possibility

After a couple months off, a new post. It seems like this blog is  going to turn more in to a general thinking aloud than a thinking aloud on anything in particular topic, such as ecology, parks and green space etc. If anything, it seems to be veering toward the topic of morality and art, which is what I’d like to write about now. Nothing fancy, but just a note I’d like to make–for myself perhaps more than anyone else. I was talking with a friend recently about the aesthetic experience and its relationship to freedom and morality. During our discussion we touched briefly on the different conceptions of freedom that takes place within the frame of the art context–a museum or gallery setting–and without it. Namely, putting a spatial and temporal frame around the aesthetic experience, cultivating and rarifying it, is to point to an abstract ‘possibility’ or condition of freedom.  Whereas to act in the world, the everyday, messy world, can be thought of as a practice of one’s freedom. By making choices in and about the world, we actually exercise our freedom. Whether it’s the freedom to buy any number of products, or transcendental freedom is a different matter that has to do with a host of other things like economics and varying fields of power-relations. It calls to mind a line from Marcuse’s An Essay on Liberation, which I’ll paraphrase: “what do people in a free society do? They think about what they are going to do.” Which in some ways, it sounds like not much is going on in a free society. But what I like about it is that it begs the moral and the ethical question.

Thinking Aloud on Morality

In “Beauty as the Symbol of Morality” Kant suggests that we achieve morality analogically. By making judgments of taste (i.e. this is beautiful) we can teach ourselves how to make moral judgments; that our reason operates according to similar rules when making these kinds of judgments. That one’s morality can be refined, as would one’s taste.

Taste enables us to make the transition from sensible charm to a habitual moral interest without making too violent a leap; for taste presents the imagination as admitting, even in its freedom, of determination that is purposive for the understanding, and it teaches us to even like objects of sense freely, even apart from sensible charm.

According to the first segment in this 2006 episode of radiolab, we are predisposed to make certain moral decisions as part of our evolution as a species. Physiologically, the brain responds with certain predictable patterns in two distinct areas when presented with simple moral dilemmas: an “ought” and an “ought not,” can be found in different parts of the brain. Highly developed areas in the brain respond more strongly when presented with complex moral problems. The eventual outcome is a contest between this part of the brain, the one that operates logically, and less developed parts in which can be found a ‘primate’ morality. All of this to say that it makes me curious whether the same neural pathways are strengthened when making aesthetic and moral judgments. In any case, if morality is a shared notion of who we are and who we ought/hope to be, can it be thought to constitute a kind of social imaginary; a frame in which we conceive of ourselves and construct narratives of who we are? Morality so conceived presents itself not as biologically determined but as a social phenomenon: not as a practice of freedom, as in Kant, but as a practice of necessity.

Sustainability is Unethical (part 1)

To truly look out for our own interests requires that we know the interests of our whole environment, which means our whole living planet. Our free choices, in order to serve our own long-range interests, must serve those of other species as well, for natural ethical behavior is that which contributes to the health of the whole Gaian system.

This, as we said, is the heart of ecological ethics — the self-interest of every holon, whether a cell, a body, a society, a species, an ecosystem, or a whole living planet. All must be balanced in the mutual consistency of the whole and all its parts. Self-interest is bad only when not tempered by the self-interest of community.

-Elisabet Sahtouris, Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution

Within the western philosophical tradition, ethics is conceived of as a self-relation whereas morality is a relation to others. For the Greeks, to have an ethics one must necessarily be free; indeed, the ontological condition of ethics is freedom. Among other things, to possess an ethics one must exercise one’s reason freely in a manner that is or less removed from necessity. To exercise reason in service of need would instead constitute a moral proposition.

Now to the problem of sustainability and the call for an ecological ethics. What would an ecological ethics look like? And perhaps more importantly, how is it distinct from an ecological morality? How does the discourse surrounding sustainability relate to freedom at the level of one’s subjectivity? To construct an ecological ethics is to reshape the issue of sustainability as a matter of freedom and not necessity, undercutting, to some extent the claims surrounding the urgent need for thinking of oneself as part of a broader ecology, sustainable practices and a re-thinking of how to calculate value.

A Brief History of Lafayette Square Park

“As the city becomes more densely developed, open space will become priceless.”
Mayor Washburn Andrus, 1879

Wino Park, Party Park, Pill Park, Old Man’s Park. Lafayette Square Park as it is more officially known was built in 1853.  Located on 11th and Jefferson, the park is one of Oakland’s seven original downtown squares and is a vertex around which various visions of the city converge. Indeed, its environs form a kind of palimpsest of urban-planning dating back to the city’s founding. Adjacent to the brick victorians of the Old Oakland historic district, Lafayette Square is circumscribed by a mixture of three and four story brick storefronts and craftsmen style homes in varying states of repair. Looking outward from the southeast corner of the park, one can read the “available” signage posted on a pristine block of newly built live/work lofts. Looking across the street to the northeast, one sees cranes looming overhead from the construction site of a major high-rise building which is part of the City Center re-development. Itself a palimpsest, the re-development plan has been roughly 40 years in the making. Beginning with the construction of interstate 980 and 880 and covering roughly 12 blocks from Broadway to the east and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to the west, downtown Oakland’s redevelopment terminates at the edge of Lafayette Square.
In 1985, the park gained historical status and in the late 1990s, it underwent a massive remodel headed by local landscape architect Walter Hood. In its current configuration, two palm trees flank a now-defunct fountain that bisects the modest hill that occupies the spot where the original Chabot observatory stood from 1883-1915. On the north side of the hundred year old live-oak that occupies the center of the park is a series of tables for two with in-built chess boards, laid out in neat rows underneath a metal awning. On the other is a neglected horseshoe pit that runs perpendicular to downtown Oakland’s only public barbecue. Also one of the few parks to have public restroom facilities, Lafayette Square is also home to a community garden and a dying Magnolia tree overrun by an outcropping of mushrooms claiming their territory at the base of its trunk.

Jimothy and Theopold

The first prayer, as I’ve heard it called subsequently, was loud and full of large animals who, as they moved, stamped a river of mud through the acorns and the little fallen leaves that covered the mass of the land-animal. The drey was warm and our bellies were close to full in the mottled mauve haze of the evening. But there, scampering up the tree in a state of mortal dread was Jimothy, bringing warning of the live creatures: “They are coming.” 

From our vantage point, we were able to sense their arrival well in advance of Jim’s alarm. Not only could we hear their low collective murmur (so unlike our own), but we saw the tiny fires that they brought with them. Strangely, they were without food. Navigating past the threshold and on to the body of the land-animal, they converged at once, from all directions in a pungent co-mingling. We had seen things like this before. But those were typically festive occasions, equal in their loudness, but with the large animals lumbering along directionless, vocalizing at random; the savory aroma coming not from the sheer number of bodies, but from their massive cargo of food. 

That night, however, their lumbering was significantly more decisive, more intentional. They demonstrated affection on each other as they plunged their shovels and spades in to the land animal. Their vocalizations, garbled painfully from their empty guts, carried with them a desperation, a solemnity typically absent. We knew, implicitly that nothing would be the same after this. No more motionless beseeching, no more intent gazing–as though I were in fact the vulnerable one in my relative smallness–in to the curiously deep eyes of the large animals. From now on, they would save their bread. This is how we were ushered back from the time of plenty; so goes the cornucopia of my life, I thought.

Shamanism and Public Nature

An excerpt from “The Ecology of Magic,” the introductory chapter in David Abram’s book, The Spell of the Sensuous in which he discusses the relationships between the shaman’s social and public function as healer, and her ecological and private function as intermediary between human society and the land:

It is this, we might say, that defines a shaman: the ability to readily slip out of the perceptual boundaries that demarcate his or her particular culture–boundaries enforced by social customs, taboos, and most importantly, the common speech or language–in order to make contact with, and learn from, the other powers in the land

In his characterization of shamanism, Abram outlines a kind of Deleuzian re-territorialization through de-territorialization scenario in which human beings emerge as fully human, through reverent encounter with the natural world.

However, what I find of particular interest here is his depiction of the shaman as a figure who, in balancing culture and nature, is also one who necessarily must balance public and private. The shaman dwells on the periphery of the village, privately engaging in behaviors and practices that are normally unacceptable within the confines of the village (even to the point of being excluded from discourse itself). That is to say, the natural world is excluded from the public life of the village proper. In fact, it only becomes acceptable within the social order of the village through the shaman, who, in invoking ‘the land’ through dream-like states and ritual practices is called upon to restore health and balance to the social order.

Freedom Farmer

Take a look at the epigraph to Brian Aldiss’ 1965 novel Earthworks (which some of you may remember mentioned in Robert Smithson’s Monuments of Passaic):

“You are sick, friend,” he said. “You’ve been babbling! Unlatch your face-plate and let’s have a look at you. You’re a landsman, aren’t you?”

“I’ve got to get back to the village,” I said. “I’ll be late. You know what that means - either the cells or the Gas House!”

“You’d be better advised to stay with us,” he said.

One of the women said: “We can’t afford to let him go now we’ve got him Jess. He might tell the guards on us. He’s a Traveller now.”

Jess! This was Jess! Throughout the prison villages, that was the name they spoke when they spoke of the Travellers. To landsmen it meant hope, to overseers fear. I knew his life was a legend and there was a reward on his head.

Jess said to me: “We were all landsmen once, convicts sentenced to work on the land, as you are. We have escaped. We broke free and now we obey no order but our own. Will you join us?”

There are almost too many elements in this passage that are deserving of analysis. But that the notion of ‘village’ and ‘landsman’ are linked with the penal system, one of slavery, is of particular interest. Throughout the course of the novel the protagonist Knowle, suffers hallucinations of the ‘Farmer,’ a disciplinary figure that haunts him like specter of death. Interestingly enough, with its allusions to Christian notions of redemption, this epigraph directly links agriculture and food production with morality. Which is to say, the question of the land is posed as a question of inherent freedoms. To ‘break free’ of the land, for Jess, is to break free of the obligations of duty and instead obey the self, evidently following the order of the will. It seems that Jess and his followers, substitute the morality of the landsmen, for ethics of the Travellers. More on this later.

Park Lesson Number One

What kinds of knowledge can we say are produced in parks? How do they educate us? From a phenomenological standpoint, parks provide a context in which to conceive of oneself as part of a natural system (more on this later). On a less phenomenological level, they are sites where the natural world is administrated (granted, this is not unique to the public park). They are called upon to soften the urban hardscape and instrumentalized as the recipients of corporate tokenism. Parks are sites where, on good days, individuals may comingle legally (albeit in a highly restricted manner in the absence of proper permits) in the open air. Highly contested spaces, parks are the sites of micro-political conflict between neighbors and various associations. What this adds up to essentially, is that parks and urban green spaces in general, are product and productive of social relations. This is what the park can teach that ‘nature’ so conceived does not.

Jeffersonian Ethical Farming

An excerpt from the 2005 essay, first published in Harper’s Magazine, “Jesus Without the Miracles” by Erik Reece:

In his book Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) Jefferson urged readers to resist the factory life of large European cities and stay on the land. “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue,” Jefferson wrote in the famous chapter called “Manufacturers.” Farmers intuit the laws of God within the laws of nature and so become virtuous, he reasoned. They are, by the nature of their work, resourceful, neighborly, independent. They are the elemental caretakers of the world. [...] To live by Jesus’ teachings would be to live virtuously as stewards of the land; it would be to create an economy based on compassion, cooperation and conservation; it would be to preserve the Creation as the kingdom of God. Jefferson was proposing a country of countrysides, a pastorale in which we would want to live; [Alexander] Hamilton was giving us a nation of factories from which we would want–perhaps in the end need–to be saved.

While Reece largely focuses on Jefferson’s transition from Epicurean philosophy to a moral system rooted in the teachings of Jesus, what I find particularly interesting about this passage is the focus on one’s relation to the land as a question of both ethics and morality; the delicate balance between self-care as manifested by one’s relation to the natural world, and one’s ability to ‘take care’ of others in developing an sustainable economy of compassion and reverence etc.

Dimond Park with Gillian Garo

This is the first in a series of reflections based on interviews with individuals working in Oakland parks about their experiences, motivations and thoughts on the importance of neighborhood parks and urban green spaces. These interviews took place informally, while walking through various sites in Oakland.

“A park is the heart of a community.” These words come honestly for Gillian Garro, currently a partner in the landscape architecture firm Larman-Garro and founder and former chair of the Oakland Parks Coalition. She tells me this as we walk across the mud and stones of Sausal creek, at the foot of a steep slope dense with blackberry brambles and ivy. From where we stand, the creek runs southwesterly, down through Dimond Park which sits in the lowlands of Dimond canyon, where Fruitvale avenue dead-ends just north of MacArthur boulevard. The park, built on the former estate of gold-rush tycoon Hugh Dimond, is a collection of facilities: a swimming pool, playground, picnic areas, basketball and tennis courts that are connected by wide concrete paths and sprawling green spaces. To get to the canyon, one can either follow one of several trails originating in the park, or simply walk north alongside the creek. Sausal is a site of major restoration since 1996, when the Friends of Sausal Creek (FRSC) began organizing around the watershed. To date it has organized several clean-up hikes within the canyon, water quality monitoring and has planted both a native plant garden and a riparian restoration site at the lower end of the hiking trail that ends in Dimond Park.
Though not a member of that organization herself, Gillian thinks that the creek restoration movement in Oakland and the FRSC in particular, is one of the more successful instances in which environmental stewardship has intersected with city government. She attributes this to the hard work and dedication of both the volunteer organization and the small staff working in the environmental services division of Oakland Public Works. Too often, she says, green spaces and urban parks aren’t looked at comprehensively but rather, are treated as a way of putting out political fires.

Gillian Garo

As we walk the length of the creek, underneath tall, slender bays arching from the opposite bank and over a yellow swath of dogwoods, Gillian tells me that our public parks and open spaces are more than just a way of satisfying constituents. A community needs a place to gather, a center. Not only that, but there is also an urgent need for individuals to consider their neighborhood parks and green spaces holistically, as part of a broader ecological system. We are stewards of our environment, just as we are stewards of our communities. It is crucial, for the health of a community, that individuals take ownership of open spaces. The two are intimately linked by our capacity to think of ourselves in context.
For the last ten years, Garo has worked in various capacities to spread an awareness of the importance urban green spaces. Her work in parks began in 1998 with the revitalization of a paved lot adjacent to Bella Vista Elementary School in Oakland’s San Antonio neighborhood. The lot, the majority of which was owned by the city of Oakland department of Parks and Recreation, served as the playground for the elementary school. While it featured basketball hoops, the playground lacked drinking fountains, adequate shade and seating. In Garo’s words, it was a horrible environment for children. She had spent the previous years as an activist and community organizer and had established connections with city officials through her neighborhood association. Joining forces with several concerned teachers and staff at the school, she began the outreach program.
Bella Vista was likewise Garo’s first opportunity to design a public space. As part of the initial design process, she worked collaboratively with community members through a series of workshops which formed the basis for her initial proposal. In 2001, with the support of her community and a groundswell of energy behind her, Garo partnered with the Trust for Public Land (TPL), a New York based fundraising entity, to raise capital for the project. However, the project’s momentum was curtailed when it hit the Oakland city government. Oakland had recently restructured both the way dealt with non-profits and the way parks were maintained. Non-profits could no longer provide funds for maintenance or enter in to service agreements with the city, while state and federal money could not be alloted for expenses related to upkeep. Maintenance for city projects would henceforth be provided by Public Works, which had no annual budget, and whose operating costs come from a set percentage of the overall moneys allocated to city projects. TPL would not build unless it could be assured that the park would be properly cared for. Though it was not the only reason, the project stalled (there was also some issue as to a small strip of land which was owned by the school and not the city), it was the first major hiccup in the process. Bella Vista Park was eventually revitalized in 2004, but it was after Garo had disassociated herself from the project.
Founded in 2001, the Oakland Parks Coalition (OPC) is a volunteer organization dedicated to the health of Oakland’s open and green spaces, is a direct result of Garo’s experience working on the revitalization of the Bella Vista playground. Based on the Neighborhood Parks Council in San Francisco, the aim of the OPC was to increase the public’s awareness of the importance of urban green spaces and to bolster volunteer/community involvement through stewardship programs, which would in turn help secure funding for various improvement projects. Another major aim of the OPC is to monitor the parks through an Annual Park Survey. The organization worked with the National Parks Service and secured a substantial grant to establish a Groundworks Trust to help with maintenance in the parks. However, none of the OPC volunteers, including Garo herself, could commit to implementing the program and the money was diverted elsewhere. Indeed, one of OPC’s more recent goals is the establishment of a Maintenance Trust to offset the latest round of annual budget cuts that occurred in 2008.
To this day, Garo is not sure whether the parks are better off as a result of her work. “Maybe the best thing to do is just to go out and pull some weeds or tend to a patch of grass.” It is difficult to know how to affect change and politics takes patience, which many don’t have. For example, Oakland has gone through several different rounds of urban planning proposals. They’ve released several reports, all of which have their merits. However, no one has taken the initiative to try to implement their findings in city projects. While this is largely a budget issue, it seems that even for those with the best of intentions, their work needs to have quantifiable results, and quickly. Otherwise, even the most committed can become disillusioned. Yet for Garo, it’s about the process: as long as it’s meaningful, then it’s worth it. If one acts from the heart, you never know what can happen but you have to just keep doing it.