Wilderness – I
This is only going to be a teaser – if that word even applies to a planned series of blog postings on a subject that might strike you as bleak and unpromising at first. Part of the essence of Artistic Energies has also been a love for the wilderness and what can happen in it. It’s strange, perhaps, to even say “in it” because what it contains is otherness – to be outside, in so many senses.
There are so many worthwhile questions to ask about the relationship between being in nature and being in technology – the ecology and psychology of each. I’ll try to get at a few of those questions that have intrigued us for years: Can technology be used as a means of escaping “back” toward reality? Do simulations of grandeur wrongly content us with simulation, or rightly extend our desires toward beauty? What beauty can we find as humans in inhuman places? And as a Benedictine monk recently asked me, Is the city itself the new wilderness? – a spiritual wasteland built on fear and self-protective distance against a super-powerful Nature and the possibility of either spiritual presence or spiritual absence.
Look for more on these topics in the days to come.
Tags: reality, simulation, technology, wilderness
