 © Cydney Brooke McIntyre
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The Quiver of a Shrub in California Click to read Click to |
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© Cydney Brooke McIntyre
|
The Quiver of a Shrub in California Click to read Click to |
The Quiver
of a Shrub in California
In my country forests are dying, rivers resemble open sewers, people are sometimes
advised not to open their windows, and television advertises gas masks for children to
wear on their way to and from school. Mine is a small country in the middle of Europe
where the borders between Welds have been destroyed, the land is eroding, the soil is
disintegrating and poisoned by chemical fertilizers that in turn contaminate the
groundwater, where birds that used to live in the Welds have lost their nesting places and
are dying out, while agronomists are forced to combat pests with more chemicals. My
country supplies the whole of Europe with a strange export: sulfur dioxide.
For years I was one of those who criticized all this; now, I am one of those who are criticized for it.
When I think about what has brought about this terrible state of affairs and encounter on a daily basis obstacles that keep us from taking quick action to change it, I cannot help concluding that its root causes are less technical or economic in nature than philosophical. For what I see in Marxist ideology and the communist pattern of rule is an extreme and cautionary instance of the arrogance of modern man, who styles himself the master of nature and the world, the only one who understands them, the one everything must serve, the one for whom our planet exists. Intoxicated by the achievements of his mind, by modern science and technology, he forgets that his knowledge has limits and that beyond these limits lies a great mystery, something higher and infinitely more sophisticated than his own intellect.
I am increasingly inclined to believe that even the term "environment," which is inscribed on the banners of many commendable civic movements, is in its own way misguided, because it is unwittingly the product of the very anthropocentrism that has caused extensive devastation of our earth. The word "environment" tacitly implies that whatever is not human merely envelops us and is therefore inferior to us, something we need care for only if it is in our interest to do so. I do not believe this to be the case. The world is not divided into two types of being, one superior and the other merely surrounding it. Being, nature, the universe—they are all one infinitely complex and mysterious metaorganism of which we are but a part, though a unique one.
Everyone of us is a crossroads of thousands of relations, links, influences, and communications—physical, chemical, biological, and others of which we know nothing. While without humans there would have been no Challenger space shuttle, there would have been no humans without air, water, earth, without thousands of fortitudes that cannot be fortuitous and thanks to which there can be a planet on which there can be life. And while each of us is a very special and complex network of space, time, matter, and energy, we are nothing more than their network; we are unthinkable without them, and without the order of the universe, whose dimensions they are.
None of us knows how the quiver of a shrub in California affects the mental state of a coal miner in North Bohemia or how his mental state affects the quivering of the shrub. I believe that we have little chance of averting an environmental catastrophe unless we recognize that we are not the masters of Being, but only a part of Being, and it makes little difference that we are the only part of Being known so far that is not only conscious of its own being but is even conscious of the fact that it will one day come to an end.
Profile
Václav Havel was a political dissident, prisoner, and playwright before becoming president of Czechoslovakia in 1989. He has devoted his life to fighting against the Communist regime and defending human rights. His 1965 play, The Memorandum, satirizes the dehumanizing effects of bureaucratic language. In the play a memorandum proposes a more efficient language in which words are as dissimilar from each other as possible. The result is a breakdown in communication, complete gibberish. Was this play a send up of Soviet bureaucracy and the quisling regime in Czechoslovakia? Apparently the regime thought so. Three years later all of Havel’s plays were banned.
In the 1970s, Havel was arrested and jailed for his human rights activism. He continued to write plays that he couldn’t sell or produce, and survived by stacking barrels in a brewery. He sent his writing abroad, and in 1977 the regime charged him with "subversion of the public." During his years of protest, Havel never sought political power. In Summer Meditations (1992) he wrote, "With no embarrassment, no stage fright, no hesitation, I did everything I had to do."
As president, Havel has reduced his country’s dependence on its arms industry and has worked to protect human rights. Among his more serendipitous ties to the West: he appointed musician Frank Zappa to the Ministry of Culture for a brief time, causing outrage in the conservative community.
I always thought a playwright would make a good president.
—Krista Koontz
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