Place doesn’t require your consciousness. That might be one of our contemporary problems. We believe we can always shape place by thought. Where did we get such thinking?
Well, we might have derived the importance of mind over matter from our own reasoning. But there are some mind-only philosophical traditions in the backgrounds of both western and eastern cultures. Yogācāra, a branch of Tibetan Buddhism, stresses mind and consciousness: Nothing exists outside the mind. Yogācāra is analogous in some ways to the philosophy of esse est percipi of Bishop George Berkeley, the proponent of immaterialism.
You might have heard of Samuel Johnson’s refutation of Berkeley’s philosophy. Johnson, speaking to his biographer Boswell about Berkeley’s claim that “to be is to be perceived,” a claim that makes matter dependent for its existence on mind, kicked a rock, and said, “I refute him thus.”
Place had to precede human consciousness. Although evidence for life on Earth derives from microscopic fossils about 3.5 billion years old, there might have been older life elsewhere in this or other solar systems; yet, the universe is 13.8 billion years old. No solar system existed until well after the Big Bang. If consciousness is associated with life, then it did not emerge until a place was available for its emergence. I refute Berkeley thus, and I don’t have to hurt my foot on a rock.
More importantly, the understanding that place can be independent of our individual consciousness allows us to adapt to what we encounter. We might be able to physically alter place, but in each encounter place exudes its effect on us. That elevates one kind of consciousness to the fore in our survival: An extended meaning of proprioception that I prefer to call proprioceptiveness.
Thus the folly of human risk-taking: Mind doesn’t make a dangerous place safer unless it imposes restrictions on movement. First, a context: When Ishmael seeks to sign onto the Pequod for its upcoming whaling voyage in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, he interviews aboard the anchored ship with Captain Peleg, one of the ship’s co-owners. After a bit of bantering, Peleg says something like, “Okay, so you told me you want to go a-whaling to learn about whaling and to see the world. Go look over the side of the ship and tell me what you see.” Ishmael looks out over the ocean and reports that he doesn’t see much else but water running to the horizon. Peleg then says, “Can’t you see the world where you stand?”
Second, some true stories, rather long, but maybe worth the read:
Two events in August, 2011 seemed to emphasize the significance of proprioceptiveness. Wing walker Todd Green, son of aerial stuntman Eddie Green, attempted to move from a plane wing to a helicopter strut while both were moving 200 feet above an air show crowd at the Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan. He seemed to know where one hand was, but not the other. Green fell to his death after a momentary grab of the strut.
Half a world away on the same day as the air show, Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran sentenced Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal to eight years in prison as convicted spies. The two, traveling with Sarah Shourd who was released after paying $500,000, had crossed into an unmarked section of Iran as they hiked in Iraqi Kurdistan on their way, they said, to the Ahmed Awa waterfall. Supposedly, they carried a GPS unit.
Why should I relate these two events? They do have something to do with the nature and chief theme of this website. Green purposely put his life in jeopardy to make money. He had practiced his craft as aerial stuntman and had thrilled crowds as his dad had for many years. But he was human, and there aren’t many of us who have not spilled a glass of milk, tripped over a curb or step, or stubbed a toe on a rock. Just the slightest proprioceptive mistake is all it takes to make us momentarily clumsy. When you are 200 feet from the ground or 200 feet from a hostile country, a simple slip can have dire consequences that cannot be undone by mind.
Life isn’t a tour through a land of peace and love on an isle of happiness. There are risks; there are bad people; there are places that harbor dangers both physical and societal. A place fraught with the dangers of war and either a cultural hatred for or a cultural distrust of westerners does not lend itself to a comfy holiday daytrip for three Americans regardless of their reported empathies for the people of the region. You have to know where you are, and you have to know that you cannot shape place simply by wishing or thinking.
Let me throw one more group into the mix. Hormiz David, Ramina Badal, and Ninos Yacoub took a July, 2011 day trip to Yosemite National Park where they climbed over a guardrail to enter the water of the Merced River 25 feet upstream of Vernal Fall, a 317-foot precipitous cascade. They did not know where to plant their feet in the high spring flow of snowmelt water. They ignored a posted danger sign. David, Badal, and Yacoub (and Bauer, Fattal, and Shourd) compounded proprioceptive errors with mistakes of judgment or with mistakes born of naiveté and ignorance of history of place. They were ignorant that where they died, just 1.5 miles from Happy Isle Nature Center, was the site of ten such deaths in the previous ten years.
To mimic Peleg, “Couldn’t you see the waterfall from where you stand?” Or, in the case of Bauer, Fattal, and Shourd, “Couldn’t you three see another waterfall, say one in the Alps near an Austrian ski resort where you wouldn’t be put in jail for allegedly spying?”
This is not an essay advocating the life of a hermit crab hiding in a shell. It is simply a reminder that place exists outside the mind. Consciousness doesn’t create place, but consciousness, particularly proprioceptiveness, reduces risk and prolongs life. Remember: This is NOT your practice life.
Well, we might have derived the importance of mind over matter from our own reasoning. But there are some mind-only philosophical traditions in the backgrounds of both western and eastern cultures. Yogācāra, a branch of Tibetan Buddhism, stresses mind and consciousness: Nothing exists outside the mind. Yogācāra is analogous in some ways to the philosophy of esse est percipi of Bishop George Berkeley, the proponent of immaterialism.
You might have heard of Samuel Johnson’s refutation of Berkeley’s philosophy. Johnson, speaking to his biographer Boswell about Berkeley’s claim that “to be is to be perceived,” a claim that makes matter dependent for its existence on mind, kicked a rock, and said, “I refute him thus.”
Place had to precede human consciousness. Although evidence for life on Earth derives from microscopic fossils about 3.5 billion years old, there might have been older life elsewhere in this or other solar systems; yet, the universe is 13.8 billion years old. No solar system existed until well after the Big Bang. If consciousness is associated with life, then it did not emerge until a place was available for its emergence. I refute Berkeley thus, and I don’t have to hurt my foot on a rock.
More importantly, the understanding that place can be independent of our individual consciousness allows us to adapt to what we encounter. We might be able to physically alter place, but in each encounter place exudes its effect on us. That elevates one kind of consciousness to the fore in our survival: An extended meaning of proprioception that I prefer to call proprioceptiveness.
Thus the folly of human risk-taking: Mind doesn’t make a dangerous place safer unless it imposes restrictions on movement. First, a context: When Ishmael seeks to sign onto the Pequod for its upcoming whaling voyage in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, he interviews aboard the anchored ship with Captain Peleg, one of the ship’s co-owners. After a bit of bantering, Peleg says something like, “Okay, so you told me you want to go a-whaling to learn about whaling and to see the world. Go look over the side of the ship and tell me what you see.” Ishmael looks out over the ocean and reports that he doesn’t see much else but water running to the horizon. Peleg then says, “Can’t you see the world where you stand?”
Second, some true stories, rather long, but maybe worth the read:
Two events in August, 2011 seemed to emphasize the significance of proprioceptiveness. Wing walker Todd Green, son of aerial stuntman Eddie Green, attempted to move from a plane wing to a helicopter strut while both were moving 200 feet above an air show crowd at the Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan. He seemed to know where one hand was, but not the other. Green fell to his death after a momentary grab of the strut.
Half a world away on the same day as the air show, Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran sentenced Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal to eight years in prison as convicted spies. The two, traveling with Sarah Shourd who was released after paying $500,000, had crossed into an unmarked section of Iran as they hiked in Iraqi Kurdistan on their way, they said, to the Ahmed Awa waterfall. Supposedly, they carried a GPS unit.
Why should I relate these two events? They do have something to do with the nature and chief theme of this website. Green purposely put his life in jeopardy to make money. He had practiced his craft as aerial stuntman and had thrilled crowds as his dad had for many years. But he was human, and there aren’t many of us who have not spilled a glass of milk, tripped over a curb or step, or stubbed a toe on a rock. Just the slightest proprioceptive mistake is all it takes to make us momentarily clumsy. When you are 200 feet from the ground or 200 feet from a hostile country, a simple slip can have dire consequences that cannot be undone by mind.
Life isn’t a tour through a land of peace and love on an isle of happiness. There are risks; there are bad people; there are places that harbor dangers both physical and societal. A place fraught with the dangers of war and either a cultural hatred for or a cultural distrust of westerners does not lend itself to a comfy holiday daytrip for three Americans regardless of their reported empathies for the people of the region. You have to know where you are, and you have to know that you cannot shape place simply by wishing or thinking.
Let me throw one more group into the mix. Hormiz David, Ramina Badal, and Ninos Yacoub took a July, 2011 day trip to Yosemite National Park where they climbed over a guardrail to enter the water of the Merced River 25 feet upstream of Vernal Fall, a 317-foot precipitous cascade. They did not know where to plant their feet in the high spring flow of snowmelt water. They ignored a posted danger sign. David, Badal, and Yacoub (and Bauer, Fattal, and Shourd) compounded proprioceptive errors with mistakes of judgment or with mistakes born of naiveté and ignorance of history of place. They were ignorant that where they died, just 1.5 miles from Happy Isle Nature Center, was the site of ten such deaths in the previous ten years.
To mimic Peleg, “Couldn’t you see the waterfall from where you stand?” Or, in the case of Bauer, Fattal, and Shourd, “Couldn’t you three see another waterfall, say one in the Alps near an Austrian ski resort where you wouldn’t be put in jail for allegedly spying?”
This is not an essay advocating the life of a hermit crab hiding in a shell. It is simply a reminder that place exists outside the mind. Consciousness doesn’t create place, but consciousness, particularly proprioceptiveness, reduces risk and prolongs life. Remember: This is NOT your practice life.
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