What Do We Lose When Experiences Go Extinct?

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org:


What Do We Lose When Experiences Go Extinct?
A less colorful, less fragrant, less delicious, less sensual world awaits us--unless we act now

August 3, 2012 | by Chris Desser


When I first understood that experiences were becoming extinct I was floored—this was a new idea—not extinction of course, but the extinguishing of the concomitant sense experience. I became absorbed in the idea, wanting to make it manifest and decided to “catalog” them.

My mind’s eye conjured dusty vitrines in forgotten museums preserving relics of extinct experiences, and shelves lined with long gone creatures in yellowed formaldehyde. But I also registered an immediate emotional reaction: the human consequence of the diminution of sense experience felt tragic to me. I moved from the idea of extinct experience to the feeling of a less colorful, less fragrant, less delicious, less sensual world. I considered the possibility of the loss of experiences that had had a deep effect on me: Not to stare in wonder at myriad stars in the sky? Not to slake my thirst with water directly from a stream? To never again witness, with a shiver of fear, a stalking tiger? To know the fragrance of sandalwood only through an old novelty fan, ever less redolent, that my grandmother brought back from India? It made me deeply sad.

We already live increasingly inured from the rhythms and cycles, the cause and affect, that spawn the natural world. At some point the extinction of experience will be common enough to make our disconnection plain—our world of scent and sight and sound, flavor and texture, will become sufficiently contracted that we may finally notice. Certainly the world will be a much less interesting place.

Experiences we enjoy without much thought—the visual thrill of a vermilion ranunculus, the heady perfume of a gardenia, the luscious taste and feel of an avocado, the sweet spread of honey across your tongue, the crunch of an almond—arise in a web of relationship: the flower attracts the bee that makes the honey and pollinates the flowers that become avocados and almonds, and more gardenias and ranunculus and more honey and more bees. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/what-do-we-lose-when-experiences-go-extinct

[FirstLight]

1. wow...must read the whole thing...

this is really profound. I was thinking to myself about the technology boom over the past decade or two.

Watching a movie made in the late 80s and seeing only ONE piece of technology in a teen's room (the boom box) and a book on the nightstand... made me nostalgic for simpler things... this article is speaking more about the ecological experiences...but I get that too. I used to stay out all day in my tree around the corner, playing on a rope swing and eating fruit off the trees in the neighbors yard. I used to be able to drink from streams. Remember the flower honeysuckle? and the coolest thing was to pull one off the vine and taste the nectar?

thanks for finding this article, I'll be sharing it for sure!