the world outside

I left Palo Alto yesterday afternoon, and as I drove out to 280 I was struck by The World Outside. The brightness of the sun, the brilliance of the blue sky, the flashing effect of the wind in Eucalyptus trees. It seemed, well...outsized. And a little overwhelming, like something you've been looking at for a long time, suddenly seen through 3D glasses.

It's easy to lose touch with the The World Outside when you're working in an office. You get inured to your little paths between your desk, the lab, the printer, and the secret coffee machine squirreled away in that code-protected area. And it occurs to me that this is the NUMBER ONE PROBLEM: the fact that we lose touch with The World Outside, that we forget the warm embrace of the air, the scent of the summer breeze, the softness of the rain, the whisper of trees in the wind.

It's not surprising that CEOs and top execs have no relationship with nature or respect for biodiversity. They never really meet either, except perhaps obliquely on a hunting trip laid on by a client, and that hardly counts. They are the nearest thing you can find outside of a fifties sci-fi movie to brains in jars, fed by an automatic feed of pre-digested nutrients.

How can we expect them to have any idea what a forest is like when it's just dusk and you can feel it breathing? How can we blame them for not understanding that manipulating transactions of profit and loss is the least of all human activities? How can we hate them for not seeing the world as more than a sink for effluent they never smell, see or touch? It's literally all numbers and concepts to them. They speed past it on their way to other things; things that exist in their minds and on their balance sheets. Things that exist ONLY in their minds and on their balance sheets. Who ever saw a share price build a nest and lay eggs? Who can lay total customer satisfaction on a plate and watch hungry people eat it?

While I was pondering all this I drove to my meeting. It seems to be consolidation time again inside the company I'm working for. It's not too far along yet, but I can scent change coming, like rain in the fall. And it gets me going. The blood starts zinging in my veins, my heart beats a little faster. I start thinking strategically, I churn out ideas. It's not excitement that generates this; it's a mixture of fear and competitive spirit. If you even have a little competitive spirit, the scent of danger can drive your adrenalin sky-high as you start to accelerate to make sure you get ahead of the team before the wolves are let loose.

After the meeting I left to drive back through the same glorious country, with the blond grass glowing in the late afternoon sun, and the smooth hills curving green to the horizon. And once again I had to struggle to see it. I was too speeded up, too hyped on paranoia and determination to survive. I was full of plans for how to feather my nest in this abstract world of contingency plans that have nothing to do with anything I could actually weigh in my hands, or plant in the earth, or gaze at with eyes that well up at its beauty.

Is it any wonder The World Outside is in such grave danger when our minds are so full of the immaterial? When even I, with my deep ecology agenda and concern for the world, struggle to see it through the film of figures that runs up and down over the inside of my eyes like the titles for The Matrix?