape. She found herself wondering about how much ‘yard-work’ could also be described as
the ‘removing organic material’—which from an ecosystem services perspective, could be
described as ‘removing the food for the decomposers.’ How many of the ‘jobs’ we have
assigned ourselves in the urban landscape, are actually removing sources of nutrition from the
soil?
Hero thought about the power dynamic at play: we’ll take the food now and bring you
something else to eat later. But she didn’t think that was everything. People have created a
system in which we assume it’s our responsibility to do the work of the decomposers. We take
nutrients away in the form of organic material and then we add nutrients back into the soil as
fertilizer. It seems more out of ignorance than malice–– maybe we project the same relational
dynamic between the decomposers and the producers, that we experience as consumers… but
that’s just not how it works?
61
J.K. Rowling (2008). Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Book. p.39-54
67
From our perspective, the decomposers seem mostly a threat. Like the gardener said,
they’re constantly eating our food and shelters right out from underneath us! Once things start to
mold, rot, and decay we perceive them as lost––and for good reason; they are mostly lost to us.
But decomposing material is not lost to an ecosystem–– quite the opposite. Decomposing
organic material has been found. And found by a really important ecosystem process.
A basket of moldy strawberries might be useless to Hero, but they were still just as useful
to an ecosystem. In fact, from an ecosystem perspective, the decomposers eating the
strawberries is probably more important humans eating them. Lots of organic material goes
straight from the producers to the decomposers. The niche we found is in the space between
them.
A decal on the rear window of a car ahead of her caught her eye. It was the earth with a
triangle of comparable size superimposed over it. She was struck by its similarity to a symbol
she associated with Alcoholics Anonymous. The triangle within the circle. She remembered that
in context the three sides of the triangle were each supposed to represent something, like three
pillars of support: Recovery, Service, Unity… She
muttered under her breath.
Following her earlier train of thought, she
imagined that triangle represented the producers,
consumers, and decomposers… the three pillars of
trophic life that support the whole system.
Letting out a sigh as she parked her car, thinking
about how many circles she had been though over the last 24 hours, she took a couple deep
breaths and decided to let it be…
68
Realizing just how tired she was, she collected the worms and buckets from the trunk of
her car, and walked up the stairs, mulling over a world so full of new experiences and exciting
things to discover. But at the end of the day there was also something incredibly special about
home: like a little environment just for you.
69
Waste(ed.) Home
Day 3
“Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is
killed…To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting
applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past.”
—Joseph Campbell 62
“Do not fight forces; Use them.”
—Buckminster Fuller63
“I'm doing therapy in a different way, I’m doing a kind of therapy of ideas, what
goes on in peoples’ minds, the collective ideas that dominant the culture, like the
idea of growth, and personal journey, and so on…”
—James Hillman64
Joseph Campbell (1949) The Hero with a Thousand Faces. p.213 Book.
Buckminster Fuller (2001) Your Private Sky: R. Buckminster Fuller: The Art of Design Science. Book. p.17
64 James Hillman (1993) - A Deeper Look (hosted by Martin Wasserman). Radio Program.
62
63
70
Hero awoke to the familiar sound of 'Oh You Pretty Things’ floating though the room as
his alarm clock went off the next morning65
"Wake up you sleepy head. Put on some clothes, shake off your bed”
had been the words that woke him up most days since buying this particular smart phone a few
months back. The next lyrics almost always aligned with his next thoughts
“some breakfast and coffee”
Rolling out of bed and glancing at the morning sky:
“Look out the window, and what do I see? A crack in the sky, and a hand
reaching down to me”
Remembering about the nitrogen, he imagined a lightning bolt cracking through the sky, as if a
God were reaching down, handing us the building block of life,
“All the nightmares came today and it looks as though they’re here to stay”
Those haunting clocks, those nightmarish scenarios, they’re here to stay.
“I think about a world to come where the books are found by the golden ones,
written in pain, written in awe, by a puzzle-man who questioned what we were
here for”
Me too, Hero thought.
65
David Bowie (1971) “Oh you Pretty Things” Honkey Dory. Song.
71
“All the strangers came today, and it looks as though they’re here to stay”
what if we are the strangers?
“Oh you pretty things, don’t you know you’re driving your mommas and papas
insane”
Is it our parents? Or our family in a much broader sense that we’re driving insane?
“Let me make it plain, got to make way for the Homo Superior”
Homo Superior? No, make way for something like homo-symbiosis… That was the next stage of
human development he was aiming for. Homo superior is a good way to characterize the last few
hundred years of humanity.
“Look out at your children, see their faces in golden rays, don’t kid yourself they
belong to you, they’re the start of a coming race”
What if this refers not only humans, but all children? Our siblings in the deepest sense.
“We’ve finished our news; the humans have outgrown their use”
Hero paused— now sitting up in bed.
If our lineages survive into the future for anything close to the amount of time they have
survived in the past, we might look back at this era of human development as not only causing
mass extinction, but also as the beginning of a new era.
We are both the cause and consequence of novel selection pressures. Consciously or not,
we choose which species will have a place to live. We select wild animals through conservation
projects and land use changes, and domesticated ones as either pets or sources of food. It’s the
difference between weeds and crops, pets and pests, endangered and invasive species. Would
72
the Pigeon Paradox bring about a new era of conservation?66 An era that drew connections
between the species occupying urban and wild environments? Hero certainly hoped so. But it
was all too easy to imagine how we drive our family — in the Life on Earth sense— insane.
Putting on some pants, his slippers and sweatshirt, Hero went to the kitchen, put some
water on to boil, and went to work grinding some coffee beans on an old hand crank coffee
grinder purchased at an antique shop a few months back. It was a nice physical wakeup exercise
before the caffeine kicked in. The kettle boiled. He poured the water over the grounds and
watched the steam rise off the top as the coffee dripped below. The smell was intoxicating.
Hero could feel the anticipation growing.
When it finished, he grabbed the filter full of ground and caught himself halfway to the
trash can with the thought, ‘Wait! This is food for the worms.’ Pausing awkwardly for a second
in the middle of the kitchen, Hero changed direction, grabbed an old yogurt container from the
cabinet, poured in the grounds, and placed it in next to the sink. Getting a Sharpie from the
drawer, he wrote “WORM FOOD” in really big letters on the side of the container.
Grabbing his coffee, Hero returned to his bedroom and typed “how to make a worm bin”
into YouTube. After watching a few videos Hero understood the basic idea. He was a bit
surprised how easy it would be. He just needed to drill a bunch of holes in three of the four
buckets, and one of the lids. Hero only needed one lid, so the other three would end up in his
own recycling bin. He would need bedding materials too––it seemed about 3/4 should be
something carbon rich, like saw dust or coconut choir, neither of which Hero had. Another video
suggested cardboard, or unwaxed paper. The paper could be printed in black and white, so long
Dunn, Gavin, Sanchez, and Solomon. (2006) “The Pigeon Paradox: Dependence of Global Conservation on Urban Nature.” Conservation
Biology. Journal Article.
66
73
as the printers used soy-based inks. Hero happened to know that the college’s sustainability
policy required it to stock all the printers on campus with soy-based ink and so he was struck by
the image of feeding his old homework to the worms.
Of course, he’d need food scraps too, but he’d already started with the coffee grounds,
and he’d ask Grace if she’d save the pulp next time she made a juice, which she had been doing
almost daily since their community supported agriculture group started delivering the previous
month.
Getting to work, he grabbed the buckets and washed them with soap and hot water in the
sink. That proved to be the most challenging part of the whole process because the apartment
sink was not designed to wash something that large. Still, he figured out a process, and was at
the point of rinsing the last one when Grace walked in, and said,
“Good morning,” followed up a couple seconds later by, “That might be easier in
the bathtub.”
“You’re right. Wish you’d walked in here 20 minutes ago,” adding, “I’m just
about done with the last one.”
“What are you workin’ on?” asked Grace.
“I’m making us a worm bin.”
“Oh, that’s exciting! I like Vermicomposting!”
“Really, I didn’t even know it was really thing until yesterday,” said Hero.
“Well, my community college had like six million worms that ate our cafeteria
food waste. It was like a little on-site recycling facility. I went through the
74
Sustainable Works program there and they were super into it. We used to joke
that worms were our real mascot.”
“Wow, six million? How big was that worm bin?”
“It was about the size of the of small shipping container, maybe 10ft x 25ft…sort
of looked like a giant tanning bed… Where are you planning on putting our new
worm bin?”
“I was thinking the balcony. The Gardner––who gave me the worms––said she
has one inside, and online there are definitely lots of other people who do too, but
I don’t necessarily trust myself to get it right at first so I’m going to start out there
and see how it goes.”
“Sounds good.”
“And I was going to ask also, will you save the pulp for them next time you make
a juice?” Hero asked, gesturing to the container labeled “WORM FOOD” next to
the sink.
“Sure—that’s what I came in here to do.”
As Grace made juice, Hero drilled, and ten minutes later they were done.
Grace was sipping on her juice and Hero was mixing the coffee grounds with the juice
pulp in one of the buckets.
“How was that lecture last night?” Grace asked.
75
Hero thought back, the auditorium seemed so much further away than it actually was. It had
been less than 48 hour ago that he’d tried to convince her to come with him. “It was kind of
depressing to be honest,” he replied.
“Hmm,” Grace hummed in an empathic tone, “like depressing new stuff, or just
the same old depressing stuff?”
“It’s the same old depressing stuff,” He responded, looking up from his
concoction. “I asked a question; I probably didn’t articulate it very clearly. I
wanted to ask if people who had read her book ever started crying when they met
her. I feel like This Changes Everything belongs in a genre of dystopian nonfiction. But in answering… she said something like, ‘I don’t understand why
people think it’s too sad, I only put like three pages of scary climate science in
there because I didn’t want to scare people’ and there was something about that
just got to me, and I don’t think I heard much else.”
“Yea, from what I remember of that book, it was pretty depressing. As I recall, it
was about us knowing exactly how scary climate change was many decades
ago—when we actually had a chance to stop it. But we gave the World Trade
Organization the power to create legally binding agreements and made all of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change accords voluntary.”
“Yep, that’s it in a nutshell,” replied Hero.
“Well, you know the college probably videotaped it, you might be able to go back
and watch it—that might be interesting,” Grace said.
76
“That’s a good idea—For the moment I’m going to focus on making peace with
the decomposers.”
Grace scrunched up her nose but said “That’s a nice thought… Is that what
inspired your worm bin?”
“Yea, sort of…” replied Hero, going on to share a bit of his experience from the
day before…
When he finished Grace said, “You should go check out the county’s composting
facility, I went on a tour last year with a class. It’s pretty cool. I’ve got to get
going to yoga, but I’m sure you can find it online. I bet they do public tours too.”
A few minutes later Hero was hanging up the phone and rushing out the door. He’d
found the website and called the composting facility to check in about a tour, only to find out
that he could join school group tour that morning, if he could make it there by 11 am. That gave
Hero 34 minutes to go 13.2 miles. Which, according to the GPS app in his phone, was totally
possible. He got dressed very quickly and grabbed an apple on the way out the door.
After turning into the driveway of the facility, Hero followed the ‘Visitors’ sign, which
diverted him to the right instead of left. As the road curved around the tree line, the facility
suddenly came into view, and it was rather striking. There were two giant airplane hangar sized
buildings, well actually, one enclosed building, and one that didn't appear to have any walls, just
a giant roof the size of a football field. He could see giant rows of compost under the big roof.
77
Pulling in, he was struck by the size of the parking lot. The building had the footprint of a
Walmart Super Center, but it had a parking lot with like 30 spaces. Stepping out of the car, Hero
was struck by an air, rich with a pungent, and yet interesting smell. Not nearly as strong as
manure, but nonetheless definitely there.
As he walked in, a woman behind the desk caught Hero’s eye…“We just spoke one the
phone? You’re here for the tour, right?”
“Yes.” said Hero.
“Ok, you made it just in time—not that joining in the middle would be the end of
the world but this way you'll get the full experience.”
Standing, she walked out from behind the desk and gestured to a group of people on the other
side of the lobby, “That's the group you’ll be joining. I let them know you'd be coming when
they arrived, and they seemed happy about it…Let’s get you a name tag.”
The receptionist handed over a clipboard with a bunch of ‘Hello my name is…’ stickers and a
Sharpie. Hero obliged, hastily writing his name on one and sticking to his chest, before they
went to join the group. The receptionist said, “Oh there’s Alice,” as a woman in a forest green
uniform walked through the double doors near the group, lowering her voice as they got closer,
“You’re lucky, she's been involved with this project from the beginning. She’ll never admit it,
but I'm not sure this place would exist as it is without her.”
As they reached the group she said, “This is Hero, he’ll be joining you; and this is a local
homeschooling group.”
78
A girl who looked to be about 11 years old, piped up, “We’re actually unschoolers!”67
It was the sort of blunt correction that only a child can pull off without coming off as snarky and
rude.
“Oh, yes, unschoolers.”
The guide said correcting herself, looking as though she was happy to say it, but still not
completely sure of what it meant.
“Oh, it’s fine.” Said a woman who, by shear resemblance must have been the
girl’s mother, which was followed by a silence just long enough to qualify as
awkward… before it was broken by the woman in uniform jumping in to
introduced herself and formally begin the tour.
“Welcome to Dillinger County’s Organics Management. My name is Alice, and
I’m the facilities manager here at DCOM. We started planning this facility six
years ago, and we opened our doors, or more appropriately our tipping floors,
almost four years ago now, and we've already processed well over half a million
tons of organic material! We are one of the most sustainable utilities in both an
ecological sense and an economic one. That is to say, we make money on both
ends, people pay us to haul away their ‘waste’ and then we transform that material
into a product that we can sell. Before we had this facility, we were paying a
private company to take the waste away, and then, too often paying them again
for the finished product as fertilizer for our gardens. It might not be obvious, but
we actually use a lot of compost in Dillinger county, and by internalizing the
Unschooling is a very particular educational philosophy characterized by the complete lack of compulsory education. It’s worth noting the I
unschooled from K-12th Grade: No adult forced me to learn anything until I started attending community college at the age of 18.
67
79
whole process we’re able to sell ourselves what we need at cost, and sell the rest
on the open market, which allows us to significantly offset the collection fees paid
by the residents. Your bill went down, and our bills went down. It was really a
win-win situation. There's such a high demand for this stuff, that all of our
compost for the next year is already sold. If you’re a resident, and you just want a
yard or two, that’s always fine, but if you’re a farm that wants 500 yards, you’ve
got to get in line.”
“Two yards? Like a front yard and a back yard?” asked a boy with puzzled look
on his face who appeared to be about 8 years old.
Smiling, the guide replied, “Oh no, completely understandable, but here ‘yard’
means a specific amount, like an inch, or a foot. A yard equals 72 cubic ft.”
Looking around she added “It’s much smaller than most front or back yards, I
don’t see a good reference in here, but as we walk through the facility, I’ll try to
remember to point one out.”
“Other questions?” Alice asked.
When no one else spoke she continued, “Well, I usually like to start out these
tours with a discussion about just what exactly composting is, because well, it's a
little bit of a tricky term. It's tricky because while it does mean something very
specific, there is significant diversity in ways of composting. Here at DCOM, we
are constantly monitoring and testing to make sure our process is ‘composting’
material according to strict quality control standards set by federal and state
agencies…. But for you, composting can mean any number of things.
80
I like to use the analogy of baking. When you're baking something, say a cake,
you mix the ingredients together in specific amounts, and then you control for
time and temperature and moisture, and at the end poof! All of your ingredients,
under the right conditions have recomposed themselves into something tasty.
With composting we’re generally doing the same thing with the opposite
intention. That is to say, we’re taking this raw material and mixing it together in
specific ratios, controlling for time temperature and moisture, then poof! under
the right conditions that material will have decomposed into something tasty for
the plants. In this analogy, DCOM would be something like the Wonder Bread
factory, operating at high efficiency and producing very large quantities of a
homogenous product. But just as baking at home can lead you on all sorts of
different adventures, so can composting.”
“What is ho-mo-genius?” the same boy asked.
“Oh yes, it means the same, or very similar. It’s very important in business,
especially when you’re selling a lot of something. You have to make sure it's all
the same quality. Does that make sense?”
“Yea, I think so.”
“So, if want to bake something, the first thing you need to do is find a recipe get
the ingredients. The thing you will find in most composting recipes is the need to
get the right balance between carbon rich and nitrogen rich materials—what we
often refer to as the C:N Ratio. In the context of compost, the ingredients come in
all different forms— but the basic thing that ties them together is that they are
81
organic material. And by organic, I mean that the material was derived through
life; not organic like you’d find in the grocery store.
For us, this material basically comes from two sources: yard waste and food
waste. We refer to these as feedstocks. Yard waste generally is much more
carbon rich, and food waste is generally rich in nitrogen. Getting the ratio right is
important if you want to optimize the process…Any questions?” Alice asked
again, and when no-one else respond, she continued, “Okay right this way… On
this tour, I’m going to show you our process, and then at the end we’ll look at
some other small-scale examples of other composting processes.”
And with that, she led the group through a door, up a flight of stairs, down a hallway and
into a second story room with a giant plate glass wall looking over the back of the warehouse. It
was pretty staggering. One moment they were walking through a nondescript hallway that could
have been any one of a million different businesses and then all of the sudden they walked
through a door, suddenly overlooking a Costco-sized warehouse alive with little people and big
machines. It felt a little like a scene from Star Wars, in the command room of the Deathstar,
looking out over the flight pad. The room was filled with all sorts of complicated looking
electronic equipment. Four different people sat at four different workstation stations with
multiple big monitors in front of each of them.
“This is our initial processing area. This is as close as we’re going to get to this
part because it’s too dangerous to take groups though that scene.” Continuing,
“Here are Matt, Krishna, Leo and Sam,” she said gesturing to the people at desks
who had turned briefly as the group came in before going back to the computer
screen infant of them.
82
“They’re all working hard, so we’re going to try not to bother them.”
Pointing out the window to the far back of the warehouse where daylight shone though big
rolling doors Alice went on,
“That’s the tipping floor, it’s where the trucks come in and dump the material.
The first check is just a visual analysis of the materials done by two employees
walking the pile and looking it over for contamination. They're checking for a
few things. First for large items that could damage the equipment and obviously
don't belong there. Four days ago, someone pulled a microwave out of a pile on
the tipping floor! They’re also checking for any hazardous wastes like paint of
motor oil… So, they're always looking for things like that, but they are also
making an overall judgment as to the relative contamination of the load. Any
load we judge as over 10% percent contaminated goes right to the landfill.
Fortunately, we do pretty well, and we only have to landfill a couple of trucks per
week, which is a relatively small number. We're hopeful that we can keep
bringing that number down as time goes on.
After a load makes it past the tipping floor, an operator uses one of those big
dozers, to load the material into this big shredder, it works like a giant blender.
The material goes in one side and it comes out the other all shredded up and
mixed together.”
83
Moving towards one end of the room, Alice touched a giant TV screen mounted on the
wall, waking it up to show a security camera style grid of live video feeds from around the
facility. Touching one of the frames made it jump to full screen, showing a close up of a trash
truck dumping out a load of organics on the floor.68
After a couple seconds, she switched views to a bulldozer dumping the material in a giant
machine.
The images that appear on DCOM’s video screen are still’s taken from a video titled, “Tour Hamilton’s Central Composting Facility –
Educational” which is posted on the City of Hamilton’s official YouTube page in 2017. Ontario, Canada.
68
84
‘Feeding the robots’ Hero thought as the wastes dropped out of sight. Alice flashed
quickly to a conveyer belt filled with raw material and said, “This is where the material goes into
the shredder.” Before switching the video frame again, and letting her voice get a bit more
animated, “This is where I think the really cool stuff starts.”
“This is the shredder…The video doesn’t really do it justice, those blades area lot
more intimidating in person, but you can get the idea. It’s basically a giant
industrial sized blender. This is an important first step in the process—by grinding
up the waste into small pieces we maximize the area available for bacteria to
colonize,” adding light heartedly, “if a tree falls in the forest, it will decompose
much faster if you turn it into wood chips,” before switching to yet another view
of the conveyor belt full of shredded material passing under some contraption
mounted over the stream with large rotating belts the width of the moving belt.
Switching the video feed to a new screen she continued,
85
“Now look closely here; this is actually using magnet to pull out metals… Which
is good because you don't want scrap metal in your compost. It's a safety hazard
because it gets pretty sharp as it goes though the shredder. A good compost will
probably have some trace metals just in much smaller particle form, and in very
low concentrations. It good because plants need the metals in trace element
forms; Zinc, Copper, and Nickel all can be necessary for plant growth—and for
that matter human health. If you could read the ingredients list in a compost,
you’ll see overlap with some of the things for sale on the supplements aisle.”
Adding, “Of course we also do batch testing to make sure there's nothing
particularly harmful in there. We make sure our finished compost meets both
federal and state agency standards.”
Switching to yet another screen, Alice went on, “I think this might be the coolest piece of
technology.” The video that now showed a sort of waterfall for the stream of organics, where
there appeared to be a thousand different little metal straws pointing toward the falling material.
86
“This optical sorter is an automated air-jet system that removes plastics, and a few
other contaminants. Basically, it's a high-definition camera feed of the waterfall
where the computer can identify contaminants and shoot them out of the stream
with hyper targeted jets of air.”
Gesturing back to the screen it was clear that this machine was doing an inhuman amount of
work. It was hard for Hero to track any one piece of contamination as it fell, but this computer
seemed to be consistently identifying a dozen every second or two. Brightly colored chips of
plastic that moved fast, and scraps of plastic bag that had a much more meandering path down
once they had been separated from the stream. It reminded him a little bit of that old arcade game
Duck Hunter.
“After this, the material goes through a series of screens that separate the stream
out by size. The largest materials get looped back around and put back through
the shredder mixed in with the fresh stuff, and the smaller materials go out of the
building on this conveyor belt, over to our outdoor section where we build
windrows, and the real magic happens.” Flipping to a screen showing a conveyer
87
belt moving the material right out of the building, she added, “In the baking
metaphor, everything up to this point has been preparing the ingredients, and now
we move to the oven, so to speak.”
She led the group back down the stairs and out of different door to the side of building.
Outside, the group saw the conveyor belt coming right out of the building, near the top,
and extending about 40 feet, supported by a welded trellis. It dumped the material over the side
of a giant concrete wall into a huge pile. As they kept walking, their perspective changed, and
you could see that there was a bulldozer scooping stuff up from the bottom of the pile and
carrying it out of sight.
Alice brought them slightly further away from all the action, to a small shed that she now
opened so that Hero can see it was filled with bright orange safety vests,
“Now that we’re outside, we’ve all got to put on one of these,” she said, waving
everyone over to get a vest and pulling the radio off her hip, she said, “Safety
Alert: I’m taking a school tour through the outside section, you know what to do!”
It took a second for everyone to get vests because the shed was only big enough for a few
people at a time; Hero looked out over the scene. The covered area seemed the size of a football
field, maybe more, and it was filled with long rows of composting material. You could see the
steam rising off the compost piles even on a day when the temperature was in the sixties. There
was some machinery on the far left, but for the most part this was just giant steaming heaps of
compost.
After everyone had their vests on, Alice said “Okay let's go take a look.” She led the group over
to the corner of the pad so that they can get up close to one of the big piles.
88
“Like I said, there are a bunch of different ways to do composting on an industrial
scale. A lot of that facility design and process really depends on your particular
situation. For example, if we were not in the Pacific Northwest where it rained so
much, we wouldn't have had to build this roof.…Efficiency was also really
important to us. We wanted to be able to process as much material as fast as
possible in a limited space. We operate on a 30-day turnover, which is about as
fast as you can get in the industry, and we achieve this in large part by combining
two commonly used methods, forced aeration and turning the piles, we’ve created
a very efficient process.”
Gesturing to the ground she said, “Look closely at the floor and notice all these
little holes? There is a 1' x 1' grid of 1/4 inch holes in the ground that spans this
entire area’s floor. The holes actually serve dual purposes. Do you remember
from my baking metaphor there are four environmental factors that we need pay
attention to when making compost: time, temperature, moister, and aeration?
These little holes what help us control both the moisture and the aeration.”
Bending down to touch one of them she continued, “These holes actually suck air
in like a vacuum, so that when you put a big pile on top of them, they pull air
down through the pile and over to that big bio-filter over there––” as she pointed
to a large silo shaped thing with a vented top. “––where any foul odors are pulled
out. It is basically just layers of wood chips and activated charcoal. And it might
not seem like it now because we’re standing so close to these piles, but it actually
does a surprisingly good job.
89
I'm watching development of carbon sequestration technology and am hopeful for
that at some point we will actually be able to run that air through some sort of
carbon capture process. For now, it’s way too expensive, and frankly, when we
get there, we should outfit power plants and incinerators long before composting
facilities…But it would be great because a lot of that oxygen we suck though the
pile bonds with newly freed carbon atoms and becomes carbon dioxide. In a
sense, the compost pile breathes–– O2 become CO2 as a consequence of the biochemical interactions involved in just living.”
Alice paused to let that sink in for a moment before continuing. “One of the cool
technologies I’ll show you later is what's called anaerobic digestion, which is
what happens when you decompose material in the absence of oxygen. The
newly freed carbon tends to bond with four hydrogen atoms instead of two
oxygen atoms, creating methane (CH4) which we can capture and burn as you
would ‘natural gas’. We looked into that for this facility but to do it on the scale
required a bigger capital investment that we could afford…” Her voice trailed off
as if lost in a memory.
“But,” she went on, “this piece about the difference between aerobic and
anaerobic decomposition (that is with or without oxygen) actually gets at a really
important point about throwing organic materials in the trash. Any ideas why?”
she asked turning to the group.
Hero knew the answer. He knew landfills were a significant source of methane, although
he’d never looked too closely at the organics in them. It was just another numeral on ‘landfills
90
are bad’ clock Hero projected onto every trash can he saw. As Hero was busy not speaking up,
one of the parents said,
“I’m going to guess there’s not a lot of oxygen in the landfill?”
“Bingo,” Alice exclaimed! “There’s not a lot of oxygen in the landfill. You can
see what we go through here to keep the piles aerated, but in a landfill, material is
just dumped, compacted, covered with something else, compacted, and on and on.
Landfill have been known to spontaneously combust deep underground.69 This is
a big problem, because methane is about 25 times more powerful a greenhouse
gas than CO270, and landfills are responsible for about 12% of global methane
emissions.71 New landfills are being designed with methane capture systems, and
old ones are being retrofitted––which good. But it’s still a little unclear exactly
how efficient those retrofitting’s are, and frankly I’m a little hesitant to fully
endorse infrastructure that requires us to keep putting organic’s in the landfills.
The point is, when you have organic material that you need to dispose of, the
choice between landfilling and composting is the difference between sending a
significant portion of that waste’s carbon up into the atmosphere as CO2 or
CH4…and in the context of climate change that actually makes a big difference.”
69
Shadi Y. Moqbel (2009) “Characterizing Spontaneous Fires in Landfills.” PhD. Dissertation.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007). IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change.
This is number is worth elaborating on as there is some variance in the literature, and it is worth
understanding how its calculated based on CO2e which assumes the 100yr warming effect of a CO2 molecule as its
baseline of 1. My understanding is that CH4 is closer to about 84 times more powerful a GHG than CO2, but (and
this is an important ‘but’) CH4 being considerably more reactive than CO2, persists in the atmosphere for
considerably less than 100yrs. Thus, CO2e calculations must distribute CH4’s warming effect over a time period
longer than it is likely to actually be floating around in the upper atmosphere.
71 Paul Hawken (2017) Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. p.100
70
91
After pausing for a second, she added, “I am hopeful that one day throwing
organic waste into the trash will carry the same cultural taboo as throwing
recyclables in the trash. I started out working in the recycling system, and I have
a lot of respect for it, but I fear we missed the forest for the trees. Plastic, metal,
and glass are very useful for us––don’t get me wrong—it’s good for us to re-cycle
them. But that recycling system is entirely a human construction. It recycles the
things that humans make. Composting, on the other hand, is the recycling of the
things that make humans.”
Looking at the pile she said, “It is hard to see, but I promise you; this pile is filled
with trillions of microorganisms actively recycling the materials that life is made
of: calcium, nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus, iron, and zinc to name a few. This
pile holds the building blocks for your DNA. You cannot access them directly
from the compost, but you can feed the compost to the plants and eat those plants
or feed the plants to animals and eat the animals, and in doing so, some of the
elements in this pile of compost will become the elements in your body.
Composting facilities like this of course are human constructions, but
decomposition functioning as an ecosystem level recycling system has been
happening since long before even the dinosaurs walked the Earth.”
“That’s probably enough eco-philosophical rantings... I have a tendency to go off
on tangents.”
“Oh, I enjoy your rants,” said Hero from the back of the group.
“Me too,” chimed in a couple of the others.
92
“Okay, well, where was I? Yes, the other function of all these holes in the ground
is to help us maintain the appropriate moisture by draining off any excess water.
Too much water and you end up with the same lack of oxygen problem that ends
up creating methane. So, the excess falls through these holes and is redirected out
that way— pointing behind the building—to where it’s run through another biofilter –– a densely packed bed of wood chips–– and then eventually back into our
retention pond, that feeds the sprinkler system. And so, when it’s too dry, we turn
the sprinklers on and wet the piles down a bit.”
Looking up, Hero could see that there was vast sprinkler system running along the
ceiling, kind of like the emergency sprinklers in an office building, but more, a lot more.
Alice walked towards a gadget on a stick poking out of the pile a little way down
the row, “These sensors are all wirelessly linked to that control room we were in,
providing hourly data on temperature, oxygen and water levels.”
As she pulled the sensor out, Hero noticed that the stick on the end was actually
taller than he was. It was thin, and looked flexible, like a tent pole, “These take
readings at two feet, four feet and six feet so we’re getting readings from different
depths in the pile, and we can make adjustments as needed.”
She put the sensor back in the pile and walked toward conveyer belt coming out of the
first building. The group followed. Hero pondered the difference between the recycling and
composting in the American psyches, and, laughing to himself a little, realized it was quite
simple. The tree didn’t have a corporate lobby maintaining propaganda machine. Hero knew the
history, the emphasis on ‘consumer recycling’ in American culture was a well-organized and
ongoing campaign funded mostly by the companies making the products people were being
93
encouraged to recycle.72 Recycling created the illusion that the downstream consumer was in the
power position and in doing so absolved the producers of any responsibility. ‘It’s absurd!’
thought Hero. They successfully framed the issue as the consumers response-ability to fix a
problem with a supply chain. It seemed an age-old trope: some humans invent something that
has benefits, but also creates problems, and once they see the problems, they invent something
else that solves the problem by making it somebody else’s problem. The dreaded Treadmill of
Production!73
Around the corner of the concrete wall, out of the pile of fresh material accumulating
underneath the conveyor belt, came a woman on in a bulldozer. She looked up and waved as the
unschoolers and Hero came around the corner.
“This is Titania, she’s building piles today,” Alice said as they walked over. “As
you can see this is where all that freshly prepared material from inside transitions
into the next phase of the process.” Asking, “Where are you building right now?”
“C4,” Titiana called back.
“Okay, we’ll follow you.” And then turning back to the group Alice said, “Step
over here for a second, we are going to watch Titiana picked up a load, and then
follow her over to the pile she's building right now.”
It was loud behind the front loader, but Alice yelled over the engine as they
walked, “All of these piles are arranged in rows A through J, going this way”
gesturing to their trajectory. “Each row has 6 piles, or at least space for them,
Andrew Boardman Jaeger (2018) “Forging Hegemony: How Recycling Became a Popular but Inadequate Response to Accumulating Waste.”
Social Problems. Journal Article.
73 Schnaiberg, Pellow, and Weinberg (2001) “The Treadmill of Production and the Environmental State.” Book Section.
72
94
starting at number 1 on the far left, and number 6 on the far right.” Adding, “The
pile where we started walking was numbered A1, and we’re on the way to C4.”
Now that they were walking, the sheer size of the piles and rows of compost looming overhead
felt a little ominous. Like a corn maze. Or better yet, a labyrinth. Maybe there was something
magical inside. An image struck Hero and he was lost momentarily in a daydream, thinking
there could be a sphinx –– no, not a sphinx, a giant worm–– lurking around the corner, standing
guard to the circle of life armed with a riddle to test the seekers as they tried to pass. Thinking
about it for a second, Hero settled on “Who eats? When the fourth letter gets their meal on the
house while trying way too hard to be cool?” as the riddle his giant worm might ask would.74
As they reach C4, Titiana dumped the load onto a half-built pile, waved and drove off,
Alice started talking again,
“So we have 60 piles here, and we operate on a 30 day process, so, when
everything is operating as it should, which luckily has been most of the time so
far, we’re starting and finishing two piles a day. Over here you can see the
beginning of the process. Take a close look at this material, you can see that it's
freshly shredded, but you can still kind of make out a lot of different organic
materials.”
“If we take a quick walk over to this pile,” she said while walking to the next one
down the line, “you’ll get to see the pile we’ll harvest tomorrow. Take a look, it’s
pretty striking how much the decomposers can do in 30 days.”
74 D (fourth letter) Comp (Getting a meal for free at a restaurant) Poser (the aesthetic quality of trying too hard to be cool).
95
Alice was right. It was almost unrecognizable as the same stuff. The only thing that was
still recognizable was some little wood chips, although they had changed from the light browns
of freshly cut wood, to the rich dark color of humus.
Hero thought about the groundskeepers he’d driven by the night before and wondered if
all that ‘food for the decomposers’ being extracted from the environment was being brought
here, to what seemed like a decomposers paradise? It seemed likely, and also sort of comforting.
Last night it seemed we were starving the soil, and now it seemed a little more like we
were cooking for it, albeit it was perfectly capable of cooking for itself, and hadn’t ask us to do
this… but still, this seemed a far better system then Hero had been imagining.
Hero giggled to himself. Thinking this was something like a decomposer farm. He had
dreamed for years about what it would be like to grow lots of food in urban areas. Looking at
the huge piles Hero realized that food was growing all around Him, most of it just wasn’t food
for people, but food for the decomposers.
Alice was talking about temperature, but Hero was a lost in a vision. All those haunting
clocks, those ticking time bombs of civilization. They seemed so easy for so many to ignore, and
yet inescapable for Hero. The experience was actually quite straightforward. Hero had series of
visions, except instead of the haunting doomsday clock, Hero saw the Word “FEED” projected
over all the materials composting around him as he imagined them appearing in his everyday
life, and the lives of the million or so people surrounding him. Those coffee grounds from this
morning—still food. That pizza box from the other day wasn’t just carrying food, the box itself
was food! Food for the millions of organisms feasting around him. How many people realized
that on the other end of that ‘green waste bin’ there are hundreds of millions of hungry microbes
excitedly waiting to devour to feed on what you put into it?
96
“Any Questions before we move on?” asked Alice.
“Yea, actually” Hero said, his stomach tensing slightly, “This might be a little
random, but, the people on the other end— the ones throwing this stuff away—
how many of them do you think realize that the stuff they throw in the bins is
about to become food for trillions of microorganisms living just outside of town?”
He continued, “Like, as opposed to thinking about this system from more of a
non-biological perspective—we take this product, break it down and turn it into a
new product kind of approach.”
Noticeably thinking about it for a second she said, “Hmmm, I would say most
people have a pretty low-resolution understanding of what’s going on here. We
do our best to educate people, but they have to be interested. I do think the way
composting is framed can make a big difference. That reminds me of my
granddaughter’s preschool––they have a composting system there— a backyard
bin, and collection bowls all around campus. When my son arrived, the system
wasn’t being used that much, the collection bowls would sit around too long, and
emptying them always fell on the parent assigned to clean up duty. But my son,
being my son, re-labeled all the collection bowls as “Bug Food” and started
emptying them during the school day and making a point of announcing, “Time to
feed the bugs!” every time he did it… and well, that’s one of those phrases that’s
bound to spark some movement in a group of preschoolers.75 Basically, nothing
about the system changed except for the name, and the positive projection of one
This little aside actually holds the genesis of this Novel. Sometime around 2013 while I was teacher at a cooperative play-based preschool, I
relabeled all the compost collection bowls “Bug Food” and started announcing, “time to feed the bugs!” near the end of each day when I emptied
them into the big compost bin in the back. It worked. I never forgot how effective that subtle linguistic reframing was at shifting the culture
around composting. Years later I picked up on this idea in graduate school and ran with it.
75
97
individual that it was a fun and interesting activity. So yes. Consider what would
happen if you change the labels of all of our official collection bins to read ‘Bug
Food!’ I honestly think we would see a shift in the culture, and probably less
contamination, but making that change is not exactly within my power… I’m only
responsible for the material once it gets here. And, well, you gotta pick and
choose your battles.”
Hero made eye contact for a second and nodded in thanks. The group kept walking for a while, a
couple rows this way, a couple that way, and finally came around the corner of a pile to see a
giant machine straddling one of the piles. It was bizarre looking, like something out of a
Transformers movie, with tires about the size of Hero. Gesturing to the monstrous machine,
Alice informed them it was that it was called “a windrow-turner” and went on to explain,
“This is a super special and expensive machine. It probably costs as much as
most houses, and the routine maintenance on it costs about as much as a luxury
car! We shut it down when we’re doing tours— it’s loud and the operator has
pretty poor visibility, which makes it dangerous. But basically, it has a bunch of
rotating blades that run between the legs—mostly buried in the pile right now, but
you can see them in the ends over there. As it drives down the row, its mixes up
all the pile really well, and provides extra aeration. Each pile will go through this
machine three times—at 5, 15, and 25 days. The combination of this and the
forced aeration though the floor makes our 30 day turn around possible. You
could easily operate a facility using either of these methods exclusively, but it
would take closer to 45 days for the material to fully decompose. For us,
98
investing in both was well worth it. This machine is a beast, I wouldn’t want to
be anywhere near those blades when this thing gets going”
Hero had a brief flash of himself standing in front of such a machine, the sheer proportion of
such a thing felt like it was straight out of
terminator movie––from the timeline after Skynet
took over the world.
“Let’s keep going” Said Alice, “I’m
supposed to keep this tour to around
an hour and we're pushing that
now.” As she led the group all the
way through the facility, and out the
back to where there was another giant machine. It had two different conveyer
belts coming off it, going in different directions. The machine was running,
building piles of compost under each of the belts.
“This is our final screening area, it’s the last stop for compost before we send it
out into the world.”
99
Pointing to the giant machine, she continued, “At this point we separate the
material into two different streams. The fine stuff is our class A material that you
would put in your garden or will get used on farms—Picking up a handful she
said—You can also buy this stuff from us for $5.35 a yard every Friday and
Saturday from 8am- 3pm, just bring the truck and we can load it up for you.”
Walking over to the other pile She went on, “This stuff is our class B material, it’s
much woodier, and it gets used a lot more in non-agricultural uses, like the sides
of freeways, and parks, and stuff like that. Storm water management too. This
stuff can slow runoff, improve drainage and mitigate soil erosion. We also take a
couple scoops of this and put it back in the shredder. In doing so the finished
compost acting like a starter culture that gets ground up and distributed
throughout the all the fresh materials as they come into the facility. This helps
keep the process on schedule by making sure that new piles are colonized ASAP
by the species we're reintroducing— It’s like with a sourdough or kombucha, or
Soy Sauce. We use the majority of finished product but mix a small portion back
in with fresh ingredients to make more. This is a good practice for any home
compost too! Mix some finished compost back into the fresh stuff and it’ll make a
big difference.
I should be honest though; we also sell a lot of this class B material to the local
landfill for use as alternative daily cover…” looking as though she knew she’d
have to elaborate of that last sentence, she continued. “Basically, landfills are
required to cover up all the materials they dump on a daily basis, and they use this
class B material to do that. They need to use something, and we produce much
100
more of this class B stuff than we have market for. So, for the time being that’s
just a part of the system. Probably the part I’m least happy about.”
After pausing again, Alice continued, “Let’s see, I think that’s about it for our
main process, let’s walk around this way and I’ll show you a couple of the
specialty processes.”
As they followed her around the back of the facility, she shouted back, “Any more questions?”
One of the parents took her up on the opportunity and said,
“You mentioned using charcoal as part of the filter for the air and that comes off
the pile, could you say a little more about how that works?”
“Yes! Of course, the charcoal we use is called activated charcoal, and its different
then briquettes you would buy in the store. The thing about activated charcoal is
that it is basically pure carbon. You make it by heating wood up to a really high
temp in an environment without oxygen. It’s called pyrolysis. What happens
without oxygen is that instead of catching fire, a chemical decomposition occurs.
And, well, everything gets transformed into gases except for a large portion of the
carbon, which remains as activated charcoal or sometimes it’s called bio-char.
It’s widely used in filtrations devices, if you have a home water filter, activated
charcoal was probably a main ingredient. It’s also used in agriculture to increase
soil fertility and slow run-off… I was just having an interesting conversation the
other day with a friend about the ancient use of biochar as way of increasing soil
fertility in the Amazon rainforest.76
76
Shearer, Apffel-Marglin, and Tindall (2017) Sacred Soil: Biochar and the Regeneration of the Earth. Book.
101
The metaphor I like is that of a battery. We’re basically keeping most of the
storage capacity by preserving the carbon structure, while removing the other
elements, which leaves us with a microscopic lattice-like structure with a strong
negative charge. When you push air or water through activated charcoal, any
contaminants with a positive charge will bond with it and remain in place for
quite a while.” Adding, “in an agricultural context we can charge the biochar by
mixing it with compost, or even synthetic fertilizers, where it will basically do the
same thing, but then once mixed in with the soil, it can slowly release these
nutrients over long periods of time… as well as minimizing fertilizer runoff––
which can also be a big problem.” Finishing with, “Does that make sense?”
“Yes, thank you,” said the parent who’d asked the question.
“Hum, let’s see,” continued Alice, “I think I’ve covered it as far as our main
process goes… Any more questions?”
Hero raised his hand, looking around first in case anyone else had question before
saying, “I guess, just thank you, I really appreciate you doing this tour and that I
was able to join last minute, this feels kind of magical how you take all the
county’s green waste and transform it into compost. I would have never even
thought to reach out if my roommate hadn’t been on a field trip here last year, so
glad I did.”
“Thank you” Alice said, “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but if you think this is
magical, you really should visit the waste-water treatment plant, because they’re
the ones composting all the county’s human waste.”
102
“Yeah!” piped in one of the kids, “We went there last week, and it was really
cool. The beginning smelled really bad, like a poop factory, then the rest wasn’t
so bad. They had killer lights at the end. That was my favorite. Did you know
the fountain in front of the Children’s Museum comes from toilet water? But,
like, they clean it really well and stuff, with the killer lights too, so we can play in
it!”
“No, I didn’t know that,” replied Hero. “I’ll definitely look into that…I had no
idea.” Thinking that the recycled water in the fountain was intriguing, and he was
a bit clueless about the ‘killer light’— although the idea of composting the
county’s human poop was rather fascinating.
“Yeah, well, it can be a controversial issue.” Alice added, “Sewage treatment
usually flies a little under the raider because generally people are happy with
flushing it ‘away’ and really not that interested in the particulars of what ‘away’
actually looks like in that particular context––out of sight, out of mind, you
know? Who wants to imagine where that stuff they flushed down the toilette this
morning is now?”
Hero kind of liked the idea but could very well imagine people being disturbed at
the practice of composting municipal sewage, he said, “Reminds me about how
most toilet paper is made from recycled material, but if you look on the shelves,
you’ll probably only find a couple of brands actually advertising the recycled
content.”
“Yep,” said Alice. “Most people don’t want to think about wiping with a recycled
product, just as most people don’t want to think of their poop as food for
103
something else. Personally, I find it kind of comforting, you know, eating plants
and animals, digesting what you can, and then feeding the rest to the decomposers
has been in our lineage for millions of years. The real change has been devising
ways of not recycling our poop.”
“Are all waste-water treatment plants creating compost out of sewage sludge?”
asked Hero.
“Oh, no, not all of them. A fair number end up sending the biosolids to a landfill
or incinerating them, but I think you’d be surprised, it’s not as rare as you might
think.” Alice said, “But sewage treatment is always interesting… You will
almost always find a waste-water treatment facility to be a collaboration between
biologists and engineers. Almost all waste-water treatment plants will cultivate a
specific microbiology in order to neutralize pathogens and homogenize the
sludge. But it takes some extra steps if you want to meet the safety standards for
producing consumer quality compost, and those steps can expensive, so in
addition to cultural taboos, that can make Class A Biosolids, colloquially known
as ‘humanure’ a bit of a challenge. After all the primary objective of a wastewater treatment plant is cleaning the water. It’s been a while, but the last time a
looked into the literature, something like 60% of the biosolids created in the U.S.
were eventually applied to the land as a fertilizer77”
Hero got a little lost in his thoughts as they continued their walk around the back of the
facility.
77
Erik Apedaile (2001) “A Perspective on Biosolids Management.” The Canadian Journal on infectious Disease. Journal Article.
104
‘Human waste is food for the decomposers.’
‘Pooping is part of the circle of life.’
If making peace with the decomposers was the goal, then feeding them seemed like a
worthy strategy. Was offering your enemy food not an effective way of initiating peace? Is
there a more powerful gesture in conflict resolution than the gift of good food? What if we had
spent a trillion dollars feeding people in the middle east instead of bombing them?’
It was kind of amazing. Two days earlier Hero felt like everything he ever did was
causing harm––like humans were separated so far from nature that it seemed impossible to
bridge the gap. But now, Hero was increasingly aware that he stood at just such bridge:
truckloads full of human generated waste were being dropped at one end, biochemical
transformation was occurring, and then food for the soil came out at the other end.
They arrived in front of a long slowly rolling tube that must have been eight feet in
diameter. It looked like a grain silo laid flat and rotating like hot-dog in a gas station hot case.
“Can anyone guess what this is?” Asked Alice asked gesturing to the contraption
behind her.
“Another kind of filter?” asked a girl with brown braids.
“Nope.”
“A worm bin?” suggested Hero.
“No again, those are good guesses, but this technology is called ‘In-vessel
livestock mortality composting.’ It was developed on large scale factory farms as
a way of dealing with dead animals. We end up using it for roadkill. Deer
mostly. Some opossum, squirrels. It’s also available for deceased pets or farm
105
animals. Not too many take us up on that though. When they do, it’s usually
chickens. Lot of families have been getting chickens for the first time. That’s
great and all— I have chickens, too––love them— but every so often we get a
panicked call from someone who woke up to discover an embodied experience of
‘the fox in the hen house trope.’ I’d say 95% of what we compost in here is
collected by one municipal branch or another.”
“So you just put the bodies in there?” one of the parents asked.
“Yes, with lots of wood chips… Sensors monitor the temperature, aeration and
moisture, and we adjust those variables as needed, and its kept separate from the
rest of our stream because there are some added dangers we need to look out for
when we’re dealing with whole carcasses, but yes, everyone from farms, to meat
processors, fisheries, to municipalities like us employ one version or another on
animal mortality composting.78”
“I read in the newspaper a while ago that there’s a bill being considered in the
state legislature that would legalize composting as a method for disposal of
human remains. Would that be in be something like this?”
“Oh yes, you’re right, I’ve got to start saying that! Our state just became the first
in the nation to legalize human composting! The governor signed SB 5001 into
law last May.79 It’s all so new at this point, that I’m not sure exactly what the
process will look like, but I’d suspect it will be something like this.” She added,
“It’s been illegal, so nobody could really study it, but that’s going to change fast
Bonhotal, Schwarz, and Rynk (2014) “Composting Animal Mortalities.” Cornell Waste Management Institute. Article
May 21st, 2019, Governor Jay Inslee signed SB5001 into law which legalized the ‘natural organic reduction' (composting) as a means of
disposal for human remains making Washington the first state in the nation to legalize human composting.
78
79 On
106
now… I think they did a study recently,80 with special permission as part of this
new law, but I haven’t read it yet… So, we’ll see what emerges… I think it’s got
a lot of promise.”
‘Human composting’ Hero thought as they kept walking. That’s an idea with some
serious implications. It was hard to wrap his head around exactly what they might be, ‘my body
could be food for the decomposers!’ This seemed to have practical implications for nutrient
cycling, but Hero didn’t have much time to dwell because they had arrived at the next, and last
stop on the tour.
He found himself in a large covered hexagonal area with picnic tables. A large built-in
countertop wrapped around the back three walls, incorporating a rather large BBQ and a big
double sink.
“This spot is one of my favorites,” Alice said, gesturing around, “This whole
system is really here for you! We knew there would be lots of school tours in
particular, and we wanted to have a place for you to gather and eat, debrief,
hangout, and stuff. And so we decided to use it as one last opportunity to show
off the usefulness of composting.” She said, pointing behind the picnic areas a
little way back, to what looked like a big above-ground swimming pool. There
were holes coming out of the top and leading to what looked like a giant propane
tank, which then hooked up the BBQ. More hoses ran to the back of the sink.
Alice continued proudly,
Carpenter-Boggs, Lynne (2020) "The Environmental Impact of Death, and the Science of Sustainable Alternatives." Annual Meeting. American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
80
107
“This is called a Biomeiler, or the Jean Pain method, after the scientist who
invented it. It captures both the heat and flammable gases generated through the
decomposition process.81 Water is pumped through that big vessel to capturing
heat as it goes. That closed top also helps capture all the flammable gases
generated by the anaerobic decomposition. Here we have hot water leading to the
sink, and the gas fueling the BBQ. In the 1940s, Frenchman Jean Pain met all of
his household energy needs through this process. He even converted his car to
run off of the gas this device generates.
I felt it was important to have examples of both heat recovery and gas capture
onsite because even though we don’t employ either of them in our main
processes, but they are used on various scales in industries all over the world. I
think they teach a tangible lesson that’s really important. Here, we really focus on
decomposition as it relates to the material re-cycling, but there is also a lot of
potential out there for decomposition as a means of heat and energy generation.”
“What kind of industries would be using this?”
“Really anything that producing a large consistent organics waste stream. I think
I’ve mentioned waste-water treatment and landfills, but also breweries, factory
farms, food processing plants… Although it would look different, this is sort of a
niche way of doing that mostly compost geeks and green energy historian types
appreciate. It’s the kind of thing you could build on a homestead for grand or
two. In modern industrial use people would focus on the anaerobic digestion part,
81
Jean and Ida Pain (1972) The Jean Pain Methods or Another Kind of Energy. Book.
108
harvesting natural gas and then using it to heat water to a conventional hot water
heater. One of the cool things about getting energy this way is that it actually
favors decentralization. What I mean is that transporting organic materials is
really costly— both in terms of money and energy— so companies or farms
usually have these digesters on site, where the feedstocks are generated.
(Remember I mentioned feedstocks earlier?)
In some cases, facilities are constructed where those raw inputs have already been
aggregated through some other system. These places also often have their own
energy needs that can be met with the gas generated on site. Most large
machinery can be fueled by natural gas.”
“Doesn't burning natural gas also produces CO2?” asked a girl to the left of Hero.
“Oh yes, very good. But think back to where that carbon started, as a truckload of
organic material. I see that CO2 is part of the carbon cycle in the same way I see
all the CO2 coming off of these compost piles. Yes, it is a greenhouse gas, but,
like I said before, carbon is literally the stuff life is made of, and it’s been cycling
from organic material to atmospheric particle and back to organic material for a
long time, a really long time. The problem we run into with burning fossil fuels is
that we liberate the carbon that has been trapped underneath the earth’s surface
for millions of years— not the carbon circulating in and out of the atmosphere.
What’s so interesting about anaerobic digestion is that it directly engages the
carbon cycle. The other piece is that the composted material you end up with —
called digestate— is also carbon rich. Digestate can be applied to the soil just like
109
compost, so that some of the carbon can be taken up into the biomass or stored
underground as soil organic matter.
In my opinion, there’s potential for biogas energy to act as a carbon sink if paired
with local efforts to increase soil fertility and boost primary production.” Alice
said beaming.
“Could we produce all our energy that way?” asked the same kid who’d wondered
about a yard earlier.
“Well, no. We’re not going to replace the amount of energy we’re currently
getting from fossil fuels with energy from biogas. But I think in the coming
decades we're going to look back at ‘all our energy’— that is to say, the amount
of energy each of us uses—as absurdly large. Biogas isn’t going to produce that
much energy… But we’re going to have to get used to consuming a lot less
energy. Once it really settles in that we're going to spend the next few thousand
years living in the Anthropocene, I think the amount of energy that we are
producing is going to be become far less important than the ecological integrity
with which we produce it.” She said gesturing around with her hands. “Clearly
I’m biased, but I think that using bio-chemical decomposition as a means of
energy generation is fantastic.”
“It sounds really interesting.” One of the parents interjected. “I didn’t realize we
had the ability to do that!”
110
“Yea, it's cool stuff. Typing ‘anaerobic digester’ into YouTube will send you
down a quiet the rabbit hole!” Alice said, following it up with, “Did you bring
anything thing to BBQ?”
“Yes, actually we did,” another one of the parents said pulling off his backpack,
and pulling out a bag full of corn on the cob.”
Alice went on to unlock the BBQ, and they began grilling. Hero stayed for a while,
munching on his cob on corn and having an interesting conversation about “unschooling,” which
did turn out to be distinctly different home schooling.
As Hero walked back to his car, he felt that sense of hypocrisy for returning to one
machine that contributes to climate change. Even in moments like this, perhaps most in
moments like this—coming off of the high of visiting a place where ecological stewardship was
valued— Hero felt the weight of turning that key, starting that engine, burning those fossil fuels
that had been trapped underground for millions of years.
But then, as he approached the car, a thought struck him, and he saw for the first time the
connection between the piles of compost he'd just been walking through and the gasoline in his
car. Fossil fuels developed when instead of doing everything you could to speed up the
decomposition, organic materials got buried underneath the ocean floor, subjected to immense
amounts of pressure, and heat, and well, time!
111
In some sense, he’d always known that his car— for that matter his civilization— ran off
of energy that had been captured by plants and animals that died millions of years ago, but there
was something about seeing all that energy radiating from the fresh compost piles brought that
timeline to life somehow. It wasn’t just a flat black line on a page. It had many dimensions.
He laughed a little bit realizing that the drug of choice among modern people was an
ancient material that, through biogeochemical circumstance, escaped decomposition in its own
time and had effectively been consumed by the Earth itself.
In some sense fossil fuels were a very particular kind of
compost, or maybe a kind of anti-compost. The kind of compost so
highly concentrated that you can light it on fire. Or it spontaneously
combusts! Hero wasn't sure what to make of it, but there seemed
something poetic there. He imagined a wine bottle labeled “Fossil
Fuels” and “100,000,000 BCE” and smiled too himself, thinking it
would be a fun art project to actually make those bottles. How many
wine bottles full of gas would it take to fill up my gas take? Maybe do
that calculation and fill a bunch of residential recycling bins with them?
Exploiting that trope––the alcoholic neighbors recycling bin. Seeing his
car as a sort of ancient compost burning machine, he imagined, that
maybe it would be best to have the back seat filled with the empty gas
bottles.
Opening the door of the car and sitting down inside, he pulled out his phone and did some
quick calculations:
((128 oz in a gallon) x (16 gallon gas tank)) / (25oz in a wine bottle) = ..?
112
Oh god, he thought, putting his head in his hands as he realized that each time, he filled
his gas tank he was putting nearly 82 wine bottles full of gas in his car. It was depressing, but it
also would make the art piece all the more powerful.
Sitting there in the car Hero wondered about how much prehistoric plant matter got
buried during the carboniferous period in order to create a gallon of gas? Again, realizing that
his might hold the answer, Hero typed the question into the search engine, and found a magazine
which made a claim so large he had to track down its source for himself. The article cited
‘Jeffery Dukes’ as the author of a new study aimed at answering this exact question. Hero
switched over to the scholarly version of the search engine, and the name into search field… and
sure enough, “Burning Buried Sunshine: Human Consumption of Ancient Solar Energy”
appeared in the list of results. Clicking, Hero discovered he didn’t have access to the whole
article, but the abstract was enough, it made two staggering claims, first that “Today's average
U.S. Gallon of gasoline required approximately 90 metric tons of ancient plant matter as
precursor material” and secondly that, “The fossil fuels burned in 1997 were created from
organic matter containing [more than] 400 times the net primary productivity (NPP) of the
planet's current biota.”82 He wasn’t ever sure which claim was more depressing, that filling his
gas tank accounted for some two hundred thousand pounds of prehistoric plant material, or that
globally were burning the fossil fuel equivalent of 400 times NPP annually. Hero knew the very
nature of such research was imprecise, even Duke’s had been quoted saying as much in the
magazine blurb, but there could be error bars of 80% and these numbers would still be absurd. It
was hard to imagine the embodied energy of just one ton’s worth of organic energy––2000
pounds of material––being compressed down to a single gallon of gas.
82
Jeffery Dukes (2003). “Burning Buried Sunshine: Human Consumption of Ancient Solar Energy” Climatic Change. 61, p.31–44. Journal Article.
113
But, then again Hero thought, this is why fossil fuels are to addictive. They possess
absurdly high concentrations of the active ingredient we’re addicted to using. Something like the
difference between a poppy seed and a poppy seed sized dose of Fentanyl… Would we ever
break this addiction?
Maybe I am living through The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight83 he thought–– before
actually turning the key, firing up the engine, and pulling out of the parking lot.
Hero’s next stop was the grocery store. He enjoyed walking through the isles stacked
head high with food, after just walking through the compost piles. It was funny to imagine that
all this food was not just food for humans, but also food for the decomposers: people weren’t
necessarily the endpoint of this food system. Maybe I’m just another transition.
Hero also thought about the embodied energy necessary to achieve these food systems.
Every single one of these products would have a unique supply chain that undoubtedly used
energy in every step. The packaging, transportation, refrigeration, and harvest and processing
were all energy-intensive process. In a Life Cycle Assessment, the term ‘embodied energy’
described the sum of all these energy inputs along the supply chain. The numbers in most every
case study Hero had read were pretty disturbing. There was an absurd ratio of upstream resource
use to make the down-stream product.
Thom Hartmann (2004) The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated Third Edition: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too
Late. Book.
83
114
Still, there was something else now; something underneath that vast energy
infrastructure. Modern civilization runs on fossil fuels-- there is undoubtedly much truth to that.
But walking through those aisles, Hero saw something for the first time. All of the food products
themselves were filled with energy. It was that food energy—caloric energy—that actually
fueled bodies. Although it may sometimes feel like it, people don’t actually run off of coal or
crude or natural gas.
Hero said under his breath “We are fueled with bio-energy! I fill my tank with proteins,
fats and carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals too. We run off of the energy on these shelves,
not necessarily the energy that brought them there.”
He looked around sheepishly. ‘I am to the grocery store what my car is to the gas
station,’ he thought as he put some apples in his cart. He added cabbage and carrots, bananas
and avocados too. He was struck by the thought that he knew much more about the externalities
associated with these things than he knew about the intrinsic properties of them. ‘I know of the
banana wars,84 the thousands of miles this fruit must've traveled to get here, and about the fungus
now threatening devastate global banana production.85 But I actually don't know very much
about the bio-chemical properties of this mysterious yellow fruit.’
Striffler, Moberg, Gilbert, and Rosenberg. (2003). Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas. Book.
Viljoen, Ma, and Molina. (2020) “Fusarium Wilt (Panama Disease) and Monoculture in Banana Production: Resurgence of a Century-Old
Disease.” The American Phytopathological Society. p. 159-84. Book Section.
84
85
115
Then, realizing that he held a portal to the internet in his pocket, Hero pulled out his
phone and typed “the biochemical properties of a banana” into the search engine. It linked him
to an article on Research Gate with a table86 listing no less than 39 different biochemical
structures that could be found in a banana. They couldn’t even all fit on his little screen. A few
of them sounded familiar — Carbohydrates, Ca,
vitamin E, vitamin C— but the majority of were
unfamiliar to Hero. What is Tryptophan? or Lysine?
or Methionine?
Not wanting to spend an hour on his
phone standing in the middle of the produce
section, he placed the phone back in his pocket,
thinking that he would return to this table when he had
time to spend a couple of hours going down the rabbit
holes each of these chemicals, trying to figure out what they did.
He kept walking the aisles, grabbing this and that and placing them into his
cart. Then, there, on the canned food isle, Hero had a vision. He was looking at the wall of
soups, when he realized that in some sense this grocery store, this wall of canned soup, was also
a front line in the battle with the decomposers. The miraculous thing about these soups was not
just that they had traveled thousands of miles to get here, on this shelf, but also that they had
probably been cooked months ago and had not yet been eaten by the decomposers. The canning
process kept them safe. Hero had spent a lot of time learning about all the problems associated
Aurore, Parfait, and Fahrasmane. (2009). “Bananas, raw materials for making processed food products.” Trends in Food Science & Technology. Vol
20 p.82 “Table 3. Chemical composition and biochemical features of banana and plantain at different physiological stages, and after
transformation, per100 g of fresh weight.” Journal Article.
86
116
with packaging, but somehow, he had never quite grasped that when it comes to food, humans
had the power to create an impermeable barrier around the food in order to keep the decomposers
out. He blinked, and in a flash imagined all the little bacteria and fungal spores floating around
the store, waiting for a chance to break that barrier and find something tasty to eat.
It was strange to imagine the air inside a grocery store as full of microbial life. A little
eerie really—the last thing Hero ever would have associated with a grocery shopping was the
idea that it was a war zone in terms of microbes… He wondered under what conditions might
society at large start really thinking about all the microbial life floating around in the air?
He had always focused on the absurd geographical distances that so much food traveled,
but somehow, he had never quite appreciated the temporal dimension. If he could travel 1000
years back in time and show his ancestors this can of minestrone soup, would they be more
impressed by the fact that it has ingredients from three different continents? Or by the fact that it
had been cooked two years prior?
117
From an evolutionary perspective, it seemed to Hero that the ability to preserve food
across time would have been incredibly valuable for our ancestors, especially as they moved
away from the equator, and ventured into more seasonal climates. The ability to preserve food
could have meant life and death in many circumstances. What would those early methods of
preservation have looked like? Dehydration? Salting? And smoking? Could we even know
what came first… Food preservation probably emerged independently across cultures… and
well, and vast majority of evidence of these tactics would have been eaten by the decomposers.
He’d read a book last year all about the deep history behind the domestication of
microbes in food cultivation, so he knew lots of ancient culture independently developed their
own versions of fermented foods.87 Kimchi, sauerkraut, beer, wine, and cheese are created by
feeding raw materials to the right microbes in conditions that allows them to dominate
territory—to the exclusion of any other microbes–– effectively preserving the food by cultivating
the right decomposers.
It was kind of beautiful how these foods exemplified what a symbiotic relationship with
microbes could look like. In Asia, some soy sauce makers have been passing down their recipes,
and the microbes that accompany them, on for many generations!88 There are bakeries that have
been using the same mother culture for 100 years!89 Without microbes, our species would not
know alcohol. Although passing by the beer and wine aisle, Hero wasn’t entirely sure whether
or not alcohol, on the whole, was good or bad for humanity.
Kathrine Harmon Courage (2019) Cultured: How Ancient Foods can Feed our Microbiome. Book.
For example, the current head of Kamebishiya, Kanae Okada, is in the 17th generation member of the Okada family to run the soy sauce
brewery… it’s story much longer than a footnote, you can read more here: http://kamebishi.shop
89 Boudin Bakery in San Francisco still uses the sourdough mother that Isidore Boudin first started collecting in 1849. I’ve had the pleasure of
eating freshly baked sourdough from this Bakery and I must say it’s fantastic.
87
88
118
Picking up a tub of yogurt, he thought this too was filled with life. It says so right on the
label: “Live Probiotics & Cultures”. He flipped it over, read the ingredients on the back, and
learned that he was holding “S. Thermophilus, L. Bulgaricus, L. Lactis, L. Casei, L. Acidophilus
and Bifidobacterium.” He didn't really know what this meant but somehow felt comforted. The
comfort was quickly replaced by a twinge of guilt when he thought about pouring it into the
blender with the cabbage and banana later on for the smoothie he'd been craving. ‘What was the
blender like for S. Thermophilus?’ he wondered.
Grabbing a loaf of sourdough bread and reminiscing for the days when he lived with a
roommate who was an avid baker, he had a crazy thought: A loaf of bread is kind of like a
cooked compost pile. To make bread we grind the grain into really small particles, then mix it
with water, salt. and microbes. As those microbes start to digest the flour and its sugars, they
produce lactic acid which gives sourdough it's taste, but they also off-gas in the process creating
all these little air pockets in the middle of the dough. That’s why breads rise—at least the ones
made with live microbes. It's like creating a compost pile with flour and water, kneading it to
glutinous glob, and giving it just enough time to get going before we put it in the oven, killing
everything and solidifying the structure of the loaf.
Smiling to himself and wondering if he’d ever be able to look at a loaf of bread and not
see a cooked compost pile, Hero finally headed towards the front of the store and checked out.
119
In the parking lot he ran into his friend Esri. Hero was excited because in the minute or
two that they had talked, she’d shared that she was in the middle of listing to a podcast called STown90 that had been assigned for an environmental health class she was about to start.
“It’s good,” she’d said, “but I still can’t figure out what it’s got to do with
environmental health.”
“Ohh its good, just wait!” Hero had replied, knowing exactly why it would be assigned
for an environmental studies course, but not wanting to spoil the ending. They talked for another
minute and made plans to meet the following day for lunch at the Casual Consumer downtown.
While driving back home, Hero reached to the center console and turned on the radio at
what turned out to be precisely the right moment to get him headed down another rabbit hole.
"So, every surface, every bit of air, every bit of water in your home
is alive. And every hour, every building we’ve ever studied all of
those things are alive. So, the only choice you really get is ‘which
life?’. And so, when you study homes, different kinds of homes
have life in different places, if you look in the hot water heater and
there are microbes that have evolved to live in really high
temperatures, if you look at your saltshaker you find bacteria Like
the ones that live in salt flats in the desert. If you look in your
attic, there are interesting bugs that you don't see elsewhere, in
your basement, you see cave animals. and so, your house has
habitats, and each of those habitats is little bit different. There are
collectively across households hundreds of thousands of species,
but the average house has thousands of species, and if you breathe
in deeply right now Terry, just inhale––in that breath––what’s in
your lungs at this very moment, are thousands of species…and a
couple of them are bad news. Some of them you depend on; and
most of them nobody has ever studied in any real way.”
90
Brian Reed (2017). S-Town. Serial Productions. Podcast.
120
‘Thousands of species inside my house’ Hero thought as he heard Terry Gross’s now
unmistakable voice go on to ask,
“Why are you studying them?”
“So, I started off studying rainforests. I was fascinated by the fact
that you could turn over a leaf and every leaf seemed to have
something new, and slowly my career drifted toward backyards.
And then eventually I found myself in homes, with the realization
that a lot of what I had done in jungles we could do under the bed,
and in showers, and we were making the same kind of discoveries
that I would be making in Bolivia or Ghana or Australia or
somewhere. And so, it was this realization that there were these
discoveries that people had overlooked right where I live, right
where we all live. And that we could engage the public, in helping
us make those discoveries, and once we figured that out it was hard
to go back.”
‘Who was the guest?’ he wondered continuing to listen intently as what must have been an
episode of Fresh Air91 kept playing.
“One of the things you have learned studying the micro-ecosystem
of homes, is that there are microbes, that live in extreme
environments outdoors—very cold temperatures, very hot
temperatures— and our homes reproduce these conditions through
things like the freezer and the boiler…”
“Could you elaborate on that?” asked Terry
“So, if you look at a traditional home from a couple of hundred
years ago, it would've been relatively open to the outdoor
environment, and the conditions in it wouldn’t have been very
much like the conditions outdoors. A little bit buffered, but very
similar. But in our modern complex homes, we have actually built
a whole bunch of little structures in the home that replicate really
extreme environments from elsewhere on earth. Our freezers are
kind of like the Arctic. Our ovens are kind of like really really hot
deserts. And so, when we do that, we are actually creating habitat
for species that like those conditions.
Scientists have discovered that many of the same micro-organisms
found living in hot springs, could reliably be found in the hot water
heaters of our homes. If you unscrew an American style shower
head and look inside, you’ll see a gunk, and that’s a biofilm, and
Fresh Air (hosted by Terry Gross). “With Bugs & Bacteria Living in Your Home, You're 'Never Home Alone” interview with Rob Dunn.
WHYY. Radio Program.
91
121
that’s a kind of apartment that the bacteria collectively excrete and
then live in. That keeps them buffered from the flow of water.
They live there and they eat essentially the nutrients that are in the
water as it passes by on its way to you.”
The guest (who was this?) went on to describe how a little bit of these bacteria trickled
down on a person in the shower, but were almost entirely harmless, with the exception of some
‘non-tuberculous mycobacteria’ which we might be unwittingly selecting for by chlorinating the
municipal water supply… Because these particular mycobacteria are chlorine tolerant, and when
we kill everything else it leaves them with a wide-open territory, and it’s a problem because
these particular mycobacteria are associated with some specific lung infections. 92
He also talked about it as presenting,
“a really a great example of where we’ve gone too far, in trying to
kill everything around us, and it’s had unintended consequences.
That’s a story that comes up again and again. We get scared by the
idea that there’s life around us, we try to kill all of it, and in doing
so we’re more likely to make ourselves sick than well.”
Such a wicked dynamic, Hero thought, ‘We can’t kill everything, but we try, and end up
providing a wide-open habitat to whichever species is resistant to our attacks. Will we ever
wake up and see that selection is an active dynamic that’s also going to bite us in the ass?
Terry went on to ask about “fungi in the house…”
“[Fungi in houses is a mixed bag] because if you open your
refrigerator many of your food things have fungi in them that help
to make the food themselves. And so you have these useful food
associated fungi, in your beer, in your bread, but if you move away
from you kitchen you also have fungi just sort of drifting in. And
so we’ve found more kinds of fungi that drift into houses than
there are named kinds of fungi in North America, which is partially
just a reflection of how ignorant we still are about the biological
world around us that there are more fungal life in house then we
have associated with any name—let alone a good understanding.”
92
Gebert, et al “Ecological Analyses of Mycobacteria in Showerhead Biofilms and Their Relevance to Human
Health” mBio
122
‘They found more species of fungi in homes than there are named species of fungi in North
America?! Could that possibly be real?’ The guest went on to describe how, through genetic
sequencing, his team isolated thousands of different species of fungi in samples from homes all
across the United States.
He then told a very interesting story about how the toxic black mold that claims so many
homes appear to come prepackaged in the drywall. In a controlled environment, they found
brand new drywall already had the spores inside of it. If the drywall stayed dry, the spores
would remain dormant… But as soon as the drywall got wet, they sprang to life, and began
consuming the house from the inside out.
Hero had lived in houses were black mold appeared, and this was exactly how it
happened. It seemed to come from within the walls, and now he knew that in all likelihood that
was indeed what was happening. It seemed a little crazy to hear that people would build homes
using drywall at all in a place where it rained 200+ days of the year!
The guest then described how the wood in houses is often colonized with the mold spores
in the lumberyard or during the framing process, and as long as it dries out completely those
fungal colonies will go dormant. But once that wood gets wet again, they reemerge with a
vengeance.
“That's one of the reasons it's so hard to study these things, the
species that we find in homes might be heavily influenced by what
happened to the materials 50 years ago…”
Hero was struck by the image. When you water the garden; it grows. When you water
your house; it grows. In the war against the decomposers, we have already lost. They have
already infiltrated our shelters, our territory. Our walls are filled with fungal sleeper cells just
waiting for the signal to spring into action!
123
‘Just add water!’ He thought, the very simplest of instructions.
‘How many of our own food stuffs came with that printed on the box?’ It was funny to
think about our walls in this way, as packaged food for the decomposers that would spring to life
when wet.
The guest rambled on at length about what he called ‘the space station model’— which is
when we basically get rid of everything except for the microbes associated with our bodies and
our food. He’d said,
“If you look only at the microbial communities, it looks almost as
if a human being has just decomposed.”
And then finally, Terry gross finished with,
“Thank you so much. This has been an interview with Rob Dunn,
author of Never Home Alone93”
‘Ah-ha!’ That was piece he’d been waiting for––the keywords he needed to keep running
down this rabbit hole in digital space. By this time Hero had arrived at his parking spot and was
sitting there parked with the key turned halfway so that the engine was off, but the radio
remained on. He turned the key the rest of the way and shut off the new voices now pivoting to
traffic, enjoying the silence for a moment.
Although, that silence didn’t last long, because without the radio Hero noticed the
squawking of a few crows, tearing apart a paper bag, and devouring what appeared to be a halfeaten hamburger and French fries near the dumpsters. Just a few days earlier it seemed that there
was all the difference in the world between humans and all the other life on earth… But perhaps
the line between humans and nature was fuzzier than Hero had previously imagined.
93
Rob Dunn (2018) Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live. Journal article.
124
It was so obvious once he saw it, but somehow, he had never quite appreciated that the
built environment was not just a habitat for humanity. As he walked up the stairs, he thought to
himself, ‘Maybe, just maybe, this is where the wild things are.’94
94
Sendak, Maurice (1963) Where the Wild Things Are. Book.
125
Feeding Whom
Day 4
"Dream is the personalized myth;
Myth the depersonalized dream”
—Joseph Campbell95
“Healing more resembles the fluidity of storytelling
than the exactitude of puzzle assemblage.”
—Chellis Glendinning96
“Somebody’s after me,
I can’t pretend to be,
something I know I’m not.”
—Cast97
95
Joseph Campbell (2008). The Hero with a Thousand Faces, New World Library. Book. p.14,
96
Chellis Glendinning (1994) My Name Is Chellis & I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization. Book. p.146.
97
Cast (1997) “Live the Dream” Mother Nature Calls. Polydor. Song.
126
Hero woke up with that awkward feeling in the center of her body. That feeling that
inspired one to drag themselves — no matter how sleepily— to the toilet. It was there, sitting on
the toilet, that Hero actually woke up. And in that moment, after letting go but before standing
up, she had a flash of the previous day, and a vision of the sewage treatment plant with its
billions of hungry microbes waiting on the other side of this massive underground sewagesystem.
Just before bedtime the night before she had looked up the local sewage treatment plant's
website and watched a short video that documented the entire process. It was the kind of
educational video that reminded her of elementary school. She could still visualize those large
vats of aerated sludge waiting at the end of the maze of underground pipes. What she had
learned at the composting facility was indeed true––the Dillinger county water treatment plant
processed sewage sludge into what they called “Class A Biosolids” which, as Alice had
suggested, was the technical term for the highest quality of compost made from sewage.98 On
the website you could make arrangements to get the compost, but a little note had been added to
the page that indicated they had a three-month waiting period.
Hero really wasn't sure how she felt about the contents of her toilet ending up in a garden.
The toilet was really not the place where she had expected to find the circle of life, ‘But here I
am, ‘feeding the earth,’’ she thought as she flushed and watched the water spiral away.
98
In the United States, the production and distribution of Biosolids are strictly regulated by the Environmental
Protection Agency. More interesting and fairly digestible information about biosolids can be found of their website:
www.epa.gov/biosolids/basic-information-about-biosolids
127
Turning on the water in the shower she thought about the microorganisms living in the
hot water heater, those creatures who until very recently had lived only in hot springs. Now they
lived in little pockets of habitat scattered throughout human developments. How many of these
symbiotic relationships with distant biological families were lurking in the shadows just out of
sight?
The biofilms too, she thought, looking up at the shower head as the warm water ran down
her body. She was pretty sure Rob Dunn had said something about how they could identify
which part of the country you were from, and if you were on a well or city water, by examining
bacterial distribution of the biofilm in your shower head.99
She wondered, ‘When a new habitat niche is created— such as with the installation of a
hot water heater or a shower head— how much time should pass before we consider those
species that come to occupy the niche as native?’
In an established the ecosystem, the native species are the ones that have been living in a
particular habitat niche for quite some time, while non-native ones have more recently entered
the ecosystem and are competing with the established species for resources. When a new species
turns out to be really good at outcompeting an old species, we call it an invasive species, and
generally do our damnedest to get rid of it! (unless, of course, the invasive species in question
happens to be us).
But this question of non-native versus native species seemed a bit different in terms of
the hot water heater because it was a new niche; we built it. The microbial communities in a hot
water heater don’t compete with other microbial communities that have been established for
Gebert, et al “Ecological Analyses of Mycobacteria in Showerhead Biofilms and Their Relevance to Human Health” mBio. Figure 4. Journal
article.
99
128
thousands of years. The niche they're occupying only appeared once the hot water heater was
installed. She thought, ‘Perhaps a hot water heater should be considered a non-native
environment?’ Did such a term even make sense? Could a species be native to a novel
environment?
It seemed to Hero that if people created niches with particular environmental conditions
that would not otherwise be present, species that came to occupy those niches —in water heaters
and shower heads, in freezers and ovens, in basements and attics— might be considered native
species.
The hot water felt good as it ran down her body. As unnatural as it was, Hero loved
taking hot showers. What a treat it must've been for her ancestors to find hot springs. She could
understand why once they had mastered the technology; they would have put hot water heaters
and showers in all homes. The hot water just felt amazing. Then, looking down, she realized
that this water too, was headed to the waste-water treatment plant, and wondered if the soap she
was using had any particular effect on all those bacteria on the living in the sludge ponds at the
other end?
‘It’s all connected’ she thought as she dried off, brushed her teeth and got dressed.
She made coffee and leisurely ate a bowl of yogurt and granola topped with sliced pear
and a drizzle of honey, feeling particularly grateful for both the Bee that had pollinated the
flower on the pear tree and ones that collected this pollen and transform it into this sweet golden
liquid that she, like Pooh, had a deep affinity for. When she was done, she returned to the pear
core on the cutting board, chopping it up into the smallest pieces she could comfortably manage,
grabbed the coffee filter and grounds, and after adding them to her countertop collection bucket,
went to feed the worms. It felt good.
129
On the little balcony, she thought about how––when it came to organic materials––the act
of ‘taking out’ or ‘throwing away’ could also be understood as ‘feeding’ the decomposers. The
former emphasized the removal from a human environment, while the latter emphasized the
addition of food (life sustaining material) to a living population. Moving something away from,
and often out of sight of, your body has a very different connotation than using your body to feed
others. Feeding connects us; ‘taking out ’or ‘throwing away’ implicitly connects us. This subtle
linguistic maneuver had the power reshape the story around a considerable portion of the human
waste stream.
Feeding the worms felt a little bit like playing the archetypal God: making it rain food
from the sky. How many worms could be fed with five loaves of bread and two fish? Having
worm bin was like having a few hundred pets, or perhaps, even a little pet ecosystem.
Something like a like a living alter to the soil. Hero drifted off, thinking about how she could
probably build a worm bin in a repurposed aquarium so that the edges of the process could be
witnessed. It would be cool to have a worm bin with clear walls so you could really watch the
feeding happen. Like the ant farms she remembered from childhood.
Hero woke up from the thought with a start when Grace walked through the room,
excitedly calling out,
“The salmon are spawning! You should come to the river with me later after I get
off work? –– around 2!”
“Yea, very possibly. I’ll be downtown with Esri, call me when you get off.”
“Laaateeerrr” Grace shouted as she rushed out the door.
130
An hour later Hero also headed out the door, having decided to walk the couple miles to
The Casual Consumer where she was meeting Esri at 11:30 for lunch.
The walk was pleasant, and the air, crisp. Early fall flowers bloomed all around, and the
oak leaves swirled down in the wind covering the ground with yellows, reds, browns and greens.
A natural carpet that, if not swept away by some well-meaning person doing yardwork, would
decompose over the winter and be unrecognizable by the time new leaves start budding out the
following spring. But at the very least she hoped that if these leaves were swept away, they
would be put in the right bin, and end up decomposing just outside of town at DCOM
She stopped for a minute at her favorite lookout just before crossing the bridge into
downtown. It was underneath the roundabout at the bottom of the 4th Street hill: A little grassy
park with a view overlooking the bay. Benches were positioned to optimize the view, but Hero
always wandered just past the benches, to her favorite spot, and plopped onto the grass with her
back against the trunk of a giant tree on the edge of the overlook.
Looking out at Capitol Lake to her right––the damned estuary now cordoned off due to
the invasive New Zealand Mud Snail.100 She saw the Port on her left, complete with giant cranes
busily filling a cargo ship with dead trees, destined to float across the ocean to some far-off land.
She looked out at the buildings comprising the downtown and couldn't help but remember the
interactive map on the city's website that showed the consequences of sea level rise on the
100
Kelly Stockton-Fiti (2018) “Recommendations for Capitol Lake New Zealand Mudsnail Management” KASF Consulting. Report.
131
northern half of downtown101. Basically, everything north of 4th Street had been built on land
created using fill from dredging the shipping channel for the port. This created problems now
because the buildings sat at just over sea level and the land was pretty flat. As the sea level rises,
a pretty significant area would flood on a regular basis. It was already happening once or twice
year during king tides, but the projections suggested we could be looking at 50+ days a year in
the next fifty years.
In some sense, the good news was that the area was home to so much crucial
infrastructure— the port, the waste-water treatment plant, an electrical distribution center, the
public transit hub, the children’s museum, and not to mention around thousand residents and
hundred or so other small businesses— that the city had begun responding. She thought there
was a good chance the city might succeed in fighting off sea level rise, but she was concerned for
all the other coastal communities that lacked the agency, foresight and/or money to secure
themselves against rising tides.
A duck swam into view underneath her from around the canopy of a tree. She watched
for a while as another one appeared. They quacked and chased each other around in the water a
bit–– in what seemed to Hero stereotypical courting behavior. It was a nice juxtaposition.
Just watching.
After a minute a Blue Jay flew into sight, much closer than the ducks, and her attention
shifted as it fluttered around in the trees. Eventually Hero’s attention shifted again to a group of
seagulls swooping down at low tide and grabbing shellfish, carrying them up high in the sky,
101
Esri Story map produced by the City of Olympia modeling the impact of Sea level rise on downtown Olympia. Map can be found at:
https://arcg.is/LSyOO
132
dropping them on the pavement, and then swooping back down to eat the tasty bits inside the
now cracked-open shells. She’d puzzled over broken bits of shell strewn all over the ground a
couple times, never quite understanding how they got there until one day last year when she’d
heard the loud crack of an oyster hitting the pavement and watched and bird immediately swoop
down and start eating.
Hero was watching the birds when she first became aware of the voices. It sounded like
two men had stopped and sat on the bench behind her. Hero was sitting just out of sight, but well
within earshot. This happened occasionally at this spot. Sometimes it was quite awkward. She
tried to tune out the voices, but they were hard to ignore… and the first words she heard of this
particular conversation only made it harder to ignore,
“But Michael, We've Had 100 Years of Psychoanalysis and The
World is Getting Worse.102 Maybe it's time to look at that.”
There was a tone of exasperation in the man's voice as he went on:
“We still locate the psyche inside the skin. You go inside to locate
the psyche, you examine your feelings and your dreams, they
belong to you. Or it's interrelations…between your psyche and
mine. That's been extended a little bit into family systems and
office groups— but the psyche, the soul, is still within and between
people. We are working on our relationships constantly, and our
feelings and reflections, but look what's left out of that…”
Hero couldn't see but could imagine the man gesturing out to the world around them, before
going on.
“What's left out is our deteriorating world. So why hasn't therapy
noticed that? Because psychotherapy is only working on that
"inside" soul. By removing the soul from the world and not
recognizing that this soul is also in the world, psychotherapy can't
102
James Hillman and Michael Venture (1992) We’ve Had a hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse. Book.
This conversation was synthesized from these two sources, with the bulk coming from the opening chapter of “We’ve Had 100yrs of
Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse” which is a transcript of a conversation between James Hillman and Michael Ventura that
occurred as they sat on a bench, upon the bluffs overlooking the Santa Monica pier, sometime in the early 1990’s while I was enjoying life as a
toddler some 7 miles south.
133
do its job anymore. The buildings are sick, the institutions are
sick, the banking system is sick, the schools, the streets—the
sickness is out there!”
The other voice muttered,
“That sea out there is diseased. We can't eat the fish.”
“There is a decline in political sense. No sensitivity to the real
issues. Why are the intelligent people so passive now? Why?
Because the sensitive, intelligent people are in therapy! They've
been in therapy in the United States for 30, 40 years, and during
that time there's been a tremendous political decline in this
country.”
“How do you think that works?”
“Every time we try to deal with our outrage over the freeway, our
misery over the office, and the lighting and the crappy furniture,
the crime on the streets, whatever—every-time we try to deal with
that by going to therapy with our rage and fear, we are depriving in
the political world of something. And therapy, in its own crazy
way, by emphasizing the inner soul and ignoring the outer,
supports the decline of the actual world.”
“I'm not sure it's causal, but it's definitely a pattern. Our inner
knowledge has gotten more subtle while our ability to deal with the
world around us has, well, deteriorated— is almost not a strong
enough word. Disintegrated is more like it.”
“Yes, and there’s another thing that therapy does that I think is
vicious. It internalizes emotions.” After a pause and he went on
with a subtle inflection change, “I'm outraged after having driven
to my analyst on the freeway. The fucking trucks almost ran me
off the road. I'm terrified! I'm in my little car and I get to my
therapist’s office and I'm shaking. My therapist says, ‘we’ve got to
talk about this’. And so, we do, and discover that my father was a
son of a bitch brute and this whole truck thing reminds me of him.
Or we discover that I've always felt frail and vulnerable, there have
always been bigger guys with big dicks, so this car that I'm in is a
typical example of my thin skin and my frailty and vulnerability.
Or we talk about my power drive that I really wish to be a truck
driver. We convert my fear into anxiety—an internal state. We
convert the present into the past, into a discussion of my father and
my childhood. And we convert my outrage—at the collusion or
the chaos so whatever my outrage is about— into rage and
hostility. Again, an internal condition that started as outrage; an
emotion. Emotions tell us something about the world. We are
learning to make sense of our emotions as if they only cover an
134
internal territory— without understanding that they connect our
interior with exterior worlds.”
She could hear the speaker took a deep breath, and his companion took advantage interjecting:
“A therapist once told me that my grief after seeing a homeless
man my age was really a feeling of sorrow for myself.”
“And so, you directed that emotion you felt inward. You decided
that the important part of that experience was what was going on
inside you.”
“Yes, it's also, in part, a way to cut off what the therapist would
call Eros, the part of my heart that seeks to touch others.
Theoretically, Eros is something therapy tries to liberate, but here's
a person on the street that I'm feeling for and I'm supposed to deal
with that feeling as though it has nothing to do with another
person.”
“The principal content of American psychology is developmental
psychology: what happens to you earlier is the cause of what
happens to you later.103 That's the basic theory: our history is
causality. We don't even separate history as a story from history as
a cause. So, you have to go back to childhood to get it why you
are the way you are. So, when people are out of their minds or
disturbed or fucked up or whatever, in our culture, in our
psychotherapeutic world we go back to our mothers and fathers
and our childhoods. No other culture would do that. If you're out
of your mind in another culture or quite disturbed or impotent or
anorexic, you look at what you've been eating, who's been casting
spells on you, what taboo you've crossed, what you haven't done
right, when you last missed reverence to the gods or didn't take
part in the dance, broke some tribal custom. Whatever. It could be
thousands of other things—the plants, the water, the curses, the
demons, the gods, being out of touch with the great spirit. It would
never, never be what happened to you with your mother and father
40 years ago. Only our culture uses that model.”
“Well, why wouldn't that be true? Because people will say… OK,
I'll say, that is why I am as I am.”
“Because that's the myth you believe.”
“What other myth can there be? That's not a myth, that's what
happened”
“Ahh ‘that's not a myth, that's what happened’. The moment we
say something is "what happened" we are announcing to the world,
I would distinguish here between developmental psychology (DP) as framework for understanding/supporting human development applied in
the present tense (especially in childhood). I consider this Piaget branch of DP as distinct, and considerably more useful, than the more Freudian
branch of DP Hillman and Ventura are riffing on here.
103
135
“this is the myth I no longer see as myth.” Or “this is the myth that
I can't see through.” That's not a myth, that's what happened’
suggests that myths are things we don't believe. The myths we
believe and are in the middle of, we call them ‘fact' or ‘reality’ or
‘science’.” The speaker let that last word hang in the air.
“I can hear a voice and me saying, ‘but this thing happened, it's not
mythological, god damnit!’ Yet at the same time, any journalist or
cop can tell you, if you talk to several different people about an
event they all witnessed or participated in, you'll have several
different recollections of that event. I know in my own family, if
you ask me and my sister to describe our mother, you'll get two
totally different mothers, and neither one of us is lying. Memory is
a form of fiction, and we can't help that. So, we are very much the
creation of the stories we tell ourselves. And we don't know we're
telling stories.”104
“[Exactly. You cannot live without story. But you also have some
interpretive power when it comes to understanding or framing
stories. For better or worse, the stories we tell ourselves impact
our lived experience. And stories are particularly important in
response to our own emotions; they give us direction. If we are
disturbed by homelessness, and our response is to retreat into our
own psyches to discover what exactly it is about bearing witness to
people sleeping in the street that is so triggering, we have
consciously or unconsciously, made the decision that the problem
that needs to be solved, the work that needs to be done, exists
within our own psyche. At the very least we must be aware of that
decision to move inward, and understand that in doing so, too
often, we’re retreating from the outside world.”
“You can spend your time and energy and money trying to figure
out why homelessness is upsetting, and develop strategies to deal
with this upsetting feeling, or you could direct your time, energy
and money toward understanding why homelessness is occurring,
and what you can do about it!]”
“[Yes] I’m saying that the concentration on ourselves is part of our
neglect of the world. Part of the reason the forests being cut down
and the fish are going belly up. It’s more important to think about
those rivers and those fish, than to always worry about you and
relationship to your son and your daughter or your mother or your
father’s father. Maybe. In other words, the concentration on
personal relationships has narrowed the focus of the citizen to
being a patient, a victim, a survivor; instead of being a citizen.”
“You really think we can solve society’s problems?”
104
Break in direct quotations, followed by excerpts of an interview on public radio Hillman did promoting We’ve Had a hundred Years of
Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse.
136
“It doesn’t matter if we solve the problems.” He interjected rather
fiercely. “We need to try. You fight not because you’re going to
win; you fight because there is something to live for that is
important. The fight is what gives your life meaning.” Chuckling
a little bit, the man added, “or, you go to therapy and talk about it."
105
They were silent for a minute of two, before the second man stood up and said,
“Well, right now, I have to pee, and I'm going to do something about it.”
Chuckling the other man said, “I'll walk over there with you. I could lose some
water weight myself.”
And just like that they were gone.
Hero was alone again, thinking about what she’d just overheard, and frankly she wasn't
sure what to make of it. Could this be why our society was so screwed up: because the people
with money and power had their feelings about the state of the world redirected into narratives of
their own historical trauma and personal growth? And, in doing so, they were unwittingly
redirecting that energy away from civic engagement?
She thought to herself, ‘Maybe we just need to find the right balance between inward and
outward.’ She couldn’t help but feel that, among her generation, so much emphasis was placed
on fixing things at the systemic level that the notion of working on oneself had become lost––
not in the inner workings of the psyche, but rather lost in the superstructures of society. Maybe
this was just the generational pendulum swinging back and forth. One generation locates all
their problems and solution within the psyche, while the next generation locates all their
105
James Hillman (1993) - A Deeper Look (hosted by Martin Wasserman). Radio program syndicated by KCSM-FM, San Mateo, CA.
137
problems and solutions on the societal level. Each generation reacting to the last… she
wondered if it would it ever balance out?
She’d grown wearing of her generation more recently, reading too many critical
deconstructions, always seemed to leave Hero feeling powerless, ineffective and cynical. But
more often than not it didn’t lead anywhere… Like, okay, you’ve torn apart my conception of
wilderness106, now what? Once you’ve deconstructed my foundation, I’m left just sitting here
amongst the rubble trying to figure out how to fit the pieces back together again… but nothing
fits together anymore. It’s all jagged edges and awkward corners.
And suddenly it hit Hero that there was all the difference in the world between
deconstruction and decomposition. The decomposers break things down into basic elements in
such a manner that cultivates fertile ground for rebuilding. The deconstructionists just smash
things as fast as possible, leaving heaping piles scrap in their wake. The academic might have
the power deconstruct a particular piece of literature–– analyzing all the themes, characters, and
plot points–– assigning motives and offering commentary. But perhaps, Hero thought, it is the
author––who first consumes such a story, decomposes it down to its basic elements, and picking
out the most useful parts proceeds to produce something new––who genuinely welds powers.
She smiled to herself as she realized that perhaps that the trophic levels a nutrient cycle
through could be analogous to the path of a meme traveling through the body of an artist.
Feeling good about her new insight, and reflecting back on the men’s conversation, Hero
remembered and thought ‘damn, developmental psychology too!’ She’d never heard someone
talk about it like that... It was so foundational to her understanding of what humans are that she
106
Cronon, W (1996). “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Environmental History. Book Section.
138
couldn’t dismiss it, and yet it did seem the two old men on the bench were onto something
because It was the myth that she didn’t think was a myth.
Hero spent some time searching, trying to find other stories that she didn’t except as
myths because she knew them to be true… and found herself swirling around this question about
the difference between humans and nature. She’d never found a particularly satisfying
articulation of that difference, but the possibility had never occurred to her that maybe there
wasn't meaningful a difference. Was this another myth of her people; that humans are separated
somehow from the rest of life on earth?
Checking her watch, she realized it was time to get going, so she crept out from behind
the tree, feeling a little relieved now that the men had moved on. It would have felt a little
awkward to reveal herself after eavesdropping.
Walking across the bridge into downtown, Hero thought about first meeting with Esri
many years ago. They were in class together. It had been Hero’s first class at this new school:
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (OMSE). OMSE had been a year-long interdisciplinary
program loosely based on Buckminster Fuller’s 1969 book of the same name. The metaphor was
elegant. We are astronauts on Spaceship Earth––but instead of understanding and maintaining
the life support systems that keep our planet habitable, we’re steadily dismantling or disregarding
them in order to make our lives more comfortable.
Hero always thought about it like a car— being much more familiar with the inner
workings of a car than those of a spaceship. In essence, people have taken the lug nuts off the
139
tires in order to attach a bigger navigation screen to the dashboard. We’ve been living with the
pedal to the metal for so long that everything under 4th gear seems useless. And so, we’ve
dismantled the transmission to be able to use the gears to make a more adjustable driver’s seat.
It had been amazing year; the 50 or so students had worked on their own ‘operating
manuals’ with wide ranging topics that covered the whole spectrum of sustainability studies.
Hero’s take away had been both inspiring and disheartening. Going in, she really thought
humans just needed an operating manual. After that class she’d realized the problem was much
more pernicious than that. We had the manuals; we just weren’t using them!
Esri’s presentation had been particularly inspiring. She had researched cases from all
over the country where the library model had been expanded into realms far beyond books.
She’d presented examples of how the model of collective ownership and equal access could be
applied to many areas of our consumer economy. She showed examples of tool libraries and toy
libraries that were already up and running. The images were striking. The toy library looked
like a toy store except without the price tags. It was like a dream come true for a younger Hero!
Hero had been in awe a couple months before when on vacation she had seen a hand
painted sign along the side of the road reading “Vashon Island Tool Library”107 with a big arrow
pointing down a side street. Hero insisted they go check it out— and it was well worth it. After
a couple turns, they found themselves walking into a warehouse in the back of a nondescript
industrial complex. Rows of large shelves overflowed with tools organized into different
sections; something like a cross between a Home Depot and a thrift store. The place seemed to
have everything you could need, from lawn mowers to table saws, paint guns to drain snakes. It
This is based on my experience visiting the Vashon Island tool library while on vacation there in 2019. Explore more here:
https://vashontools.org/
107
140
was like a dream come true! It was the kind of place that made Hero want to move into the
neighborhood.
She had have fallen in love with an old set of wood carving tools that looked like they
were older than her with worn wooden handles and a deep patina on the blade that faded
smoothly into the polished steel of the working edge. She’d imagined the hands that must have
held them before…
One of the most surprising and endearing aspects of the whole thing had come as Hero
spoke with the tool librarian about where the tools came from. The librarian shared that although
they received some small donations, the bulk of their resources came from entire workshops
whose contents were donated by heirs, or increasingly, were donated by people who have
reached an age stage in life where not using them. For those people, the librarian shared, who
had built tool collections over a lifetime, the tool library was a good option. It made a lot of
sense to Hero too; someone who spends a lifetime building a collection of tools would want to
donate them to the tool library; making their collection accessible to the whole community. In
some sense, the tool library offered the serious collector of tools an opportunity let their
collections live on after they die.
As she reached the bottom of the bridge, the thought occurred to Hero that the library
model might just be the best resource use model for things that don't decompose. That structural
model allows for the maximum possible use value distributed across a community. Basically,
anything that you own that is reusable could be circulated through a community with the library
model.
141
Esri’s work had been inspiring, and yet again, emblematic of the whole situation; we had
the library model, we just rarely applied it. The operating manual existed, for the most part we
just didn't use it.
‘Who actually reads the instruction booklet?’ Hero mutter aloud in exasperation as she
crossed into downtown.
When Hero got to The Casual Consumer, she found Esri sitting on the other side of the
room, drawing in one of the sketch books shop kept stocked at each table like salt and pepper.
Hero enjoyed paging through these sketchbooks; it felt a little bit like time traveling. She could
get a sense for the people who had eaten here before, a little glimpse into the shared history of
her table. Esri was so engrossed in what she was doing that she didn't look up until Hero said,
“Hey stranger” as she pulled out the chair and sat down across the table.
“Hey! Good to see you Hero, I got us a pot of green tea, help yourself.”
Hero obliged and was pouring herself a cup as Esri continued,
“Oh my god, I finished S-Town this morning. That’s one of the craziest, most
bizarrely disturbing podcasts I've ever listened too!”
“Yeah,” Hero agreed in an exaggerated manner and went on to discuss the details
of the story, which eventually turned to gossiping about mutual acquaintances –
as so often is the case with old friends. Where was Jean-Luc? What ever happen
to Trinity?
142
Hero described the dissolving of her last relationship, her graduation from college, and all
the anxiety and excitement that brought… eventually recounting (as best she could) the
conversation she had just overheard between the men on the bench.
“That last bit about going inward is interesting,” Esri replied. “I can't help but
think of it through my own filter, and, well, I have spent much of the last couple
of months going inward through a completely different frame of reference. I
mean, they might be right when it comes to the psyche, but when it comes to your
body, a lot of what's on the inside isn’t necessarily you.”
“What do you mean?” asked Hero.
“I mean your microbiome. ‘The human body contains trillions of microorganisms
— outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1. Because of their small size, however,
microorganisms make up only about 1 to 3 percent of the body's mass.’108 But
still, I mean that’s 90% of the cells that make up your body are actually nonhuman. It sounds crazy; I know. But I got sick after I came back from Ecuador
last year—I got some kind of stomach bug, we never figured out exactly what it
was—but my doctor had me get my microbiome tested, and long story short, in
trying to figure out what was going on in my own gut, I stumbled into this crazy
National Institutes for Health (2012) “NIH Human Microbiome Project defines normal bacterial makeup of the body: Genome sequencing
creates first reference data for microbes living with healthy adults.” Press Release.
108
143
field of research around the human microbiome. Researching this stuff has really
forced me to rethink what a human being is. What I am.”
“Ohh, tell me more. How do you think of a human now?”
“It's crazy.” She prefaced again, “Well, I suppose I used to think that there was
all the difference in the world between humans and nature. I mean, I live here
within my skin and nature lives there outside of my skin. But when you start
looking at the world through the perspective of the microbiome that boundary gets
very, very blurry. Like you and I are not just walking, talking manifestations of
genetic code. We are also walking and talking microbial ecosystems! We have
diverse organisms living in niche habitats throughout our bodies. These
microorganisms literally share our body space; your mouth alone probably
harboring over 700 species of bacteria.109 You have a hand microbiome,110 and
there’s microbiome that changes throughout your respiratory tract.111 In your
bladder too,112 and of course you have an epic microbiome in your gut that can
have impacts on health in what are often rather staggering ways.113”
“For example?”
“Well, there’s so many examples. I mean, there's a lot coming out about the
‘mind-gut connection.114 Research is basically showing that your gut microbiome
can have direct impact on your mood regulation and other issues like depression
Nimish Deo and Deshmukh (2019) “Oral microbiome: Unveiling the fundamentals” Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology. Journal article.
Edmonds-Wilson, et al. (2015) “Review of human hand microbiome research” Journal of Dermatological Science. Journal article.
111 Santacroce et al. (2020) “The Human Respiratory System and its Microbiome at a Glimpse.” Biology. Journal article.
112 Thomas-White, Brady, Wolfe & Mueller (2016) “The Bladder Is Not Sterile: History and Current Discoveries on the Urinary Microbiome”
Current Bladder Dysfunction Reports. Journal article.
113 Patrice D Cani (2018) “Human Gut Microbiome: Hopes, Threats and Promises” Gut. Journal article.
114 Emeran Mayer (2016) The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and
Our Overall Health. Harper Collins. New York, NY.
109
110
144
and anxiety115. It’s crazy… and not always so subtle, researchers are drawing
significant connections to serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia and bipolar
disorders116. There’s even an emerging subfield called of “Psychobiotics” that’s
exploring the possibility of introducing specific bacteria into the gut microbiome
as a means treating a whole host of cognitive issues.117
“Whoa!” Said Hero, feeling a bit overwhelmed with information… which of
course didn’t stop Esri from continuing.
“On some level it's strange to think about your gut having such a direct influence
on your thinking,” Esri paused for a second as if for dramatic effect, then added,
“but then when you really start thinking about it, you realize that there are so
many different things we can eat or drink that affect our thinking: eat the right
mushrooms or drink too much alcohol and it’s very hard to deny that what goes
into your mouth can ultimately affect your brain.”
Laughing a little bit Hero replied, “Yea, I never really thought about it like that.”
“I take it you’re familiar with the sense of having ‘a gut feeling ’about
something?”
“Of course!”
“In recent years, scientists have begun to map the underlying biological structures
that might inform such a feeling! We have what's been described as a ‘second
Peirce and Alviña (2019). “The role of inflammation and the gut microbiome in depression and anxiety” Journal of Neuroscience Research. Journal
article.
116 Nguyen et al. (2019) “Gut microbiome in serious mental illnesses: A systematic review and critical evaluation” Schizophrenia Research. Available
online, as corrected proof.
117 Bermúdez-Humarán et al. (2019) “From Probiotics to Psychobiotics: Live Beneficial Bacteria Which Act on the Brain-Gut Axis” Nutrients.
Journal article.
115
145
brain’ or ‘little brain’ or ‘Gut-Brain-axis’ distributed throughout our digestive
system. And well, in the way that our big brain is constantly mediating our
interactions with the outside world through an active sense-response feedback
loop, our second brain that surrounds our gut mediates our relationship with the
world in a similar way… but it’s the parts of the outside world we choose to put
inside us.” Esri said, before going on,
“And it’s not just mental–– on the trajectory from one end of our body to the
other, that food passes through a series of diverse microbial communities that are
effectively eating the food too. The microbes in your gut eat by releasing
enzymes that break down organic molecules into bioavailable forms that then
become accessible to both the micro-organism releasing the enzyme, but also the
super-organism (us!) that has effectively contained the whole process. Every time
we eat, we are feeding ourselves, but we are also feeding the billions and billions
of organisms that share our bodies.”
“It’s like compost!” Hero exclaimed, with a flash on insight finally knowing
where to jump in “This is kind of crazy. For the last couple of days, I have been
on this kick thinking about composting as a way of reconnecting with the natural
world. I have been thinking about food waste and yard waste, and frankly even
human waste. You know, thinking about composting as a way of reconnecting
with the natural world, of making peace with decomposers.” After pausing for a
second she continued, “I have been tripping out on all the different places where
it's possible feed the decomposers, and I guess, what I'm hearing now is that
perhaps it’s actually impossible to separate feeding us from feeding our
146
decomposers. We all go through life with a special kind of compost pile in the
center of our bodies!”
“Composting is powerful,” agreed Esri, “And yeah, being human--scratch that-being a mammal, in some sense means that, by definition, you are powered by an
anaerobic digester filled with microbes located in the center of your body.”
“I was touring the county’s composting facility yesterday, and the raw energy that
was just radiating off of the piles really impressed me. I was walking back to my
car and I had this vision that fossil fuels where what happened when that energy
couldn't escape through decomposition and instead those materials were subject to
immense pressure and heat for millions of years. And now, I guess I'm seeing
that it’s that same kind of energy radiating off of a steaming pile of compost that
fuels my body…” Hero’s voice trailed off, and then finally she added, “Maybe
we made peace with these decomposers a long time ago, and then we forgot all
about it.” Those words hung in the air for a while before either of them spoke
again.
Eventually Esri went on “Some of the interesting research that I found was an
ongoing debate around the what called the “Bacterial Baptism Hypothesis” that
relates to the passing of the microbiome from mother to child during birth.118 It’s
a bit unclear what the long-term health impacts of children born via cesarean
section versus those experiencing vaginal births are, but there is evidence that the
infants gut microbiome if effected by its method of birth.119 The they found that
Stinson, Payne and Keelan (2018) “A Critical Review of the Bacterial Baptism Hypothesis and the Impact of Cesarean Delivery on the Infant
Microbiome” Frontiers in Medicine. Journal article.
119 Hoang, Levy and Vandenplas (2021). “The impact of Caesarean Section on the Infant Gut Microbiome.” Acta Paediatrica. Journal article.
118
147
although the womb near sterile, the birth canal is very much not, so that when the
child is born vaginally, they are immediately covered in their mother’s
microbiome. Children born through cesarean section skip the trip through the
birth canal and often then are colonized by the microbes in the hospital room
instead… there is a practice called “Vaginal Seeding” that is being used after Csections in an attempt to counter act this phenomenon and reintroduce vaginal
microbiome––basically as soon as they pull the baby out it gets vaginal fluids
smeared all over it. It makes perfect sense to me, and I’ve been surprised by how
controversial an issue it has become in the literature. Frankly I think it has a lot to
do with the fact that more and more mothers are requesting it–– because it make’s
intuitive sense–– and well, doctors who ‘know what’s best’ don’t want to take
orders from their patients… focusing their concerns on the risk of transferring
infection to the newborn and the lack of evidence that the practice is effective.
But it’s such a new concept, that it hasn’t been adequately studied. And there are
a few confounding variables.
Nursing seems to also play a big role in the development of the infants
microbiome too, turns out breastmilk also has a microbiome that’s transferred the
from mother to child during breastfeeding–– not to mention the skin microbes
transferred from the areola.120 The observation that breast milk is a means of
passing microbiome from mother to child makes a pretty strong case that we
figured out how to make peace with our gut microbiomes a very long time ago.”
Pannaraj et al. (2017). “Association Between Breast Milk Bacterial Communities and Establishment and Development of the Infant Gut
Microbiome” The Journal of the American Medical Association: Pediatrics. Journal article.
120
148
After pausing momentarily Esri continued, “Maybe we've gone beyond peace and
into the world into the realm of symbiosis. There are many places where our
relationship with our microbiome is characterized by much more than nonaggression — it’s more like mutual aid. Symbiosis. We both help each other.
Just by living we support them, and just by living they support us.”
“The bit about breastmilk is fascinating.” Hero said, “now that you mention it,
somebody was just telling me about a disease—I can’t remember the name right
now— where in recent year they’ve discovered fecal transplants to be something
like a miracle cure.”
“Yes! Crazy right! It sounds like some medieval medicine type shit!” Esri
laughed with a look in her eyes that said pun intended. “I don’t know about a
miracle cure, but seriously, who would have thought that one person’s poop could
be another person’s medicine?”121
Moments later the waiter showed up with that impeccable sense of timing that left you
wondering if they had overheard the conversation they were about to walk into. Esri ordered a
kale salad with poached eggs and Hero opted for a classic: two eggs, potatoes and toast.
After the waiter left the two kept talking, touching on pesticides and preservatives, and
wondering if our attempts to stop the pests from eating our food in the fields, by poisoning them,
might also be poisoning the microbes within us.
Esri commented, “It’s so funny you know… that we have an ‘organic’ produce
section in grocery stores. It's kind of absurd! The word ‘organic’ already meant
Voth and Khanna (2020) “Fecal microbiota transplantation for treatment of patients with recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection.” Expert
Review of Anti-infective Therapy. Journal article.
121
149
something that applied to all food, so deciding that just this food can be labelled
organic is a non-sensical claim. It's Orwellian. We take a word that has a broad
meaning, then redefine it to mean something specific—a nuanced sliver of that
original broad category. It creates an inherent tension in the word because if you
use that specific interpretation— in this case food grown without synthetic
products— you are, by definition, excluding a large number of the cases that
would easily have fallen within the old category. The broad definition of organic
is import and it gets confused when we use it to mean ‘made without synthetic
poison’ colloquially.”
“And you would think that a message that appears to be as important as ‘made
without synthetic poison’ being shortened into a word so seemingly innocuous as
‘organic’ would have set off some alarm bells in someone’s head.”
“I’m sure it did. I mean, unfortunately we don’t seem to have the linguistic
equivalent of a fire alarm to pull in the case of our words definitively
combusting,” Esri said, adding, “And look at what ‘meme’ has come to mean…
It’s but a fraction of what Dawkins defined.122”
“Yep—same thing,” Hero replied.
"And why did we come to name this particular kind of cultural transmission with
the same word that refers to ‘all units of cultural transmission’––it just seems so
self-defeating to me. The concept of ‘memes’ is really important. It’s the damn
122
Richard Dawkins (1989) "11. Memes: the new replicators", The Selfish Gene (2nd ed.). Book section. p.368.
150
bridge between the social constructionists and the evolutionary theorists! And we
need that bridge more than ever.”
“If only we could figure out how to market ‘Organic Memes’ to the world, maybe
we could save it,” Hero said jokingly.
Esri buried her head in her hands, shaking it with exasperation, “Ideas without
synthetic pesticides or fertilizer?”
“Something like that. Pure ideas—nothing toxic.”
“I'm not sure… there isn’t much that scares me more than a group of true
believers armed with ‘pure’ ideas, convinced they’re going to save the world.”
“You’ve probably got a point... but somethings gotta give? It feels like we're
pushing up against hard limits, something’s going to start pushing back. The
atmosphere doesn’t care about our language”
“I think linguistically speaking we already are hitting the limits… I swear, we're
living through the Tower of Babel; except it’s digital — like seriously —
something is interrupting our ability to communicate with each other at the
precise moment when we have built the best communication tools the human
species has ever known. We built this thing,” Esri said, holding up her phone,
“and we all started using it, and now it’s harder to understand each other than
ever… but it’s so addictive and contagious that we can’t put it down… And it’s
increasingly the place we turn to seek definition and meaning in our lives. It’s
strange… and I don’t think it’s going to end well.”
151
Smiling as she saw the opportunity for a good quote, Hero jumped in, “Wait a
minute, Juanita, this thing your describing, is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”123
Esri shrugged, playing her role perfectly. “What’s the difference?”
Their shared love of Neal Stephenson had been one of the first things they really bonded
over, when they had both been reading Seveneves on that first field trip together.124 Of course
the scene they had just enacted was from Snow Crash; but Hero knew that Esri, like her, had read
them all.
“Kale Salad with poached eggs?” interrupted the food runner who’d just appeared with
plates in hand. Esri raised her hand a bit and nodded, and he put the plate down in front of her.
“Eggs potatoes and toast?” asked the runner as he slid the other plate down in front of
Hero who asked for ketchup and Tabasco. Moments later he had come and gone with
condiments, and the two of them were busy eating while occasionally throwing out memes that
have made the world better.
Eventually Hero’s phone buzzed in her pocket and pulling it out she saw a message from
Grace, “Hey, I’m off, Going to the river. Should I swoop you?”
Esri was into it too, so an hour later, after stopping back by Hero’s to drop off Esri’s car,
the three of them were driving to one of the many rivers that drain into the Puget Sound.
123
124
Neal Stephenson (1992) Snow Crash. Book. p.406
Neal Stephenson (2015) Seveneves. Book.
152
On the drive up they listened to a fascinating RadioLab about Facebook censorship.125
The show exposed a particular dynamic none of them had ever thought of before: the
psychological experience of the censors spending their workday (every workday) looking at
flagged images and trying to determine if they violate Facebook’s community guidelines. It’s a
twisted dynamic, because the very act of flagging a post conveys the judgment ‘not appropriate
for viewing in my community’ but in flagging a post you’re just sending it to another feed–– of
only flagged posts––that someone else, in a different community must look at. Someone sitting
in-front of a screen, in a non-descript building in a far-off land processing 1000s of flagged posts
a day. The sensors sending the censors material for censure. There’s quite the debate about
censorship in the social media space, but it all seems to focus on the users who either want more,
or the users who insist there’s already too much. It’s mostly free speech debate… between the
sensitive and censured, with little regard to what’s happening Behind the Screen, to the actual
censors, in the shadows of social media.126 Who scrubs all this toxic shit we dump into the waste
stream? Who are The Cleaners?127
The three agreed that they might be able to do this job for a day, maybe a week, but it
would drive them crazy eventually.
Grace pointed out the parallel to some of the worst recycling systems, “Oh my,
it’s just like the e-waste streams flowing from the richest places and converging
into rivers that eventually flood some of the poorest populations with the ‘job
opportunity’ of sorting through all our toxic crap…”
Adler and Hunte (2018) “Post No Evil” Radiolab. Radio program.
Sarah T. Roberts (2019). Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadow of Social Media. E-book.
127 Block and Riesewieck (2018) The Cleaners. Independent Lens. Documentary film.
125
126
153
“Yea, that primary literature is pretty depressing,128” Esri added. “They make us
feel better about ourselves by creating a ‘proper’ place for disposal— just bring it
to the right place and it will go ‘away’. But too often ‘away’ means transporting
the material to places with few economic opportunities so people will accept the
negative health outcomes associated with processing the material just to gain
access to an income stream.”
“And we keep doing it…” added Hero, saying “I was just reading a report a few
months ago where a non-profit hid like 200 GPS trackers in old electronics and
then disposed of them properly in 2016, and watched as like 30% of them still
ended up going overseas, the report had a map and everything129… and then, the
same group did it again in 2020 and found 4 out of 6 LCD monitors they donated
to the Goodwill in the U.S. eventually ended in Guatemala City illegally.”130
“It really is bizarre to think of social media as generating waste products.” Grace
replied, “Like with e-waste you have something physical, but this digital stuff just
seems so… well, not physical!”
“I really want to see a picture of one of these censorship factories.” Hero said, “I
keep imagining them like the psychological equivalent of the e-waste slums.”
And then another question struck Hero and she asked, “Where might
decomposition fit into this social media system?”
The trio didn’t make much progress on the flagged images, because it seemed dangerous
to give AI editorial power over speech. Child porn and extreme violence maybe, but speech
Brett H. Robinson, “E-waste: An assessment of global production and environmental impacts” Science of The Total Environment. Journal article.
Basel Action Network (2016) “Disconnect: Goodwill and Dell Exporting the Public's E-waste to Developing Countries.” Public Report.
130 Basel Action Network (2020) “GPS Trackers Reveal Dell Reconnect via Goodwill Exporting E-Waste to Guatemala.” Public Report.
128
129
154
seemed dangerous… and well very challenging because laws around speech were different
depending on what country you were in.
The conversation turned to another social media problem. People on social media were
getting dogpiled on for something someone dug up deep in their social media history. In just an
instant, you worst moment could go viral and a life could be canceled.
“It’s sort of bizarre,” Hero said, “that default social media settings are preserve
everything. It’s the opposite of the natural world–– where decomposition is sort
of the default and preservation generally requires, specific and conscious effort.”
Grace asked, “What if everything you posted it on social media began to
decompose after a year or two unless you were intentional about going back and
hitting something like a ‘Pasteurize post’ button?”
Esri added, “It’s not just big brother watching you––everyone can watch you!
And somehow, we’ve gotten caught up in a competition, where the more people
‘like’ watching you, the higher your status. I’m not sure that’s healthy. I don’t
want 100,000 people evaluating my outfit, I do my best to not give a shit what the
100 people I might see in a day think of what I’m wearing.”
Hero jumped in, “We’re increasingly moving through the world with an eye
focused on curating those bits of our life that we wish to broadcast out on our
social media feeds.” She added, “But what exactly is it that we are feeding?”
"We’re feeding our social networks,” Grace responded, “or maybe they are
feeding us?”
155
“Yeah” said Esri. “I think the most generous interpretation is that we’re feeding
our friends and family, we’re maintaining our social networks across large
distances. But I can see what you're getting at… We're also feeding
governments, and corporations, and frankly, maybe, the scariest is that we’re
feeding the algorithms. The machine learning revolution in seems to be bringing
us closer and closer to a world where artificial intelligence wins. It's almost as if
our social media feeds are entering into a digital ecosystem where they are
consumed multiple times—something like trophic levels of big data.”
“And we’re the autotrophs,” added Hero.
Esri quipped back with, “We photo-synthesize the world around us!”
“It's eerily like The Matrix,” said Hero.
“Except voluntary,” replied Esri.
“For now,” finished Grace, with a rather resigned inflection in her voice.
As they parked and got out of the car, Hero couldn't help but notice the strange new
cultural landscape they had just entered. The parking lot was rather full, and just down the road
from them was a group of about 25 people who arrived just before them and appeared to be on a
field trip— they were mingling outside three white passenger vans with notebooks and cameras
in hand. Hero noticed a tree inside a chain link cage in the middle of a mowed lawn. Across the
park she could see people gathered by the river’s edge. Even from the parking lot there was an
156
atmosphere of spectacle. It was a different energy then would have been present on a normal
summer day— when people were burning in the sun, hiding in the shade, and floating in the
river.
Today there was something happening…
“You know there’s something special going on when people flock to a place that
smells this bad,” Grace noted as they walked across the park in the direction of
both the crowd and the stench.
“Reminds me of the foliar days back at the farm when we use to spray down
everything with liquified fish fertilizer.” Esri offered. “The stuff smells awful—
but the plants sure did love it” She added, “You could see them perk up in the
space of hours.”
“Yeah,” said Grace. “I read somewhere about how effectively a similar thing is
happening here. These ecosystems where salmon spawn get a huge annual dose
of organic fertilizer in the form of hundreds or thousands of decaying fish––”
“The Salmon in the Trees,131” Esri interjected. “They found deep sea minerals in
the trees around these streams as I recall. The idea was that animals, birds in
particular, feed on these decaying salmon which have spent a lifetime traveling
the ocean— and then move into the surrounding environment and poop what
remains it out.”
“Where it becomes food for the decomposers,” Hero added with a smile as they
arrived at the river’s edge, they saw no shortage of birds swooping in and out
Peter Wohlleben (2019) The Secret Wisdom of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the extraordinary Balance of All Living Things. Greystone (English translation)
Book Section. p.22-34
131
157
gorging themselves on the dead fish. “It’s funny to think about bird poop being
so valuable.”
“Yea” Grace added, “bird poop––well, bat poop was one of this continent’s first
major exports… it’s random to think about now, but it played a significant role in
the early colonization of the Americas.”132
After a couple of moments of reflection, and then awe at the scene in front of
them, Hero went on, “It's sort of magical… We’re watching as energy and
nutrients are being transferred from the ocean to the forest.”
Silence returned until Grace eventually broke it: “To me it feels magical just to
bear witness to a species that has such a different relationship to death than our
own. When I try to imagine this from the salmon’s perspective it looks like a
nightmare.” Gesturing out to the scene in front of them, “It looks like there are
more dead salmon than living ones, and the living ones are persistently fighting
upstream, dodging other bodies in absurdly shallow water. I mean, this is a mass
grave. It would be a tragedy for so many species––a signal screaming at us that
something was wrong! Most species do not die together of their own doing. If
you came across 1000 dead birds, or 1000 dead mammals, you would be pretty
freaked out, because it would suggest that there was something very dangerous
around. But for the salmon, this is the fulfillment of their destiny. These are the
salmon who have lived their entire lives successfully and have now returned to
132
Gregory T. Cushman (2013) Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History. Book.
158
the place where they were born to reproduce and die. Just as their parents before
them did. And hopefully as their children after them will do.”
“We, on the other hand, fight death with pretty much everything we've got,” Hero
replied.
“Exactly,” added Grace. “While the salmon offer up their bodies as fertilizer for
the environment that will raise their offspring, we actually embalm our bodies
with preservatives that poison the environment and anything that might eat us.”
She paused then added, “or we get buried in cement lined graves, or get cremated.
We do our damnedest to put up a barrier between ourselves and the rest of the
natural world even after we die.”
“We fight the decomposers even in our own death,” Hero said solemnly.
Esri chimed in, “Did you know Washington State just legalized human
composting?”
“Actually yeah,” Hero responded. “The tour guide at the composting facility the
other day mentioned it briefly while she was showing us the composter they use
for roadkill. But I forgot to look it up when I got home. I ended up going down
the sewage treatment rabbit hole instead. What do you know about it?”
“It's pretty remarkable––someone in my conservation biology class did a project
on it last year. As I recall there was one main company about to start doing it that
was really cool.133 One of the things I remember were the renderings of what the
facilities would look like, and they were very beautiful. I remember the woman
Recompose Inc is the first company in the united states to offer Human Composting as a mean of natural body disposal. Started by death care
advocate, Katerina Spade, this is a fascinating company operating an innovative model. Learn more: www.Recompose.life
133
159
who started the company had a past career as an architect, and that really came
across in the designs of the spaces. They’re awe inspiring. The kind of place that
was befitting a funeral. I mean, you could have a service, and then place the body
in the composter, where would decompose for eight weeks, during which time
there were hours where you could visit the tumbling remains and eventually you
could have an opening ceremony during which the compost would be distributed
to loved ones, or donated to local conservation lands.”
“That’s powerful,” said Hero.
“What do the composters look like?” asked Grace.
“A bit like an oversized side loading commercial washing machine or dryer.
Except without the glass window—so you can't actually see the composting
taking place,” Esri replied.
They watched the river and the salmon for a while in silence. Hero focused on one fish
in particular who was trying to navigate a very shallow patch of rocky water that left a good third
of its body exposed.
A few minutes passed in silence.
Esri eventually went on, “You know, one of the other things that always stuck
with me from the presentation on human decomposition was a point the guy made
about the clash between religious narratives and narratives of evolution. We had
read this book for class called Last Song of the Dodo134 which had a section that
went over the origins of evolutionary theory and the way the tension with
134
David Quammen (1996) Song of The Dodo: Island Biogeography in An Age of Extinctions. Book. p.15-115
160
creationism played out in society. And while there is no doubt that creationists
still exist, evolution has effectively won that debate. The guy’s point was that
religious narratives answer three questions:
1. Where we came from?
2. How should we live while we’re here? and,
3. Where do we go after we die?
While evolution through selection does present a direct challenge to the question
of where we come from, it doesn't tell us much about the second or third
question––at least in a personal sense. The answers to the question of what
happens after death is better answered through the lens of nutrient cycling. He
pointed out that we have cross-cultural canons about the afterlife of one's spirit or
soul or consciousness that date back thousands of years, and yet while so many
have speculated about what happens to these intangible parts of one's being after
death, we don’t have any clearer an answer. Scientists who really wanted to
understand how ecosystems work have started mapping what can happen to all the
tangible parts of you. They have developed a clearer and clearer picture of how
nutrients and energy move though ecosystems after death. Still, they haven’t
really worked out that tension, they haven’t incorporated those data sets into the
way we think about death culturally. I'll never forget his last PowerPoint slide; it
was a big image of tomatoes on the vine with blossom end rot and he said
something like,
161
“Look… I have no idea what happens to your spirit or your soul after you die, but
the near ubiquity of these stories about something happening that appear across
human cultures suggests to me that they are important, we seem to need stories
about the afterlife. But I would suggest that those stories need to account for the
fact that this tomato plant is suffering from a calcium deficiency, and the fact is,
that if it was growing in soil that was amended with your composted remains, this
wouldn’t be happening—because the tomato plant could be re-consuming the
calcium that was once in your bones. I don’t know how to interpret that? What
meaning to make of it? But just as the history of life was held to account for
evolution, perhaps, the future of death should account for nutrient cycling.”
“That's an interesting way to think about it: never occurred to me before,” Grace
commented. “Whereas evolution gave us a new foundation upon which to build
our updated creation narratives, nutrient cycling offers new evidenced upon which
reviewing, we might choose to redraft our stories about death.”
Hero couldn't stop thinking about the salmon, the composting tour, the circle of
life. Holding up her hand in front of her face–– as if really seeing it as if for the
first time–– she said in a rather slow voice “I’m recyclable” and then, and a
second or three, “Maybe this is something we can learn from the salmon. As we
die, let us offer up our bodies as fertilizer for the habitats our offspring will
occupy.”
“What does it mean to be eaten?” Grace asked in tone suggesting she wasn’t quite
comfortable with the idea.
162
“It seems like most of our stories about being eaten are terrifying!” replied Esri.
“I mean, it makes sense because the idea of being eaten alive is terrifying. But it
does seem like maybe being eaten after you die holds the seed of an entirely
different story.”
“It’s funny,” Hero said after some thought, “I think you could interpret some of
the traditional stories as metaphors for decomposition.”
“How so?” asked Grace.
“As you decompose parts of your material body are released as gasses, which can
float up into the sky. Other parts of your body break down into the smallest of
pieces and stay below us in the soil… And frankly, now that I say that out loud, I
think you could take it even further if I anthropomorphize the molecules that
make up my body. When I think about life as an N2 or a CO2 molecule floating
around in the atmosphere, I imagine it’s a rather blissful experience —something
like heaven. Whereas those pieces of you destined for the soil will be eaten, eaten
again and eaten again, by a series of nightmarish creatures that when viewed at
scale, clearly belong in dystopian sci-fi — Something like hell.”
“That is certainly an interesting way to think about it,” Grace responded,
eyebrows raised. “I’ll bet there are lots of examples of different ways that various
after death cultural narratives could be read as metaphor for nutrient cycling and
other natural process. I wonder if anybody has written that book?” adding “I’d
read it.”
“Me too!” responded Esri and Hero simultaneously.
163
“Jinx!”
The three of them laughed.
Hero thought about something the gardener had said about how it's not just that we fail to
understand decomposition when we're looking directly at it, but more like when we don't focus
on it directly, we don’t see it lurking in the periphery. If you look for decomposition, you can
almost always find it. And If you can’t, Hero realized, that might tell you something important
about the system in question.
She wondered aloud, “What would decomposers look like in the context of
capitalist economy? Where does money decompose?”
At first her friends gave Hero quizzical glances… But, eventually embraced the
seemingly obscure question.
“You know it's funny,” Esri said. “In a class we once read about the major
developments in the field of ecology ––when scientists discovered that some of
the analytical tools developed in economics could be used to better understand
how ecosystems worked. Of course, there's a lot of work being done in the vein
of ecosystem services: attempting to quantify the specific monetary values that
individual ecosystems (or aspects of those ecosystems) offer to the broader
community. It's righteous work. But I always kind of felt that it was half the
picture. We’re using tools of economic analysis to assess and value ecosystems,
but, the other side of that, why don’t we use ecosystem analysis to assess and
value our economic systems?”
164
“Yea,” said Hero, “Exactly! What would it look like if our economy understood
that decomposition was just as crucial a structural element as production and
consumption?”
“Maybe, something like a universal basic income?” Grace asked.
“How so?”
“Well, the government collects taxes from both production and consumption of
goods, and in my mind, a universal basic income might be the equivalent of
breaking that money down into its most assessable units —cash— and
redistributing it to the whole population.” She took a breath, then added “You
know there's a guy running for president who wants to give everybody $1000 a
month.”
“That's an interesting thought,” said Esri. “Universal basic income as a sort of
systemic analog to the function of the decomposers in an ecosystem… I can’t help
but think of generational wealth, and the absurd amount of money that gets passed
down. Like when a big old tree dies… wait, scratch that––when anything but a
mammal dies–– it doesn’t get to decide ahead of time where of its resources go
after it’s dead. Only we do that.” She added, pausing for a second, “I might return
to that, but” glancing back at the salmon, “I keep coming back to this other
thought about nutrient cycling, death, and religion. I mean, maybe the
phenomenology of nutrient cycling as it relates to decomposing bodies
transferring nutrients into the soil is related to the origins of bodily sacrifice as a
religious practice… You know, for the longest time I could understand why on
165
earth we would think that killing animals, or even people, would somehow please
the gods. But I just had another thought…”
“Say more,” said Hero, interested but unsure because she also had always thought
of bodily sacrifice as a bizarre practice.
“Well, for instance,” Esri continued, “in organic agriculture, blood-meal is often
used as a fast-acting high nitrogen fertilizer. Today we get it as by-product from
slaughterhouses, it’s just dehydrated animal blood. I know, its gross, but the
blood from the cows in your hamburger was very possibly dehydrated and sold to
farm where it was used as a fertilizer… while we don't drink blood, plants kind of
do.”
Hero’s mind could help but to conjure up an image of the vampire plant, with leafy green arms
and blood dripping fangs–– straight out of ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’ But Esri went on,
“And before we had slaughterhouses, when we killed an animal, especially a big
one, all the blood would effectively fertilize the spot where it died. Would it not?
It would probably be too hot and kill the plant in the short term, but would this not
make the grass grow a little greener next season? After observing this for
generations, does it not make some sense that we would draw the conclusion that
animals dying somehow pleases the gods?”
“Whoa!” exclaimed Hero, “I've never thought about it that way.”
Grace added, "And early burial sites as well…” fading off in a distant tone. “If
people decided to begin burying their dead in a particular location, how long
would it take before the nutrient load from those bodies could be reliably
166
observed? Wouldn’t we also expect the grass to grow back a little greener over a
grave? Over generations, would that not make a traditional burial ground
distinctly special––not just in a spiritual sense, but in a phenomenological one as
well?”
“Yeah!” Esri said. “But I think a lot of cemeteries around the world have become
ecological time bombs of sorts. I wouldn’t drink the ground water near a
cemetery.135 When we started embalming our dead, we effectively added
synthetic poisons to the mix, turning grandma into a problem for the earth instead
of a fertilizer.136 But what you say about ‘the grass grows greener’ makes perfect
sense to me in a natural burial context.”
“Last year's death becomes next year's life,” Hero said, reflecting back on the
wisdom of the Gardner.
The three of them stared at the salmon for a while longer in silence before walking back
to the car. Grace and Esri went to the bathroom, and Hero walked over to check out the tree in
the chain-link cage. It was sort of a bizarre sight: a tree inside a cage. It wasn't all that
uncommon to see fencing around trees to protect them from deer, but this cage was particularly
intense.
It made more sense once Hero got close enough to read the plaque, which explained that
the apple tree had been grafted from an apple tree that had been planted by the first white people
to settle here some 150 years ago––but which had recently died. Smiling, Hero thought that in
some sense, this was a monument to our capacity to deny death. We can see that an apple tree is
135
136
Józef Żychowski (2012) “Impact of cemeteries on groundwater chemistry: A review.” Catena. Journal article.
Chiappelli and Chiappelli (2008) “Drinking Grandma: The Problem of Embalming.” Journal of Environmental Health. Journal article.
167
sick and dying, so we cut off a limb, and propagate it by grafting it onto a strong root stock,
effectively creating an upper body clone. Then we put a cage around the tree to make sure that
nothing else tries to eat it until its branches grow out of reach of the animals that roam the forest
floor. She noted it would have been unbearable to live in that cage as a human… but the tree
didn’t seem to mind.
After Hero had been pondering the caged apple tree for a few minutes as if it were a piece
of contemporary art, Esri and Grace returned and the three of them piled into the car for the drive
back into town. They sat in relative silence— each integrating the experience in their own way.
Once home, Hero sautéed some vegetables and tofu and made a pot of rice—feeding the
scraps to her worms. Eating, she reflected on the trajectory of the week and took stock of
making peace with the decomposers. What had started as an opportunity to feed food scraps and
yard waste to the decomposers, had quickly expanded to include her own bodily waste. The
conversation about the gut microbiome had instilled in Hero the vision that all people are
powered in part by the anaerobic digester located in the center of their body. It was not just that
Hero had fed the scraps from her cooking to the decomposers, or that later on she would feed the
leftovers of her digestive process to the decomposers, but that right now— and every other time
she has eaten something— Hero was feeding what she came to think of as the decomposers in
her gut.
She thought that it became harder and harder to maintain clear boundary or distinction
between humans and nature when looking at the relationship through this lens. Or maybe it was
just easier to see the interconnection between humans and nature when you focused on the
168
decomposers. Either way, she was happy with where she was now. In some sense, she felt that
she had found herself in the circle of life, and having seen it, she had the feeling that she
wouldn’t be able to unsee it. Her home was an ecosystem, and she was embedded within it,
whether she liked it or not.
Today she had realized that even in death, one can become food for the decomposers.
Hero could not imagine a more intimate set of narrative plot points for understanding oneself as
part of the larger life around them than spending a lifetime feeding the decomposers with
activities like cooking, eating, and using the bathroom, with the understanding that when the
time comes, the body through which I have spent a life time feeding the decomposers, will itself
become food the decomposers.
Hero had realized some years ago that, for her, jumping on a skateboard was the quickest
path to something like mindfulness.
Nothing cleared her head like applied physics.
On a skateboard there is an implicit —and occasionally painful— feedback loop for
anyone who lets their attention slip from that which is directly in front of them. This time was
no different. As soon as she started picking up speed going down the hill, the decomposers
disappeared and all she saw was crack, crack, rock, curb cut, no car, driveway, crack… and so
on until she got to the park, where it switched, and she spent the rest of the night trying tricks
while dodging kids on scooters.
169
170
Reunderstanding
Day 5
“I Tell them that I’m doing fine, watching shadows on the wall”
John Lennon137
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else
in the Universe."
.
John Muir138
"Holy shit, I’m the holy shit; I’m God’s manure.”
Lil Wayne
139
137 John Lennon (1981) “Watching the Wheels” Double Fantasy. Song.
138 John Muir (1911) My First Summer in the Sierra (Sierra Club Books 1988 ed). Book. p.110
139 Lil Wayne (2015) “Glory” Free Weezy Album. Song.
171
Hero woke up early the next morning. Early enough to lay in bed and watch the sun rise
and transform the sky. There was condensation on the window; and lying there in bed, Hero
thought about the chemical reactions occurring through the night that had pulled this water out of
the air. He thought about how with each breath we exhale water vapor into the air, and
wondered ‘how much of that H2O was in his body the night before?’
He looks down at the Philodendron underneath the windowsill and thought about its
respiration cycle and how it paired so well with his own. Each consuming the gasses created by
the other. He’d always been fond of the plant but thinking about it this way gave him a new kind
of appreciation for all the plants in is his room. Looking around at the few of them, he imagined
that this was indeed How to Grow Fresh Air.140
Hero cringed a bit while brushing his teeth, thinking first about the war zone in his mouth
from the perspective of the microbes living in there, followed shortly after by the vision of the
casualties of this particular battle disappearing down the drain. Another activity that could be
understood as a point of connection to the circle of life. Another place where Hero could feed
the decomposers…
Standing over the toilet watching the stream of yellow liquid filling the bowl he flashed
back to a childhood memory of his friend Fritz’s dad who would encourage them to ‘fertilize the
plants’–– which was his euphemism for peeing outside. Flushing Hero wondered what the N-PK Ratio of human urine was? Reaching for his phone and realizing it was still plugged-in on the
140
B. C. Wolverton (1997) How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 Houseplants to purify your home or office.
172
bedside table: his pajamas didn’t even have pockets. So, he made a mental note to ask google
later before stripping down and jumping in the shower.
Soaping up he realized that it wasn’t just dirt he was cleaning off his body, but that this
was yet another assault, this time on the microbes colonizing his skin. Looking down he
imagined all those dead and dislodged bodies embarking on the journey to the decomposer’s
paradise in the bowels of the city.
An hour later, while cooking he thought about the cycles that brought about the
ingredients he was preparing. With coconut oil sizzling in the pan, he imagined how the kale
was connected to the world: to the atmosphere through respiration, the solar system through
photosynthesis, and the soil system through roots. He thought about all the grains and grubs that
fed the chickens that produced the eggs. He envisioned the carbohydrates stashed in the soil now
appearing as potatoes in the frying pan, and the carbohydrates packed into seeds that were
ground up and transformed into bread.
These ingredients were all plucked from their respective places within the circle of life…
A week ago, Hero probably would have felt alienation at this realization, thinking of himself as a
thief, stealing the food stuffs. But today, somehow, he felt more at peace with his identity as a
consumer. He’d found some deeper meaning in the term, a sense of consumer identity much
deeper than capitalism… He now understood himself as a consumer in a trophic sense. Always.
If he felt lost or disconnected from the natural world, he could orient himself as a consumer––
through his relationships with the producers and decomposers.
Eating plants and animals while feeding bugs, bacteria, and fungi offered a consumer
identity even deeper than humanity. Being a consumer in this way was something shared with
that Squirrel.
173
While eating Hero thought about how he fit into the natural world… and felt pretty good
about it. The atmosphere was in every breath, and every breath was in the atmosphere.
The water in the ocean, was the water in the sky, was the water in the coffee.
It was these simple things like eating, and pooping, breathing, and feeding that provided
this sense of integrity, of connection, of identity.
He’d spent so many years working hard to find such a sense, but somehow the sense of
integrity he’d now found was in the behaviors that could hardly be considered work.
How many times had he taken a break from doing homework about climate change to sit
on the toilet and contribute directly to the carbon cycle?
How many conversations about the problems associated with synthetic nitrogen run-off,
and algal blooms had occurred without mention of the fact that the people engaging in the
conversation have bodies that produces a nitrogen rich liquid that must be drained multiple times
a day?
Have we missed the forest for the trees when it comes to relating ourselves to the natural
world?
After thinking for a bit, Hero decided that regardless of what they were doing, he’d found
the forest, so other’s projections weren’t going to get in the way. They simply couldn’t. He’d
seen things in a way that he couldn’t unseen.
Indeed, it occurred to him that for the first time in years, he was more concerned with
finding his place in civilization than the natural world… and that thought just made him laugh,
out-loud and alone for a few good minutes.
He had genuinely thought this day would never come. But here it was.
174
On to the next great adventure, time to figure out where he fit into the working world;
Hero needed a job.
After all, those years of searching in college had earned him a degree, but also a
hundred-grand in student debt… It was time to get back on the traditional trajectory for a recent
college graduate. Time to update the resume, to start the job search, to find a place in the
working world. This thought brought a creeping sense of anxiety flowing over his body.
Hero decided to walk down to the cafe and work on his résumé there— being in public
view, always helped hero stay focused on his computer. Being a social animal, he’d always
found it easier to do something when surrounding by people doing the same thing, using the herd
mentality to one advantage. And in this town, the easiest way to immerse yourself in a crowd of
people on laptops was to go to the coffee shop.
The words floated around in his head as he stared at the screen trying to figure out how to
arrange them so as to convey his personality, skills and work history all at once, in a single page.
Writing a résumé felt like distilling one’s value down to a single page— an activity that always
left Hero feeling a bit insecure. It seemed so arrogant to tell the truth and say ‘I’m trying to help
save the world’— even though that is the thread weaving together the last five years of his life—
it’s an absurd claim to put in writing. Felt a bit like greenwashing but personal, the last thing
Hero wanted was to present himself in ‘Green-face’.141
141
Green-face is like greenwashing but applied to the individual––as opposed to the corporate––identity.
175
Feeling the need for structure Hero googled “résumé templates” and spent 20 minutes
looking through different layout designs, eventually deciding to hybridize two of them. Once he
had the format set, he began to fill in the details first draft style (with emphasis on getting it out
there coherently rather than making it pretty and grammatically correct).
Hero made it through work history and was listing his skills when his attention started to
wander again, not out of some inner sense of procrastination but instead because there was
something going on in the cafe that was rather interesting...
An older man was sitting a few tables away hunched over the planter box that encased the
patio peering through a magnifying glass at something that was exciting him. It was a bit out of
place to have someone peering through a magnifying glass on a patio and half a dozen other
people all focused on their computers, but what really caught Hero’s attention was the man's
body. He had the energy of a kid, or sports fan watching the game. One who’s watching
something so intently that you can feel the energy in their posture…
Hero watched the man watching...and looking around, he saw that he wasn’t alone in
watching the watcher. There was just such a kid of about eight gazing from across the patio
standing by his mother’s side. The mom was engaged in conversation with a man who’d also
been sitting at a table alone on his laptop…
When the man with the magnifying let out a little ‘yeep’ and started shaking the littlest
bit in what was clearly excitement, the boy started to cross the patio––approaching the man
somewhat transfixed. He was just feet from the man's table when the mother noticed and called
him back loud enough that the man with the magnifying glass looked up, read the situation in a
second or two and said,
176
“Ohm oh please. He’s fine. I’d be happy to show him. I was just watching these
ants carry this ginormous breadcrumb back home across this planter.”
“Oh, no, that’s fine, thank you,” the mother replied. “We need to get going. Got
to pick up your sister––come on now” she said gesturing to kid who looked a bit
crestfallen yet resigned––showing no sign of fighting the order.
After the mother and son left, the man with the magnifying glass sat there looking a bit
crestfallen himself. His eyes eventually caught Hero’s and with a shrug he said, “Well, you win
some, you lose some.”
Hero matched the shrug and said, “I’d kinda like to see the ants— you make it
look fun! I’m not surprised you caught the kid’s attention.”
The man smiled and said, “By all means,” holding the magnifying glass out over
the planters in a gesture that welcomed Hero over to take a look. Shutting his
laptop and momentarily forgetting about his résumé, Hero walked over, the man
handed him the magnifying glass and pointed to a spot in the planter saying,
“There’s some serious gathering going on down there.”
“This is quite the spectacle,” Hero said as he peered through the glass and saw the
little group of ants carrying the breadcrumb. “The difference in scale is crazy!”
he noted. “I can't help but imagine three humans trying to carry something that
large in proportion to their bodies. It’s like of us carrying home an elephant for
dinner.”
“The ants are pretty impressive,” the man agreed. “I think I let out a squeal
earlier when they managed to get it up onto the rim and push it over into the
177
planter… two of them pushed it from below while the others climbed up,
reaching over and grabbing it from the top and pulling.”
“I heard you, so did that that boy,” said Hero. “It’s so dramatic when you watch
on this scale.”
“Make no mistake, there’s a never-ending story all around, and the right piece of
glass offers a window through which we can witness the endless drama unfold.”
Smiling Hero straightened up and said, “Well you’ve got me wanting a
magnifying glass of my own” as he tried to hand it back to the man.
“Well, you could have that one if you’ll promise to use it?” putting his hands up
in the air, in an expression that communicated ‘It’s yours: if you want it.’
“Really?” asked Hero, adding “I’m not sure I feel good about taking your
magnifying glass.”
“Oh please” he said, brushing his hand aside. “I have plenty. I try to give away
one every day.”
‘Give one away every day,’ Hero thought, this was getting more bizarre by the moment.
The idea of taking possession of the magnifying glass was exciting, but it still just didn’t quite
feel right to accept a gift from a stranger, so he asked the man the only question that did seem to
make sense, “Why?”
“When you get to my age you start thinking about your legacy. What you’re
leaving behind. I started thinking about my legacy— both in a personal sense and
a generational one— and well, I felt compelled to do something I felt good about
leaving behind––other than my kids of course…
178
I played a minor role in the creation of this digital universe we all spend so much
of our time living in, and, well, this worked out great financially, but being my
own worst critic, it also put me in a position watch closely the ways in which
digital technology is reshaping our relationships to the world. People don’t
realize that the early internet was fueled in part by a vision of digital
utopianism… now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s all bad. But It went
From Counterculture to Cyberculture, and I fear we’re losing our awareness of
the world around us.142 We’re all splitting our attention between physical and
digital space. And as time has passed were spending more and more time in the
latter, and I think we’re losing sight of the former. We’re living in ways that
don’t feel healthy— for us or the planet.
I was sitting in the park one day and I noticed that almost everybody seemed to be
dedicating the very minimum amount of attention necessary to navigating the
physical world around them, and virtually no one seemed interested in
exploration. My own nieces and nephews would spend hours getting lost in
digital ecosystems, but for the life of me, I could not hook their attention long
enough for them to get lost in the bark of a tree for five minutes! … This haunted
me, and then, one day, it just hit me, magnifying glasses!”
“Magnifying glasses?" Hero echoed back.
“Yes,” the man said. “The message I wanted to communicate was something like
‘Don’t forget to look closely at the world around you’ and what better way to say
142
Fred Turner (2006) From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of digital Utopianism. Book.
179
that than looking through a magnifying glass? You see, with age I’ve come to see
that ultimately the Medium is the Message.143
So I bought a magnifying glass and started carrying it around in my pocket, and
using it. In public. And, if I’m honest, especially when I was surrounded by
people looking at screens,” gesturing around at the patio’s occupants, “I enjoy the
juxtaposition.”
“Hmm” hummed Hero, intrigued but still not sure what to make of this eccentric.
“The Medium is the Message—I like that, but why did you start giving them
away?”
“Oh well, because it worked. People noticed —usually children, but not
always— and after parting ways with a few people who got genuinely excited
about what they saw, I realized that if I wanted to do it right, I should be sending
them away with this little window into a bugs world… and well, like I said, I had
something to do early on” he said gesturing around the patio again at the people
sitting with screens in front of them, “so I can afford a few grand a year in
magnifying glasses for the privilege of being able to give them away. I even
found a place last year that’ll engrave them. See here,” he said pointing to the
metal band holding the glass in place.
Turning it sideways, Hero read the words inscribed along the band encircling the glass,
143
McLuhan and Fiore (1967) The Medium Is The Message: an inventory of effects. Book.
180
“…But the end of all our exploring shall be to return home, and know the place
for the first time.144”
Smiling because he
recognized the quote and
thought it was rather well placed, he
said,
“T.S. Elliott. That’s a good one.”
“I’ve always thought so” said the man.
A thought occurred to Hero, and he said,
“You know it’s interesting to think about glass as a
material that offers a window into scale; both incredibly
small with the microscope, and absurdly large with the
telescope… and I guess, the thought I was having is that there is
some sort of cosmic parallel in the material itself. My understanding is that glass
is naturally occurring when lighting strikes sand… and well, that moment, that
point of contact––direct energy exchange from the sky to the earth should create
just such a material that once shaped could offer a literal window into both the
depths of the earth and the vastness past the sky… is well, kind of poetic.”
144
T.S. Eliott (1943) The Little Gidding. Poem.
181
“Wow” the man said, “I’ve never thought about it like that before, that’s a nice
vision… thank you for sharing that. I’m going to have to ponder it for a while,
but I think your right, there is something poetic there.”
“Thank you for the This” said Hero, holding up the magnifying glass.
“Oh, trust me, the pleasure is all mine” said the man.
Ten minutes later the man was gone and Hero was back at
his table trying to refocus his energy on his résumé, but the
new magnifying glass in his pocket weighed heavy on his
attention. The urge to explore was strong. And after a little
while hero gave in, closing the laptop and wandering out of the
café with magnifying glass in hand with the intention of using it.
The first thing that caught his attention was a was a little
bunch of feathers that auspiciously blew across the sidewalk like
tumble weed. He chased it down into a corner, squatted down and
got really close.
Next, he noticed the littlest new buds on a pine tree and stood
up close for a look at them.
And so, on and so on… Hero spent the rest of the afternoon getting lost in exploration of
the world around him, with the magnifying glass.
182
183
184
185
186
187
…And then suddenly it just hit him, like a ton of bricks, as he was watching this little
roly-poly with its babies… It was so simple, and yet, somehow, he had never quite seen it
before.
You can trace any leaf on the evolutionary tree of life back to the base of the trunk!
Back to the very beginning: Life is a lineage.
What we find in the present as circles of life, overtime through reproduction become
links in a great chain of life. Just the fact that this rolypoly was here, in front of Hero, meant that it
was the embodiment of an unbroken chain
of life that went back to the beginning.
This wasn't just true for this life––but for
life in general.
To notice a tree, or a bird, or dog, or
bug, or bacteria is not just to see life in the present, but to know that
life is here because it is part of a linage that has persisted over unthinkable periods of time.
If he had a time-machine and could travel 1 million years back, both his and these roly-poly’s
ancient ancestors would be there. Of course, it would be nearly impossible to actually locate
them, but theoretically, they would be there none-the-less. Just the fact that something is alive
today means that if you could go back 16, 32, 64, or 128 million years ago— the lifeforms
you’re looking at in the present would have living ancestors in the past.
Perhaps the story was even larger than the circles of life… Maybe all those circles of life
formed links in a great chain of life.
188
He walked for a while after that trying to integrate this new thought. He’d found himself
in the big park on the edge of downtown with its seemingly endless trails, meandering somewhat
aimlessly. There was life. There was life. There was life. He thought to himself as he walked.
Hero had become so distracted looking at all the life on the ground, that he walked right
into a little tree branch hanging down over the trail.
After recovering from the shock of knocking
one’s head, he refocused, and brought the
magnifying glass up to inspect the branch,
and yes, just as he suspected, there was life
there too.
He was looking at the branch, wondering if impact of his head had triggered
any particular response in any one of the three species he could see, when he heard a familiar
voice say,
“Hello Hero! Fancy running into you here!”
Startled a bit, Hero turned and saw Rachel, the gardener, walking along the path
toward Hero, “Oh hello Rachel, you startled me a bit, I was lost in a bugs world,”
he said rather sheepishly.
“Oh, that seems like a fine place to get lost to me,” said Rachel, “Are we still on
for Sunday morning at the Garden?”
“Yea, definitely,” said Hero. “I’m looking forward to it”
189
“Me too. Yesterday I finished spreading out the compost around the back orchard
with a couple other people, so on Sunday we can get you all set up with your own
plot if you want?”
“Oh yea, I’d love that,” said Hero.
“What are you up to this evening?” asked Rachel,
“Oh, nothing much, just been walking around looking at things through this
magnifying glass I got earlier from this eccentric guy at the coffee shop… I’ve got
nothing else in particular planned.”
“Well, it’s sort of serendipitous running into you here and now… I was going to
talk to you about this on Sunday, but I'm actually on the way to a support group of
sorts that’s meeting over on that side of the park pretty soon?”
“What kind of support group?” he asked
“Well, it's not official in any particular capacity, there's no formal organization,
just a score we organize around… I know a couple people think of it like a secret
society, but I think of it like a support group. It's really just a group of people
sitting in a circle around a fire listening to each other, really listening–– without
casting judgment or jumping in to fix things.
It’s a safe space for sharing your experience––which, maybe I should point out,
often means it can be pretty dangerous listening145. But we came together around
this idea of building support structures that help us live with the existential crisis
145
It’s worth highlighting this difference between ‘a safe space to’ and ‘a safe space from’ because there is an
inherent tension between these two kinds of safety that in my experience, too often goes unacknowledged.
190
of the Anthropocene. It's support group for people working on recovery in the
broadest sense of the word. I was reflecting on our conversation in the garden,
and I think it might be helpful for you too.”
“Oh cool, yea,” Hero said, feeling caught off guard but resonating, and intrigued.
“I would be interested in checking that out, I had no idea such a group existed
around here.”
“Well, we don't advertise, it's sort of invite only, and one of the few rules is not
talking about what happens in our meetings… So, in that way we are a bit like a
secret society.” She added with a chuckle “Or fight club.”
Smiling at the reference, Hero asked “Why the secrecy?”
“Because it’s about us; not them.”
“Isn’t that kinda selfish?” Hero said. “I mean, no offense but…” and sort of
shrugged.
“Yeah, maybe, but this is something we really do for ourselves. We do grow
numbers, but it’s always initially through personal connections—as I am inviting
you— that way the groups grow slowly with a curator’s eye. We also meet in
public, so sometimes people just happen upon us too. Once groups get big
enough that everybody can't comfortably sit around a fire and still hear each
other, we’ll split up, and become two groups. Some people move and bring the
process other places, or visitors come through town sit in on a meeting of two and
then bring the experience back with them. That’s how our group started, someone
191
from our town visited a friend in another place, got to sit in on a meeting, and
brought the score back with them.
So yeah, maybe it’s selfish, but we’re building a different kind of foundation—not
a 501c3, a level slab, or a primary text— the foundation we’re working on is
decentralized…autonomous… and well, self-organized. It’s a fundamentally
different model. More like a fractal than a pyramid…but also, “she added circling
back to the beginning before finishing with, “sometimes being selfish is okay.”
“Well, I guess, thanks for inviting me,” said Hero.
“So, do you want to come?” asked Rachel, adding, “If so, we should probably
start walking over there. I’ll give you a run down on the score while we walk.”
“I’m in. Sounds good” said Hero, quickly adding, “what’s a ‘score?’”
“Well, I use the term as you would in music or dance–– it’s something like a set
of instructions that are acted out or performed.”
“Like a script?” Hero asked, as they started walking.
“Kind of” said Rachel, “but a script has lines–– a score has movements”
On the way over Rachel began to explain, “We’ll go to the fire pit and mingle
around getting settled, while a person or two stage the fire. Once we’re all sitting
in a circle, on the ground, someone will light the fire and well sit in together in
silence while it catches… Once the logs get going the first person––that is
whoever acts first–– would grab the talking water and b–”
Hero interrupted, “Talking Water?”
192
“Of yes, of course, there will be a water bottle that is place near the fire before we
start… and well, have you ever heard of a talking stick? Or rock? –– you know,
some object that’s passed around a group to signifying who’s turn it is to speak?”
“Oh, yes” Hero said, “I am familiar with such a practice”
“Ok. Good. So, yea, we use a vessel containing water as our talking piece…
because, well, actually for a few reasons, for starters your body is mostly water,
water carries sound and absorbs energy, and so in some sense the idea is that your
words can resonate within it.” Pausing for a moment on two as they walked
before continuing, “And well it’s also part of a deeply human trinity, you know,
starting fires, holding water, and sharing thoughts aloud are some of the earliest
behaviors that set us moving on the trajectory to where we are now. In other
words, it’s an homage to our ancestors.”
“Fire, water and language,” Hero said. “I like that.”
“Me too,” answer Rachel. “So where was I, yes. We sit in silence while the fire
catches… Once it’s really going the first person ––any person–– grabs the Water
and begins sharing with ‘My name is _____________ and today I’m feeling
__________’ in a sentence or maybe two. The water is then passed to the left,
where the next person follows suit, and so on until it goes all the way around the
circle. Then, on the second and third time around the circle you can share
whatever you want, and we’ll listen… to whatever you want to be heard…
While nobody interrupts the person speaking, there are some hand signals some
people use to demonstrate active listening throughout the gathering,” Rachel said,
193
and continued to model each signal as she explained it. “Raising your hands and
waving your finger was something like applause, a positive reinforcement, good
news. A clenched first showed that anger was resonating. A limp wrist with
fingers hanging down communicated a milder negative judgment–– like bad
news, or stupid people. Finally, the hands cupped in a bowl signaled the offering
of emotional food, something like a warm bowl of empathy.
After the water had gone around the circle again giving each person the
opportunity to speak three times, there would be an open floor where the bottle
got placed by the fire and anyone could go pick it up and say more… Once it sat
there for over a minute, someone would get up, open the bottle and pour it on the
fire–– releasing the captive water (with all its embodied emotions) back into the
atmosphere and putting out the fire. Or at least dampening it… at which point the
gathering was technically over, but usually followed by an hour or two of hanging
out, sharing food, and decompressing.”
Partially pulling out two foil wrapped bars from her bag, Rachel had said, “At the
very least, I think we should all have a little bit of chocolate afterwards...”
And then just as they approach the group gathering around the fire pit Rachel
added “Its fine to share as much or as little as you want,” and reminded Hero "
But this is all privileged information, it's confidential, so please don’t repeat
anything you hear in the circle around the fire. Before and after are open
discourse, but what happens in the circle, happened it the circle, and it stays
there”
194
And so, as they joined, Hero obliged and filed the experience under ‘confidential’ within
his memory library.
“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started” ...But where did
we start?
“To know the place for the first time.”
“We shall never cease from exploration”
“We shall not cease from exploration
!
1st, I could acknowledge that the only material I have is bricks and choose instead to
build a brick cabin.
!
2nd, I could choose to abandon all of the bricks and seek out logs to build a log cabin.
!
3rd, I could seek to integrate the first two paths, finding the patterns wherein the two
materials can work harmoniously.
And know the place for the first time.”
And the end of all our exploring
And this was my experience seeking out an answer. You see I kept looking in us
rather than at us. When I finally stepped back, it was so eloquent, the answer so simple. One
sentence. Seven words. We are not manifesting a Success Story.
195
As I embark on this next great exploration, in the face of near impossible odds, in
the shadow of mass extinction and looking into a future from the very precipice of uncertainty, I
can not help but think of the word of another great poet. In 1928, Edna St. Vincent Millay
published Dirge Without Music, A poem that ended with these three simple lines…
As I said earlier, this leaves us with three options forward from where we stand.
Let us take a minute to look at those options within this construct:
Before humans appeared, life on Earth was doing fantastic. Life was this amazing,
against-all-odds, manifestation of self reproducing patterns of energy, which over generational
time had a tendency to diversify in response to the particular environmental conditions.
Something like 3,634,238,958 years of continued growth and development (via natural
selection), and this incredibly grand diversity of life emerged out of itself. Out of that grand
diversity of life emerged a species whom learned the patterns of life on a more complex level.
They understood this power as means of segregating themselves from all other life, using their
process of “Understanding” to exploit everything for personal benefit.
By exercising ownership, over many generations, they claimed the planet for themselves,
divided it up, and redistributed its wealth. By putting faith in an abstract metric (Money), they
justified extermination and/or enslavement of all kinds of life on earth (including their own
species). Of course, you should know by now, I am speaking of us. Humanity did not appear into
unoccupied space.
Feeling hopeless, one day I decided try something different. I let go of everything
I had previously assumed was successful about my situation. I just walked away and looked at
the clearing from a distance. It was only then that I saw the absurdity of my predicament. I came
to the realization that it is impossible to build a log cabin out of bricks. Not because of lack of
196
skill or knowledge, but quite simply because I was working with the wrong material. I
understood the bricks as so clearly a successful part of my design that I had never questioned
their success. Or even imagined the possibilities of what could happen if I abandoned the bricks.
From where I stood I was aware of three paths forward from this realization:
I finally got! If all the designs are flawed, the root of the problem doesn’t exist
within the design itself, but rather resides in the paradigm from which the designer is operating.
The root of our problems is not our systems, but something that exists in the story that informs
our creation of them.
I started looking everywhere I could think of: evolutionary psychology, history,
sociology, art, marketing, consumerism, financial inequality, globalization, political economy,
activism, social justice, our democratic apparatus, child development, non-violent
communication, sustainability, infrastructure design,linear consumption, ecology, systems
thinking and cultural narratives...Finally bringing me right back to where I am now,
reunderstanding: in The Whole sense of this world.
I would like to start out by naming this “uncertainty” as the pivotal psychological
reality I am now experiencing. I have enough information about the impact of civilization on the
natural world to grasp the horror we have manifested. I will try not to dwell on the problems we
face, I am not here to convince anyone.
In metaphorical words, I was in a clearing in the forest trying desperately to figure
out how to build a log cabin out of bricks. I was convinced this could be done. I was using bricks
because I had never used anything else. I was sure that if I could arrange them in just the right
way, I could indeed, build a log cabin (out of bricks). I did this for nearly a decade, rearranging
and rearranging, always sure I was about to figure it out.
197
It is as I said earlier, as if humanity has been trying to build a log cabin out of
bricks. We (the historical collective) have been trying to create a successful life by building
almost exclusively with the historical innovations’ of civilized humans. This is not the correct
material for building a successful life. The correct material for building a successful life exists in
the patterns of life, not the patterns of humans attempting to exploit life for personal benefit.
It was a strange feeling standing there, the scene looked much as it had the first time I
had come across it, I was at the end of my adventure because looking at it now, I knew it for the
first time.
It was as if there was an invisible force that was corrupting the design of all of our
systems. I found lots of problems, but on close inspection they all appeared to be symptomatic,
not the primary cause. I could not for the life of me see that bigger problem. For a moment I
didn't believe there was a simple answer.
My first purpose here is agency. That is, my capacity as an individual agent to make
choices and enact behaviors that are divergent from the dominant cultural structures that
surround me. As a civilized human I feel a vast immensity of blame, guilt, and shame when I
zoom out and see myself in the whole picture. I am publishing a historical record of my own
actions and intentions, so that I may look back upon them and regain some sense of sanity and
purpose in my life. I also imagine my grandchildren (a dream I hold onto) remembering me, and
knowing, I tried.
My grand exploration was through the lens of my culture, but I was searching in
culture instead of stepping back and seeing it for what it is…
198
My intention is to publish work grounded in an exploration of this awareness as a way of
connecting with others whom live in a similar situation.
My second purpose here, is support. Specifically to cultivate social support
structures with those whom share my perspective and are also suffering under the emotional
weight of this awareness. I can not adequately put words to the experience of understanding how
something is dangerously wrong (evil) for life on a systemic level, yet occupying a space
wherein it is being celebrated as if it were the greatest success. For example, walking around in a
big city with awareness of the relationships’ between burning fossil fuels, industrial civilization
and climate change. You either know this feeling, or you do not. I am speaking to those who
share this experience.
My third purpose here is Reunderstanding. This is a big idea. It will take some
explanation, and I will frame my projection of reunderstanding around T.S. Elliot’s words.
Our culture is in denial. Those of us who accept the reality of our current
situation too often feel insane. Mass culture is assaulting us with prefabricated images that are
rooted in this denial. We feel crazy because our concerns are not mirrored in our mass culture,
often they are taken to the other extreme and are even glorified. This has been a traumatic
experience for me personally; I need support.
Reunderstanding happens when you step back and see that the solution to the
problem you are trying to solve exists within a different paradigm than the one you have been
operating from. Your response to this, is to intentionally seek to live within the new paradigm.
In this context, reunderstanding is enacted as the intentional journey back into harmony with
patterns of life “And know the place for the first time”...
199
Reunderstanding.com is the means by which I am intent on publishing my new
exploration. I do not know what this path looks like or where it will take me, but I know this is
the path for me. Now that I see it, I fear that I could not live with myself if I did not choose to
spend the rest of my life exploring it in some way or another.
T.S. Elliot’s words also described the long arc of humanities story. When I imagine this
line in the context of humanity, I see the agricultural revolution as starting off this great
expedition of discovery. Soon civilization is born which leads to the path of industrial
revolution, globalization and the digital world. We have done incredible things, but we facilitated
our exploration by separating ourselves from the natural world.
The 3rd path, “seeking to integrate both of the first two” is the only one that makes any
sense to me. We must redefine every aspect of our lives. We cannot abandon civilization, but we
can abandon the premise that it has been successful. We can intentionally try to reunderstand
ourselves as stewards of Recovery(in the Whole sense of the world).
The first option, “to keep doing what we have been doing” is out of the question. I will
not accept that humanities innovations alone are the correct material for building a successful
life. If we keep doing tomorrow, what we are doing today, near term human extinction is our
destiny.
The problem is that we have been so focused on the success of our innovations,
we have failed to see the impacts of our inventions. We have chosen to see ourselves as gods. In
enacting liberty we have disrupted our planet’s regulatory systems. By expressing our Freedom,
we have found ourselves responsible for the largest mass extinction since the dinosaurs. We
appear to be enacting the worlds largest suicide pact. We are not enacting a success story.
200
The second option, “to abandon everything we have built, and all immediately live
wild” is impossible, because there simply is not enough wild space left for all of us. We have
clear cut the forests, overfished the oceans, depleted the soil, polluted the fresh water, and
disrupted the global weather patterns. I feel confident speculating that the current carrying
capacity of the earth for wild humans is equal to a small fraction of the global population.
Billions of people need to die for this second option to be viable. I will not kill them and I do not
expect them to die willingly. Thus, this is not an option for me.
These words reflect both my personal journey to writing this manifesto and what I have
come to see as the long arc of humanity’s story. First I will articulate it’s relevance to my own
narrative.
This is the meme at the center of all of our dysfunctional relationships. Humanity
is under a mass delusion that we are all enacting a success story. This is the root cause of this
crisis we have found ourselves in: a mistaken belief that the whole of human innovation has been
a great success. We are not living a success story.
This knowing that Elliot speaks about is crucial, because it speaks to the profound quality
of appreciation and understanding of home you can have following the experience of being
separated from it for an extended period of time.
This, in my mind, is the core of what Reunderstanding means, it is the second half
of our exploration. Segregation took us one direction for many years, we learned great things, but
also found ourselves in immense danger. So, we decided to reunderstand ourselves back into the
context of the natural world.
201
Throughout my exploration I was trying to search for an answer, a solution, an
understanding of the root cause of all this dysfunction. I wanted to know what was wrong in The
Whole sense. Believe me, I found a lot of problems. The deeper I searched the more confused I
was, because everything seemed to embody a flawed designed.
Will be to arrive where we started
You see for nearly as long as I can remember, I have been trying to answer
the question, “What is wrong with us?” I have spent the last decade or so exploring my culture
trying to find an answer. It all started with this deep feeling that there was indeed something
incorrect with the way that I and the people around me were living.
He stood there; fourth in line. Watching. He was watching as another member of the
group had turned one of the adjacent picnic tables into a little screen-printing studio and started
making shirts with the same triangle inside the earth insignia, he’s seen on a bumper sticker the
other day. As he stood in-line, Hero listened to the printer described,
“I know! It’s a fascinating technology… I like to think of it as one of the things
hiding behind the emerald curtain. You know, one of the technologies that Nike
has behind the walls in their factories that empower them to imprint clothing with
the significance of their own logo. The tool that gives them the power to offer
people the privilege of exchanging their own labor for the opportunity to dress
themselves up in corporate identity… and frankly I find it offensive, that the
most powerful icons of our time are no longer used communicate one’s values,
202
but rather confer value onto products. I think the artists have a responsibility to
society, we’re the ones who inherited the visionary’s toolkit… and we’ve lost
sight of that responsibility. We’ve made a deal with the devil. We’ve traded our
ability to project cultural identities in favor of projecting corporate identities––and
I think we’re living out the consequences of that shift…
Of course, those corporate products are mass produced on an assembly line and
have what I would characterize as a distinct lack of soul— that’s just me—but the
point is, when it appears they’re doing magic, if you look, back there, behind the
emerald curtain, more often than not you’ll find it’s just a nifty tool that some
artist is wielding.”
“But how does it work?” asked the next person in line, gesturing to the frame the
printer was holding.
“Well the principal is actually pretty simple” he said–– holding up what Hero
could now see was clearly a repurposed picture frame with the earth-triangle
image in the center, “Think about like a window screen and how it’s mesh
constructed out of interwoven strings, and how it creates spaces in between that
allow air to pass through— well if you look closely here,” holding up the screen,
“you'll see that there's a much more tightly woven mesh that I have stapled around
the edges and pulled tight to fill the frame. Next, I coated the mesh with a photo
emulsion in a dark room — basically a light sensitive paint that fills in all those
holes in the mesh. Once it dried, I exposed it to light while using a high contrast
image printed on a transparency to block light from curing the emulsion in the
exact pattern of my image, so that when I rinsed the screen out with water right
203
after exposing it to light… all of the uncured emotion just washed away, while
the parts exposed to light hardened to the point where it would need special
chemicals to be washed out again.”
He put the screen down, and pulled out a shirt from the pile, and laid it out on the
table––brushing out all the wrinkles with his forearms, “And once you have the
screen made, you put ink on top, put the screen in place, and use a squeegee like
this to push the ink through and onto the tee-shirt—or whatever else your
printing”
He demonstrated— eventually lifting the screen to reveal the iconic image now
emblazoned over the heart. Picking up the shirt carefully so as not to fold the wet
ink back on itself he continued,
“I’m using a water-based ink, so they’ll dry pretty in a couple minutes if you go
hold them up close to the fire, and maybe a half hour if we leave them sitting
here.” He finished and left the shirt on the adjacent table.
“That’s the process! Now it’s your turn—just find a shirt, something you like, and then
print it” He said, gesturing to the pile of clothes.
The few people in front of Hero started picking through the pile, while one of them
asked, “Where did you get all these?”
“Oh, some combination of garage sales (I have to stop at everyone I see) and
friends who know me, and that fact that I’m obsessed with this process of
reclaiming clothing, that they give me their old ones.”
“Why are so many of these shirts inside out?” asked someone else.
204
“Because most of them already have things printed on them. Flipping them
inside-out is a fast and easy method of recycling… It’s almost so simple that
recycling isn’t the right word, maybe reappropriating or reclaiming is more
fitting”
As the printer helped the first person print their shirt the second person asked,
“Do you ever use new shirts?”
“Rarely” answered the printer. “And if so, only because they’ve found
themselves in post-consumer waste stream without ever actually being consumed
in the first place… which unfortunately happen more than you would think.
Honestly, I do my best to stay away from virgin stuff in general, things just feel
better to me the more of a history they have. So long as it’s still functional, I’d
prefer to have something that’s been used by someone else for a decade.”
Holding up the screen as the first person finished printing, he continued,
“Look, you know 99% of screen printers would use a brand-new frame built
specifically for screen printing, but I’d prefer to use this picture frame I got at a
garage sale— not just because it’s cheaper, or saves resources, but because I like
looking down and imagining the life it had before. This vessel that once held an
image, perhaps a family photograph or a children’s piece of art, has grown up into
a tool that reproduces images.” He shrugged, “I’m sort of a romantic when it
comes to these things.”
“Ahh what we could learn from the hermit crabs,” said the next person in line as
they laid down their shirt, and the four of them all laughed a little.
205
Hero was now second in line and was up to the pile of clothes— sifting through, first
holding up a blue on that turned out to be too big, then a grey one that was too small, and
eventually settling on a white one with a pocket.
The person in front of him asked, “How did you get into doing this?”
“Well, I used to make a lot of art that I put up on the walls––occasionally I still
do––but after I came across this process, and realized how easy it is I just got
obsessed… I tend to think the medium chooses the artist, and not the other way
around… And, well frankly, I think if there’s one thing we pay more attention to
then the images on the wall, it’s the images we choose to wear. I just like the
story of clothes better… they move through public and private spaces.
You know, in the graffiti world it’s a big thing to throw up on trains and, well,
part of that is knowing that those trains effectively take your piece on tour around
the country where thousands of people get to see it. I would argue the same is
true for clothing. If you put an image on an article of clothing, it can find its way
into all kinds of interesting venues that would otherwise be inaccessible. You
can’t just put up a poster in a grocery store, or a classroom, or restaurant— but if
your medium is clothing it can be all three places in a day. Sometimes I wonder if
my work has ever been arrested, I mean, hope not, but you never really know…
And also, how do I say this… one day I realized that I was done making work
about change and was, well, ready to make work that was change.”
206
It was Hero’s turn now, and he laid out his shirt on the table, using his forearms to
flatten out all the wrinkles and asked, “Can we print over the pocket?” wanting
the image to cover his heart.
“Yea, the line might get a little funny right at the edge, but I’d say go for it and
see what happens,” said the printer.
Gesturing down Hero asked, “What does it mean?”
“What does it mean?” The printer repeated to himself aloud as if thinking, “I’d
say it’s an image without an official definition, but I would say it signifies a story,
and it connects people who have faith in that story. It’s just a symbol. One
simply uses the symbol to revel oneself to other believers— in the hope that they
might help one with the quest.146”
146
J.K. Rowling (2007) “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows” Scholastic (US ed.). p.404-5.
207
Hero had just pulled the squeegee across the screen and was still a little unsure what it
meant. Pulling up the screen and handing it back to the printer, Hero carefully picked up his
newly printed shirt, holding it in front of him with both hands and asked, “But, what is the
quest?”
Smiling the printer said, “Recovery: in the Whole sense of this world.”
208
The End.
209
Semantography Key
The pictographic sentences that appear throughout Hero’s journey are written in the language of
Semantography, which is also commonly known as Bliss Symbolics, after its creator Charles K. Bliss. This
language and its creator have a long and complicated story. The “Mr. Bliss” Radiolab segment provides a
great introduction to the complexities of this language’s origin, development, and contemporary use147. And
today the Blissymbolics Communication International is a non-profit, charitable organization that holds the
perpetual, worldwide rights for the use and publication of Blissymbols.148
For the purposes of this thesis, I’m just going to touch on a few aspects of the story that drew me in…
Charles Bliss, a Jewish survivor of both Dachau and Buchenwald–– He became obsessed with the idea
that a structural flaw in the way we use language enabled the perpetrators of the holocaust to convince
themselves that what they were doing was right. He saw that the interpretative space between the signifier and
signified could be manipulated to justify evil. By changing the meaning of words already in common use,
people could be persuaded to go along with drastic changes to society without an awareness that of what they
were actually doing. Like the doublespeak phenomena Orwell described in 1984; the Ministry of Peace is
constantly at war.
After the war, as a refugee–– first in Shanghai, then Australia–– bliss became obsessed with the idea
that if we just had a pictographic language, it would be much harder to lie and mislead people in writing, going
so far as to imagine that such a language could end oppression and rid the world of evil… He devoted the rest
of his life to crafting a pictographic language.
I’m skeptical of such a claim, but I do believe he stumbled onto something profound. Bliss was trained
as a chemical engineer, and so when he set out to draft such a language he turned to the periodic table of
elements for inspiration. Basically, He set out decompose all human communication down to its most
simplistic and basic elements and then created a visual symbol element. These elements could then be arranged
in different combinations to represent a whole plethora of messages we might want to communicate. In Bliss
Symbolics, the position, orientation, size, combination, and the indicator symbol all get analyzed together to
derive meaning. Often what appears a simple change can change the meaning of the whole pictogram. For
example:
In 2016 I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy his nearly 900-page volume Semantography: A
Logical Writing For An Illogical World149 and too this day it is one of my most prized possessions. Charles
Bliss is one of my favorite eccentrics whose work I love introducing people to. I wanted to give Hero’s journey
a mythic feeling. I’m hopeful that interspersing symbolic sentences was a way of doing both.
The following table offers rough English translations to the Blissymbol sentences used throughout this
narrative particular.
147
148
149
Tim Howard (2012), “Mr. Bliss” Radiolab. WNYC studios. Radio program.
For contemporary use of Blissymbolics, I suggest the Blissymbolics Communication International website: https://www.blissymbolics.org/
C.K. Bliss (1965) Semantography: A Logical Writing For An Illogical World. Semantography (Blissymbolics) Publications. Book.
210
Page
Number
Blissymbolic Sentence
Rough English translation
3
Waiting to ask a question about climate
change negative emotions.
12
Walking past the climate change machine
14
Walking into the place where many things
tree, flower, animal and insect.
19
Open to receive language about all things
beginning
28
Walking out of the place with many things
tree, flower, animal and insect.
38
Holding worms and walking back to the
house of knowledge
50
The self, entering the House of Many Books
65
Leaving the house of many books holding
language and many thoughts
71
The self––having a conversation with a song.
77
“departing to the place where the opposite of
useful things arrives”
211
111
I exchange life energy the climate change
machine exchanges very very old life energy
114
Arriving at the place where money exchange
happens for many things holding life energy
119
Listening to New perspectives of life inside
many many houses.
127
Opening eyes to that feeling in the center of
one’s body.
131
Questioning the present self on the scale of
inside and outside.
139
Thinking about the house of exchanging
books model for many things
142
Conversation with an old friend.
143
Seeing in the minds eye the bacteria inside of
our body
152
Questioning about the place where strong
emotionally negative images arrive
156
Going to see the fish cycle of life.
168
Additional thinking about life after death.
212
169
I will become life energy for the
decomposers
172
I hold the circle of life.
175
When lightning connects sky and earth a
window into many things bacteria and many
things stars might open.
194
Fire on the ground, holding water in hand,
many people exchange speech from the heart
202
Waiting in line to make an image of medical
care in the mind for all things meta-natural
between earth and sky.
213
On Hero’s Identity
By now you’ve probably realized that Hero’s gender appears to change on a daily basis. There
are a couple of ways to interpret such a change. One might imagine Hero as a gender fluid individual
whose pronouns change daily, however, that wasn’t exactly my intention. I had my own reasons and
think it is worth taking a moment to explain my thinking on Hero’s identity…
First, I don’t actually see Hero as an individual character at all. Instead, I think of Hero as an
archetypal person–– one who is not identifiable through a consistent bodily identity but rather through a
sort of generational positionality and a particular internalization of the socio-ecological problems of
today. Hero is somebody who lives in an industrialized modern society and struggles with the emotional
weight of knowing how to find oppression, degradation, and pollution nearly everywhere. Hero was an
empathetic child who listened and took seriously the preposition ‘it’s gonna be your generation’s
responsibility to fix this!’…and so, in my mind, Hero is an archetypal representation of this subset of the
living population who took on the weight of the world’s problems.
This is an experience I know well. I spent years in that place. Those who identify with such an
experience are my target audience. It was only through hitting rock bottom that I was able to trace a path
back into a coherent self-narrative–– one where I wasn’t the villain or victim but simply playing an active
role in the circle of life… and this is the story I am attempting to tell through Hero’s journey.
One might wonder, ‘what’s this archetypal Hero has to do with gendered pronouns?’
Relatively little. That’s, in part, why I choose to use both masculine and feminine pronouns. I
wanted as many people as possible to be able to see themselves in this character… and, well, at the same
time and somewhat paradoxically, I wanted to challenge the readers ability to hold a static image of Hero
in their mind as they read.
‘Anything in particular about Joseph Campbell, mythology and gender?’
Yes, actually. I find his work fascinating, and this Hero’s journey was heavily influenced by The
Hero with a Thousand Faces150 and The Power of Myth151 interviews he did with Bill Moyers…
However, the once place I found myself continually disagreeing with Campbell was that the hero was
nearly always male, and when the female appeared it was mostly either in supporting or hostile roles…
It’s unclear to me to what degree this centering of the man comes from Campbell himself, or if it’s just an
accurate representation of his source material. Both actually make sense to me, but that’s another essay.
The point here is that I Consumed a lot of Campbell’s work, decomposed it in my own, and
produced something new that was very intentional about trying to weave together the masculine and
feminine into one story––without giving power to one over the other. I would argue that just as the
foundation of our bodies is a genetic double helix composed of both maternal and paternal lineages, the
foundation of our societies is a mimetic double helix like structure composed of both masculine and
feminine cultural lineages.
Let’s dance.
150
Joseph Campbell (1949) The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Book.
Joseph Campbell and Bill D. Moyers (1988) Joseph Campbell and the power of myth with Bill Moyers.
Television.
151
214
On Mushrooms
A keen reader might notice a rather conspicuous absence of the fungal kingdom in a narrative that
is ostensibly about the decomposers. All I can I say: Mushrooms are the missing day. Originally, there
was an entire day dedicated to exploring the wonders of fungi… but somewhere along the way I cut it.
Not for lack of interesting material, but quite the opposite: I didn’t have the time to do it justice. The field
of mycology, much like the microbiome, has spawned across a wide range of fields...mushrooms are
popping up everywhere!
There’s a scene near the beginning where Hero awakes from a deep history dream with a
sensation as if she ‘had terra bytes of vision downloaded directly into her consciousness.’ My intention
was to employ some creative license by imagining Hero was 400 miles SE and making a plot point for the
mushroom day the discovery that she had been sleeping on top of the largest known organism on earth; an
‘Armillaria’ or ‘Honey Fungus’ that has been living in Malheur National Forest for an estimated 8000yrs,
occupying about 3.5 square miles..
On the evolutionary tree we are more closely related to fungal kingdom than that of plants,
bacteria or archaea… and what’s more, in Food of the Gods, Terrence McKenna makes the case that our
ancestors eating lots of psilocybin containing mushrooms was a significant contributing to the unusually
fast (by evolutionary standards) growth of the human brain.152
In The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross John M. Allegro, suggests that early Christianity has
deep roots Pegan shamanic rituals involving psychedelic mushrooms.153 I, along with quite a few others,
find the most interesting parallels to be between the celebrations of Christmas and the Amanita muscaria,
which is today still perhaps the most iconic mushroom with its bright red cap speckled with white spots.
It emerges in early winter under the bows of pine and birch trees and is toxic to humans until dried out ––
traditionally done by hanging on the mantel over a fireplace. Once dried, Amanita Muscaria are Alice in
wonderland level hallucinogens.
Paul Stamets (in my opinion, is one of the world’s most interesting people) makes the argument
in Mycelium Running that “mushrooms are nature’s internet” pointing out not just the similarity in
physical patterns of growth, but the active sense-response mechanisms that carry data, nutrients, and
minerals across significant distances to the places where such things are useful. 154 In other words,
mycelium do not just decompose material enzymatically in place, but can actually transport such
materials in bioavailable forms delivering them within reach of the plant roots. And more often than not,
these roots are actually home to mycorrhizae fungi which live symbiotically––actively feeding each
other––on their host plant.
Myco-remediation is another emerging field of study that cultivates specific fungi as a means of
cleaning up toxic pollution… myco-pesticides offer promise as safer alternatives chemical pesticides, and
myco-forestry could drastically improve our reforestation and afforestation efforts… and all this without
even touching connections between mycology and human health.
So I will leave you with this advice, Mycelium is a rabbit hole well worth diving into.
152
Terence Mckenna (1993) Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of
Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution. Bantam. New York, NY.
153
John M. Allegro (1970) The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity
Within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East.
This book was highly criticized at the time of its publication for making such claims as ‘Jesus never existed
as a historical figure but was a mythical representation of psychedelic experiences’ and ‘the Eucharist is meant to be
psychedelic’ which are understandably offensive to many and not claims I would make…But I do find the overlap
between Amanita Muscaria and the aesthetics and mythology of Santa Claus vary hard to dismiss.
154
Paul Stamets (2005) Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can help Save the World. Ten Speed Press. Berkeley,
CA. p.2-12
215
216
Bibliography
Adler, S., & Hunte, T. (2017, Augest 17th). Post No Evil. RadioLab. New York, NY: WNYC
Studios.
Allegro, J. M. (1970). The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins
of Christianity Within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East. London: Hodder and
Stoughton.
Allers, R., & Minkoff, R. (Directors). (1994). The Lion King [Motion Picture]. United States.
Apedaile, E. (2001). A perspective on biosolids management. The Canadian Journal on
infectious Disease, 12(4), 202–04.
Aurore, G., Parfait, B., & Fahrasmane, L. (2009). Bananas, raw materials for making processed
food products. Trends in Food Science & Technology, 20, 82.
Barrie, J. M. (1911). Peter and Wendy: The Story of Peter Pan. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.
Basel Action Network . (2016). Disconnect: Goodwill and Dell Exporting the Public's E-waste
to Developing Countries. Seattle: BAN.
Basel Action Network . (2020). GPS Trackers Reveal Dell Reconnect via Goodwill Exporting EWaste to Guatemala. Seattle: BAN.
Bates, C. (2001). Pigs Eats Wolves; Going Into Partnership With Your Dark Side. St. Paul, MN:
Yes International Press.
Bermúdez-Humarán, L. G., Salinas, E., Ortiz, G. G., Ramirez-Jirano, L. J., Morales, J. A., &
Bitzer-Quintero, O. K. (2019). From Probiotics to Psychobiotics: Live Beneficial
Bacteria Which Act on the Brain-Gut Axis. Nutrients, 11(4), 890.
Bliss, C. (1965). Semantography: A Logical Writing For An Illogical World. Sydney:
Semantography (Blissymbolics) Publications.
Bonhotal, J., Schwarz, M., & Rynk, R. (2014). Composting Animal Mortalities . Department of
Crop and Soil Sciences. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Waste Management Institute.
Bowie, D. (1970). The Width of A Circle. The Man Who Sold The World. London: Mercury.
Bowie, D. (1971). Oh you Pretty Things. Honkey Dory. London: RCA.
Bowie, D. (1972). Five Years. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
London: RCA. .
217
Bowman, W. D., Hacker, S. D., & Cain, M. L. (2017). Ecology 4th ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer
associates inc.
Braungart, M., & McDonough, W. (2002). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make
Things. New York: North Point Press: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Bush, M. B. (2003). Ecology of a changing planet 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall
inc.
Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Pantheon Books.
Cani, P. D. (2018). Human Gut Microbiome: Hopes, Threats and Promises. Gut, 67(9), 1716-25.
Carpenter-Boggs, L. (2020). The Environmental Impact of Death, and the Science of Sustainable
Alternatives. Annual Meeting: American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Carrol, L. (1865). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. United Kingdom: Macmillan.
Carson, R., & Kelsh, N. (1998). The Sense of Wonder. New York, NY: Harpercollins Publishers.
Cast. (1997). Live the Dream. Mother Nature Calls. United Kingdom: Polydor,.
Chapin, F. S., Matson, P. A., & Vitousek, P. M. (2011). Principals of Terrestrial Ecology 2rd ed.
New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media.
Chiappelli, J., & Chiappelli, T. (2008). Drinking Grandma: The Problem of Embalming. Journal
of Environmental Health, 71(5), 24–29.
City of Hamilton. (2017). Tour Hamilton’s Central Composting Facility. YouTube channel.
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
City Of Olympia. (2020). Sea Level Rise Map. Retrieved from https://arcg.is/LSyOO
Corn, D. (2019, July 8th). “It’s the End of the World as They Know It: The Distinct Burden of
Being a Climate Scientist.”. Mother Jones.
Courage, K. H. (2019). Cultured: How Ancient Foods can Feed our Microbiome. New York,
NY: Avery: A Division of Penguin Random House.
Cronon, W. (1996). “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.”.
Environmental History,, 1(1), 7-28.
Cushman, G. T. (2013). Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological
History. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1989). "11. Memes: the new replicators". In The Selfish Gene (pp. 368,). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
218
Deo, P. N., & Deshmukh, R. .. (2019). Oral microbiome: Unveiling the fundamentals. Journal of
Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, 23(1), 122-28.
Dinnel, P., Banks, A., Rice, N., & Kaufman, L. (2009). “Skagit County Creosote Inventory and
Removal Project: Phase III”. Skagit County Marine Resources Committee , Creosote
Subcommittee. Skagit County Marine Resources Committee.
Dukes, J. (2003). Burning Buried Sunshine: Human Consumption of Ancient Solar Energy.
Climatic Change(61), 31–44.
Dunn, R. R. (2018). Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and
Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Dunn, R. R., & Gross, T. (2018, November 18th). With Bugs & Bacteria Living in Your Home,
You're 'Never Home Alone. Fresh Air . Philadelphia, PA: WHYY.
Dunn, R. R., Gavin, M. C., Sanchez, M. C., & Solomon, J. C. (2006). The Gigeon Paradox:
dependence of global conservation on urban nature. Conservation Biology, 20(6), 181416.
Dyson, F. (1992). From Eros To Gaia. Pantheon.
Edmonds-Wilson, S. L., Nurinova, N. I., Zapka, C. A., Fierer, N., & Wilson, M. (2015). Review
of human hand microbiome research. Journal of Dermatological Science, 80(1), 3-12.
Eliott, T. (1943). Four Quartets. In The Little Gidding. Harcourt.
Eminem. (2002). “Lose Yourself”. 8 Mile: Music from and Inspired by the Motion. Detroit, MI:
Shady; Interscope.
Finley, R. (n.d.). http://ronfinley.com/. Retrieved 2020
Fuller, B. R. (2001). Your Private Sky: R. Buckminster Fuller: The Art of Design Science. (J.
Krausse, & C. Lichtenstein, Eds.) Zürich, Switzerland: Lars Müller.
Gebert, M. J., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Oliverio, A. M., Webster, T. M., Nichols, L. M., Honda,
J. R., . . . Fierer, N. (2018, October). “Ecological Analyses of Mycobacteria in
Showerhead Biofilms and Their Relevance to Human Health”. mBio, 9(5), 1614-18,
Figure 4.
Glendinning, C. (1994). My Name Is Chellis & I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization.
Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Guggenheim, D. (Director). (2007). An Inconvenient Truth: A Global Warning. [Motion Picture].
Haraszti, N. (1987). The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism. (K. Landesmann, & S.
Landesmann, Trans.) Basic books.
219
Hartmann, T. (2004). The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated Third Edition:
The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late. . New York, NY:
Harmony Books.
Hawken, P. (2017). Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse
Global Warming. New york, NY: Penguin.
Hillman, J. (1993). A Deeper Look: Hosted by Martin Wasserman. San Mateo, CA: KCSM-FM.
Hillman, J., & Venture, M. (1992). We’ve Had a hundred Years of Psychotherapy And the
World’s Getting Worse. San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins.
Hoang, D. M., Levy, E. I., & Vandenplas, Y. (2021, July 29th). The impact of Caesarean Section
on the Infant Gut Microbiome. Acta Paediatrica, 110(1), 60-67.
Holms, S. M. (2013). Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States.
Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Howard, T. (2012). Mr. Bliss. RadioLab. WNYC studios.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2007). IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate
Change.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2019). SPECIAL REPORT: GLOBAL WARMING
OF 1.5 C. United Nations, IPCC.
Jaeger, A. B. (2017). Forging Hegemony: How Recycling Became a Popular but Inadequate
Response to Accumulating Waste. Social Problems, 65(3), 395-415.
Jean and Ida Pain, J., & Pain, I. (1972). The Jean Pain Methods or Another Kind of Energy. Self
Published.
Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death and Dying. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company.
Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate. New York, NY: Simon
& Schuster.
Lennon, J. (1981). Watching the Wheels. Double Fantasy. New York, NY: Geffen Records.
Macy, J. (2007). World as Self, World as Lover; Courage for Global Justice and Ecological
Renewal. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.
Macy, J., & Johnstone, C. (2012). Active Hope: How to Survive the Mess We’re in Without
Going Crazy. Novato, CA: New World Library.
Marquand, R. (Director). (1983). Star Wars: Return of the Jedi [Motion Picture]. Los Angeles,
CA.
220
Mayer, E. (2016). The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies
Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health. New York: Harper Collins.
Mckenna, T. (1993). Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A
Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution. New York, NY: Bantam.
McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The Medium Is The Message: an inventory of effects. London:
Penguin.
Millay, E. S. (1955). Dirge Without Music. In Collected Poems (Vol. “Dirge Without Music”).
Harper Collins.
Moqbel, S. Y. (2009). Characterizing Spontaneous Fires in Landfills. Orlando, FL: College of
Engineering and Computer Science: University of Central Florida.
Muir, J. (1911). My First Summer in the Sierra. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
National Institutes for Health. (2012, June 13th). NIH Human Microbiome Project defines
normal bacterial makeup of the body: Genome sequencing creates first reference data for
microbes living with healthy adults. NIH Webpage.
Neil, A. (1966). A.S. Neil. Freedom—Not License! 1966. Hart Publishing company, New York,
NY. P. 47. New york, NY: Hart Publishing company.
Nguyen, T., Hathaway, H., Kosciolek, T., & Knight, R. (2019). Gut microbiome in serious
mental illnesses: A systematic review and critical evaluation. Schizophrenia Research.
Ornelas, R. G. (2018). Organized Crime in Michoacán: Rent‐Seeking Activities in the Avocado
Export Market. Politics and Policy, 46(5), 759-89.
Pannaraj, P. S., Li, F., Cerini, C., Bender, J. M., Yang, S., Rollie, A., . . . Aldrovandi, G. M.
(2017). Association Between Breast Milk Bacterial Communities and Establishment and
Development of the Infant Gut Microbiome. The Journal of the American Medical
Association: Pediatrics, 171(7), 647-54.
Peirce, J. M., & Alviña, K. (2019). The role of inflammation and the gut microbiome in
depression and anxiety. Journal of Neuroscience Research, 97(9), 1223-41.
Placebo. (2003). Running Up That Hill. Covers. Hut Records/Astralwerks. .
Priggen, E. (Producer), Leonard, A. (Writer), & Fox, L. (Director). (2007). The Story of Stuff
[Motion Picture]. US: www.storyofstuff.org.
Quammen, D. (1996). Song of The Dodo: Island Biogeography In An Age of Extinctions. New
York, NY: Scribner.
Quinn, D. (1992). Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. New York: Bantam.
Quinn, D. (2001). After Dachau. New York, NY: Context Books.
221
Riesewieck, M., Block, H. (Writers), Riesewieck, M., & Block, H. (Directors). (2018). Im
Schatten der Netzwelt - The Cleaners. [Motion Picture]. Netherlands.
Roberts, S. T. (2019). Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadow of Social Media
(Vols. E-Book). New Haven, CT: Yale university Press.
Robinson, B. H. (2009). E-waste: An assessment of global production and environmental
impacts. Science of The Total Environment, 408(2), 183-91.
Rowling, J. (2007). Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. Scholastic.
Rowling, J. (2008). Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (1st (US edition) ed.). Scholastic.
Sacks, O. (1985). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. New
York, NY: Summit Books.
Sancton, T. (1989, January 2nd). Planet of The Year: What on EARTH Are We Doing? Time
Magazine, 133(1).
Santacroce, L., Charitos, L. A., Ballini, A., Inchingolo, F., Luperto, P., De Netto, E., & Topi, S.
(2020). The Human Respiratory System and its Microbiome at a Glimpse. Biology, 9(10),
318.
Schnaiberg, A., Pellow, D., & Weinberg, A. ,. (2002). The Treadmill of Production and the
Environmental State. In A. Mol, & F. Buttel (Eds.), The Environmental State Under
Pressure: Research in Social Problems and Public Policy (Vol. 10, pp. 15-32). Emerald
Group Publishing Limited.
Schultz, T. P., Nicholas, D. D., & Preston, A. F. (2007). A brief review of the past, present and
future of wood preservation. Pest Management Science, 63(8), 784-88.
Scott, M., & Lindsey, R. (2018, Augest 1st). “Unprecedented 3 Years of Global Coral Bleaching,
2014–2017.”. Climate.Gov.
Sendak, M. (1963). Where the Wild Things Are. New York: Harper & Row Publishers.
Shearer, D., Apffel-Marglin, F., Tindall, R., & Baker, I. (2017). Sacred Soil: Biochar and the
Regeneration of the Earth. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Sobel, D. (1996). Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education. Great
Barrington, MA: Orion Society.
Stamets, P. (2005). Myceluim Running: how Mushrooms Can Help Save The Wrold. Berkeley:
Ten Speed Press.
Stephenson, N. (1992). Snow Crash. New york, NY: Bantam Books.
Stephenson, N. (2015). Seveneves. London: HarperCollins.
222
Stinson, L. F., Payne, M. S., & Keelan, J. A. (2018, May 4th). A Critical Review of the Bacterial
Baptism Hypothesis and the Impact of Cesarean Delivery on the Infant Microbiome.
Frontiers in Medicine, 135.
Stockton-Fiti, K. (2018). Recommendations for Capitol Lake New Zealand Mudsnail
Management. Capitol Lake Improvement and Protection Association. Olymipa: KASF
Consulting.
Striffler, S. (. (2003). Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Tame, N. W., Dlugogorski, B. Z., & Kennedy, E. M. (2007). Formation of Dioxins and Furans
During Combustion of Treated Wood. Progress in Energy and Combustion Science,
33(4), 384-408.
Thomas, M. (2014, october 28th). Madeleine Thomas (2014) “Climate Depression Is for Real.
Just Ask a Scientist.” Digital Publication. Grist.
Thomas-White, K., Brady, M., Wolfe, A. J., & Mueller, E. R. (2016). The Bladder Is Not Sterile:
History and Current Discoveries on the Urinary Microbiome. Current Bladder
Dysfunction Reports, 11(1), 18-24.
Turner, F. (2006). From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth
Network, and the Rise of digital Utopianism. Chicago, Il: The University of Chicago
Press.
Turner, T., Pyle, B., & Larkin, R. I. (1990-1996). Captain Planet and the Planeteers. TBS.
Viljoen, A., Ma, L.-J., & Molina, A. B. (2020). “Fusarium Wilt (Panama Disease) and
Monoculture in Banana Production: Resurgence of a Century-Old Disease. In Emerging
Plant Diseases and Global Food Security (pp. 159-84). St. Paul, MN: The American
Phytopathological Society.
Voth, E., & Khanna, S. (2020). Fecal microbiota transplantation for treatment of patients with
recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection. Expert Review of Anti-infective Therapy,,
18(7), 669-76.
W., B., & Anonymous. (2001). Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of
Men and Women Have Recovered From Alcoholism (The Big Book) 4th ed. New York,
NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services.
Washington State Legislature. (2019, April 25th). SB5001 'Concerning Human Remains'. State
Law.
Wayne, L. (2015). Glory. Free Weezy Album. New Orleans: Young Money Entertainment.
223
White, R. (1995). “Are you an Environmentalist, or do you Work for a Living?”. In W. (Ed.)
Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking The Human Place In Nature. New York: W. W.
Norton & company.
Wohlleben, P. (2019). The Secret Wisdom of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the extraordinary
Balance of All Living Things. Berkeley, CA: Greystone (English translation).
Wolverton, B. C. (1997). How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 Houseplants to Purify Your Home or
Office. New York, NY: Penguin.
Zychowski, J. (2012). Impact of cemeteries on groundwater chemistry: A review. CATENA(93),
29-37.
224
Illustration Key
Unless otherwise noted, all images and visual components thereof, were made by the author
(Jesse Dotson) using Photoshop. All base photographs were taken using an Iphone 7.
Title
Inspired by
Direct Source:
29
Community garden
sign.
The various
community
gardens I’ve had
the pleasure of
visiting.
Earth globe image sourced from
website:
https://pngpart.com/png/globevector-9.html
Attribution:
<ahref='https://pngpart.com'>https://
pngpart.com</a>
50
More choices quote.
52
Chemicals Recycle.
Page
#
Image Thumbnail
Charles Bates (1991) Pigs Eats
Wolves; Going Into Partnership With
Your Dark Side. Yes International
Press. St. Paul, MN. P.51
The hand in the image belong to
Gloria Hernandez.
Mark B Bush
(2003). Ecology
of a changing
planet 3rd ed.
Prentice-Hall
inc. New jersey.
P.67
52
Energy Flow
Through Earth.
Mark B Bush
(2003). Ecology
of a changing
planet 3rd ed.
Prentice-Hall
inc. New jersey.
P.67
53
Abiotic & biotic
decomposition.
Reading multiple
sources and
writing
definition in my
own words.
Hand drawing, sourced from––
https://pixabay.com/vectors/drawdrawing-hand-human-line-art4067546/
Earth sourced from:
https://dlpng.com/png/3953547
Earth sourced from:
https://dlpng.com/png/3953547
Hand drawing, sourced from––
https://pixabay.com/vectors/drawdrawing-hand-human-line-art4067546/
225
54
Defining the
Decomposers
Reading many
sources, writing
a definition in
my own words.
55
Redrawing Trophic
Dynamics
After consulting
many sources,
drawing diagram
and writing in
my own words.
56
Plant based vs
detritus based
trophic systems.
Largely
informed by
diagram in text
book
57
Trophic Triangle.
Trophic levels
being formatted
in a manner
similar to the
recycling
symbol.
58
Seed of life ––
nutrient cycles
Inspired by
combining the
seed of life and
the various
nutrient cycles.
60
“the carbon cycle”
Consulting
multiple sources,
drawing from
memory,
descriptions in
my own words.
63
“The Nitrogen
cycle.”
Consulting
multiple sources,
drawing from
memory,
descriptions in
my own words.
Hand drawing, sourced from––
https://pixabay.com/vectors/drawdrawing-hand-human-line-art4067546/
Chapin, Matson and Vitousek.(2011)
Principals of Terrestrial Ecology, 3rd
ed. Springer. 2011. P. 317
Same as above: I could find
sources…
226
68
“Recovery in the
whole sense of this
world”
The triangle in a
circle symbol
from the AA,
broadened to the
whole world.
I made this image for the first in
2015 as part of a school
assignment… it was the cover of the
for a project where I rewrote the 12
steps of recovery in an ecological
context.
84
“Composting tour:
tipping floor”
Screenshot from: “Tour Hamilton’s
Central Composting Facility –
Educational” which is posted on the City
of Hamilton’s official YouTube page in
2017. Ontario, Canada.
84
“Composting tour:
front loader”
85
“Composting tour:
The shredder”
86
“Composting tour:
Magnetic Removal”
87
“Composting tour:
Conveyer belt”
99
“Windrow turner”
My experience
touring Silver
Springs Organics
in Yelm, WA…
And, watching
many a tour
video of various
composting
facilities.
My experience
touring Silver
Springs Organics
in Yelm, WA…
And, watching
many a tour
video of various
composting
facilities.
My experience
touring Silver
Springs Organics
in Yelm, WA…
And, watching
many a tour
video of various
composting
facilities.
My experience
touring Silver
Springs Organics
in Yelm, WA…
And, watching
many a tour
video of various
composting
facilities.
My experience
touring Silver
Springs Organics
in Yelm, WA…
And, watching
many a tour
video of various
composting
facilities.
Some version of
this Machine is
in use at many
composting
facilities:
Screenshot from: “Tour Hamilton’s
Central Composting Facility –
Educational” which is posted on the City
of Hamilton’s official YouTube page in
2017. Ontario, Canada.
Screenshot from: “Tour Hamilton’s
Central Composting Facility –
Educational” which is posted on the City
of Hamilton’s official YouTube page in
2017. Ontario, Canada.
Screenshot from: “Tour Hamilton’s
Central Composting Facility –
Educational” which is posted on the City
of Hamilton’s official YouTube page in
2017. Ontario, Canada.
Screenshot from: “Tour Hamilton’s
Central Composting Facility –
Educational” which is posted on the City
of Hamilton’s official YouTube page in
2017. Ontario, Canada.
the model in this image is a
KompTech Topturn X4500.
Image Sourced from:
https://komptechamericas.com/produ
ct/topturn-x4500-windrow-turner/
Also, an image of Me, taken by
gloria Hernandez, 2020.
227
99
Final Compost
screening.
112
“Fossil fuels: ExtraExtra Vintage”
116
“Biochemical
Properties of a
banana”
117
“What’s floating
around at the
grocery store?”
181
“Magnifying glass
inscription”
Some version of
this Machine is
in use at nearly
all composting
facilities:
This particular depicts a
“Powerscreen Chieftain 1400”
The image was sourced from:
https://powerscreencanada.com/scree
ners/chieftain-series/chieftain-1400/
The idea that
wine gains value
with age, and
well, so do fossil
fuels… just a lot
longer.
Photo taken with my left hand of my
hand holding my phone.
Aurore, Parfait, and Fahrasmane.
(2009). “Bananas, raw materials for
making processed food products.”
Trends in Food Science &
Technology. Vol 20 p.82 “Table 3.
Chemical composition and
biochemical features of banana and
plantain at different physiological
stages, and after transformation,
per100 g of fresh weight”
Photo taken by me in a Grocery
outlet, and then overlayed with basic
Bacteria shapes in photo shop.
Photo of my hand holding a
magnifying glass holding a T.S Elliot
quote photoshopped onto it.
Quote from: T.S. Eliott (1943) “The
Little Gidding” Four Quartets.
Harcourt.
182
“Magnifying glass:
feathers”
Image taken by Jesse Dotson,
through a 40x magnifying glass
228
182
“Magnifying glass:
Conifer buds”
Image taken by Jesse Dotson,
through a 40x magnifying glass
183
“Magnifying Glass:
Composite #1”
Images taken by Jesse Dotson, over
the course of writing this thesis, with
an IPhone, often through either a 20x
40x, 60x magnifying glass
184
“Magnifying Glass:
Composite #2”
Images taken by Jesse Dotson, over
the course of writing this thesis, with
an IPhone, often through either a 20x
40x, 60x magnifying glass
185
“Magnifying Glass:
Composite #3”
Images taken by Jesse Dotson, over
the course of writing this thesis, with
an IPhone, often through either a 20x
40x, 60x magnifying glass
186
“Magnifying Glass:
Composite #4”
Images taken by Jesse Dotson, over
the course of writing this thesis, with
an IPhone, often through either a 20x
40x, 60x magnifying glass
187
“Magnifying Glass:
Composite #5”
Images taken by Jesse Dotson, over
the course of writing this thesis, with
an IPhone, often through either a 20x
40x, 60x magnifying glass
229
188
“Magnifying Glass:
Isopod with babies”
Isopod image sourced from:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3470/372
6687288_ff7c83ef82_b.jpg
189
“Magnifying Glass:
Branch to the head”
Images taken by Jesse Dotson, over
the course of writing this thesis, with
an IPhone through either a 20x
magnifying glass.
207
Recover Shirt
An image of me holing up one of
my Recovery in the whole sense
of this world Tee shirts.
Photo: photo by Gloria
Hernandez.
210
Blissymbolics
Example Page.
C.K. Bliss (1965)
Semantography: A Logical
Writing For An Illogical World.
Semantography (Blissymbolics)
Publications. Book. p.377
230
