How Everything is an Illusion
The following is my response to how my past environmental class is going, specifically referring to the text the Ecological Thought by Timothy Morton.
In the past few classes, there has been many readings and discussions that bring up "control" and "equality". Terms such as "The Strange Stranger" and "The Trickster" were also tossed around in class. Every time I heard these concepts and ideas, the first thing that came to mind was Jurassic Park. Specifically I am referring to the scene where John Hammond and Dr. Sattler are discussing the events that have occurred and how the next time around all functions in the park will be in control. As a rebuttal, Dr. Sattler says that having control is the illusion.
So having regulations placed by the Environmental Protection agency and other organizations is pointless. It's pointless because they cannot regulate or control everything that being taken or put back into the environment. The pollutants are either going to be regulated poorly or they are going to be claimed regulated when the reality is that they're not. The illusion is the sense of control by the EPA and it gives the public a sense of security that the problems are taken care of.
I really want to touch upon the "equality" idea. As we have seen in class, many individuals do not have equal treatment or rights as others do, and yet this is what people strive for. Equality is even mention in the constitution. Morton in the Ecological though claims that "when we approach the idea that all sentient beings are equal and free, we discover the trickster" (pg 82). People strive to be free and equal, but it is either very difficult or near impossible. If the vision of equality or freedom were to come true, then what would occur in the future? I feel that equality would cause more problems because as I mentioned in a previous discussion post, everyone is built differently and they have different lifestyles. What if someone could not afford the basic rights? What if someone did not have the same diet as another? What I'm wondering about is that if there is difficulty achieving equality, why do people want it? Is it a source of comfort for others? Is it the foreground when everything else is the background? It could be that it gives people power that they could never obtain though other means.
With the illusions of control and equality, people fail to see the interconnectedness and how their actions can effect others. Going back to Jurassic Park, the illusion of control in place makes everyone unaware of the connections. The faculty at the park were so narrow minded that they failed to see the big picture (Morton's thinking big). Specifically, when the one individual shuts down the security system, the effect is the dinosaurs running loose in the park. When the dinosaurs were made female, researchers failed to se that the gene they put in caused them to switch genders in a single sex environments and allow them to breed (which they did not want to happen).
The purpose of these illusions are to hide the fact that everything is connected and I think that the only way to overcome them is to think big. Thinking big will help us see the interconnectedness.
