Stewart Brand's environmental heresies

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Permalink Reply by Amy Lenzo on July 23, 2009 at 12:34pm

Joseph,

Thanks so much for starting this thread - you've touched on something that is so important to me and I believe all of us, and that's the importance of beauty. Beauty is available to us anytime, but we have to look for it and value it enough to want to try. I wonder where the beauty is in these favelas, these cardboard cities...

You reminded me of a quote I sometimes use as one of my email signatures:

"Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways."
~ Neal Stephenson, Anathem

Thanks again for starting this thread - I'll come back to you when I've listened to Stewart's talk.

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Permalink Reply by Joseph Rowe on November 10, 2009 at 4:53am

Greetings Amy --- a very belated thanks for your interesting reflection on inner beauty. I'd have responded sooner, but haven't been able to take a moment to really "sit down" at the Café for a long time, because of work (to say nothing of the many distractions of the Internet).
This is a difficult and delicate, philosophical --- and social --- question, so please bear with me as I try to elucidate it.
I think Stewart Brand would heartily agree with what you say, and perhaps use it as an argument against what I'm saying. There is a dialectic here, and as with many dialectical situations, one has to be very careful not to fall into one-sidedness. The two sides, or positions, of the dialectic, as I see it, are:
1) Outer, environmental beauty is essential for a truly human life
2) Inner beauty, the beauty of the soul, is essential for a truly human life
And a certain one-sidedness would occur if position 2 were to say: "as long as you have inner beauty, outer beauty will take care of itself." The opposite one-sidedness would be something like: "Give people outer beauty in their lives, and inner beauty will take care of itself."
I want to avoid both of these errors. But I don't believe it can be done by some abstract assertion, such as that 1) and 2) are equally important.

In fact, I would say that inner beauty is actually more important than outer beauty. In this, I think I am agreeing with both you and Stewart. This might seem like one-sidedness, but I maintain that we're dealing with an assymetrical dialectic here. (Contrary to what a lot of philosophers say, I contend that many dialectics are assymetrical. But that does not relieve us of the responsibility of avoiding falling into one-sidendness.)

For example, when I go to Egypt or Morocco and see the alive, present, smiling faces of people who live in outer conditions of sordid misery, it's an instructive shock to return to my home in France, and see Parisian streets full of people surrounded by beauty and prosperity, but looking anxious, stressed, hurried, and depressed. The lesson is obvious. Or is it?

One must be very careful not to go too far in this. People can only take so much environmental ugliness. And there is an enormous variation in individual ability to remain sane, balanced, and inwardly happy in the midst of adverse and ugly outer circumstances. Also, who says that inner peace and "enlightenment" are incompatible with indignation about social injustice?
So in sum, I'd say that Stewart has an important point to make, but that he seems strangely oblivious to people's vital need for things like parks, as just one example. (I'm told that there is a favela in Rio where people have access to a huge park, and that they respect this park and obey the collective injunction not to build in it, without any government intervention in the matter... don't know if this is true, I'll try to check on it...) .

I'd very much welcome other opinions or reports to this discussion. But please do watch the video first!

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