Wake Up! Look Around: The World Is Beautiful
Ethan Niederer

"And each of us must learn to know beauty for himself just as he learnt for himself to talk and think and love.." - David Pye

What follows is an account of human ecology as I would like it to be, it is the human ecology that I hope to practice in my life after COA.

Human ecology is not a science; it is a study that encompasses so much more than science. Human ecology is not apathetic; its primary direction comes from its practitioners having great stock in and passion for the work that they are doing; they view it as profoundly important. Human ecology is not like the apophatic, neti neti (not this, not this) mystic, it is like the cataphatic, love mystic walking around saying 'this, this, this, yes, yes, THIS IS IT, S'WEET!'

Human ecology sees that the world is beautiful and as a human ecologist I am going to be awake to it, I am going to be in it as best as I know how and to the fullest extent of my ability.

Seeing
Human ecology requires seeing, a very particular kind of seeing; a seeing that takes in what is in front of us without preconceptions. This is not the kind of seeing that sees what the seer thinks they should be seeing, or what they want to be seeing, rather it is an open awareness of the world. Human ecology is a seeing that is a loosening, a freeing, it is a wild awareness.

In practical terms what does it mean to see in this way? This kind of seeing is nothing totally revolutionary or extreme, it is being aware of what is going on in front of us instead of being plugged into ourself at all times. It is also seeing the horizon of influence that all of our actions and non-actions have on the world.

One time when I was little my mom was teaching me to draw.  As I looked out the window of her studio at the trees along our driveway, I was trying to draw the trees, and was looking at them, however as I put the charcoal to the paper what came out was the idea that I had of what a tree should look like. What she told me when she saw what I was doing was,"Draw what you see not what you think you see." This is the first abstract human ecological lesson that I remember: 'The world is what is seems to be not what you think it should be.' About eighteen years later I'm still working on it; yesterday in Ernest McMullen's 2-D design class I was drawing some boards as part of a still life. Ernie looked at what I was drawing and said the same thing as my mother did but in different terms. "Ethan, you are drawing Platonic wood, you want Aristotelian wood; this wood, not the idea of wood." This tendency to look through the particular, the reality, the immanent, to the map, the transcendent idea, is very deeply rooted. To be firmly in this world is to be wild and to see without preconception.  Seeing this way is essential to human ecology; it takes the world as it is, not as how we want it to be.

Human ecology teaches us "how to examine one's own seeing, so as to see the one who sees and thus make seeing more true." (Gary Snyder). The true seeing he is speaking of is a sort of seeing that comes from being aware of the slant that our subjective perspective gives to the world. His seeing could be said to be a kind of "cultivating the wild" or "going with the grain," a seeing with the eyes of a newborn that have been enhanced through cultured intuition. This is not to be confused with the seeing of any one grand 'truth;' rather, it is a seeing that sees truly and sees that there are other ways of seeing truly as well.

Listening
We see it all the time (at least I do at family gatherings): people having a 'conversation' where all they do is sit across the table from one another and try to knock each other out with their idea which is to them the right way to approach the issue at hand. They throw their ideas at the other and wait for their turn to talk. This is not human ecology; as a gathering of perspectives, a calling on various 'languages' human ecology means truly listening to what someone has to say. Fredric Frank wrote "[Every Day] we see less and less. . . . We stick labels on all that is. . . . By these labels we recognize everything but no longer SEE anything. We know the labels on all the bottles but never taste the wine." The same is true of listening, we turn on the radio station that we like and we listen to it. A human ecologist is someone that turns on the radio station that they don't like and is able to listen to it, is someone that is able to listen to the opposing person on the other side of the table and try to truly understand where they are coming from.

The awareness of the one who sees and listens is an awareness that goes beyond or expands the "language" that they are using. The language that I am referring to is not a language in the sense of English or French or whatever, language is the result of the sum of our experiences and influences, a filter controlling what we see as we make our way through the world. Our language is not entirely personal or entirely communal, rather it is something in between the two, we share it to different extents with various individuals and groups of people. The extent to which we share a language with others depends on how much our experience physically and mentally overlaps. In this sense language is how we interpret our experience. The degree to which we share language controls the degree to which we share judgments about values such as what is good and beautiful.

Seeing without preconception is what enables us to get past the preconceptions we have about the nature of the world. Listening without preconception allows different languages to get together and work things out in a meaningful way, truly hearing what the other is saying. This is human ecology; creating an open space, so that we have grounds on which to speak about what is good, what is beautiful and what is not. Human ecology does not fill that space with a meaning of its own. Human ecology creates that space and leaves it open so we can engage in a conversation that is a true exchange of meanings.

Caring
In as much as human ecology is about seeing it is about seeing a direction, seeing which way to go. What we consider to be good is really the thing that is close behind all the decisions that we make. We all affect the world in some way; we have a responsibility to not only talk about what is good but also to do it in a very physical way. Human ecology is a practical getting around to the job at hand. It has an ethical structure, though a loose and fluid one, and that allows us to take action with direction. Its ethical structure is one of doing and being; it's not one of saying "someone else will take care of that." It is one of taking responsibility and acting accordingly. Seeing with openness is what facilitates this direction.

Human Ecology is the application of seeing and listening in an 'interepistemological' study - it is drawing together conventional academic ways of learning with ways of knowing that are based in the clean rawness of the physical world, with just plain being. It should draw the academic and non-academic, intellectual and non-intellectual ways of knowing together: Human ecology provides a place for the visceral knowledge of the fisherman and the academic knowledge of the ichthyologist, the feeling of the artist and the reasoning of the politician, to all come together. It is a study and action that holds caring and compassion as the needle that points its direction.

If human ecology had any dogmatic saying it would be: 'Be awake and live in the world caring about, and working with a heart for what you are invested in.' Being in this way is a beautiful thing from the human ecological point of view - In a world devoid of Meaning (with a big M, as in a grand Truth) it is essential that we recognize the beauty of being in the world in a state of continual creation of meaning (with a little m). Meaning is the recognition that something fundamentally matters; it does. That which is meaningful and beautiful matters because it is what makes us care. There is not much else to being other than living in the world to the best of our ability, as each of us knows how and we cannot do that if we do not care about the world that we are engaged with.

Human ecology is a calling together of all the different passions, all the different languages. It is a calling for discourse and for understanding. It is not a discipline that unifies all other disciplines but rather it is the indescribable attraction between them. It says we are all human; however, it does not try to describe what that means. Human Ecology realizes that being is going to mean something different to everyone. It realizes that trying to pin being down is irrelevant. Human ecology should force us to dwell in the world and recognize the thread of humanness running between people and irrevocably tying all to the world.