"...the single track of conscious attention is wholly inadequate for interactions with a multi-tracked world." ~Watts~
One aspect of modern-suburban-Michigan life that has always interested me was that of Sprawl. In particular, where I grew up, Lake Orion, Oxford, Auburn Hills on down to Detroit was a sea of faux front buildings, corporate pharmacies, fast food repeats, and "stately" homes. Come to realize, no matter the direction you travel out from Detroit, it all looks the same, especially the further away from Detroit one gets. Come to find out, the whole country reeks of the same look, that same vibe.
Detroit and Ypsilanti, on the other hand, have a shockingly diverse, local, organic look and style. Everywhere you go there are hand painted signs for local businesses and twisty streets hiding decay and growth around every bend and right angle. There can be no doubt that Detroit is a beautiful city, in beautiful decay. We should clearly and deftly rebuild, reseed, replant, and repeople the jewel of modern cities that was/is Detroit.
My point is not this. My point is one of aesthetics. Like much of the rest of this American life we live, there exists a startling lack of beauty. The palate itself so cheaply conceived and so forcefully applied. Drab color schemes boring, unimaginative, impractical designs, complete disregard the natural world, as roads blaze straight-lined forever with convenient desires, drawn on with the most simple of geometries.
It is in this form that we live. Forced and dominating. We could, for instance, build towns around the preexisting forms of rivers, trees, and topography. We could create pocketed villages/communities scattered, nestled peaceably throughout the wooded lands that breathe our air and create our space. Each village/township utilizing their own farmers, their own architects, their own artists, their own educators, elderly and husky. Was there never a time when the look was considered? The design? The function?
This "look" is rather indicative of the mindset we have inherited and perpetuate, this grey march out and out. It is also rather indicative of our internal feelings, our internal imagination, that we accept this drab, we accept this lack of forethought, this lack of wisdom and lack of usefulness. What can one do? Like all matters, it requires a change of perception, a questing of perception that frees one from the mono-chromatic jail, the death march. One must engage with different perceptions, with themselves, other people, and nature to transcend the dis-eased mind. Only then can any social change occur, and really, social change is irrelevant until the individual is able to unshackle the mind of strict understandings and fixed concepts.
I prescribe two sensible modes of action and inquiry. Meditate. Permaculture.
"...the single track of conscious attention is wholly inadequate for interactions with a multi-tracked world."
