Nothing Here?
The idea for this entry came during my walk to the train station this morning.
Near the railroad tracks there are two single-family homes surrounded by apartment buildings and town homes. These houses just don't fit in and look very much misplaced.
I started imagining that they must have been built when the area looked a little different. Rather than apartment building or town homes there might have been fields. I caught myself saying that they must have been built when there was "nothing here".
I immediately realized that I might have made a mistake. Not in saying that the houses might have been built when there were only fields around them but in saying there was "nothing here". The statement implies that today there is something here. That somehow there is more today than there was back then - whenever "then" happened to be.
I indeed made an error.
Yes there may be more human beings living in this place today than there were in the past but is there really "more"? Is there less of nothing today? Sure there are more human inventions visible than might have been visible back then - cars, paved roads, bricks and mortar, garbage cans. What you see less of is a variety. Fewer plants and animals. Less colours, fewer spaces. Interestingly you also see little of that most familiar of animals - humans.
Was there really less back then? Was it the middle of nowhere?
Of course I can't say what the place might have looked like a hundred years ago but I imagine a field with a larger variety of plants and insects, birds and maybe small mammals. I imagine an eco-system of some sort. Maybe less humans lived here but those that did likely shared the place with a greater variety of other life forms. It likely was quite a vibrant place if only we happened to take a closer look.
When we walk in a forest, on a mountain top or on a beach are we really in the middle of nowhere? Or is the middle of nowhere someplace more like the cities we live in?
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
Near the railroad tracks there are two single-family homes surrounded by apartment buildings and town homes. These houses just don't fit in and look very much misplaced.
I started imagining that they must have been built when the area looked a little different. Rather than apartment building or town homes there might have been fields. I caught myself saying that they must have been built when there was "nothing here".
I immediately realized that I might have made a mistake. Not in saying that the houses might have been built when there were only fields around them but in saying there was "nothing here". The statement implies that today there is something here. That somehow there is more today than there was back then - whenever "then" happened to be.
I indeed made an error.
Yes there may be more human beings living in this place today than there were in the past but is there really "more"? Is there less of nothing today? Sure there are more human inventions visible than might have been visible back then - cars, paved roads, bricks and mortar, garbage cans. What you see less of is a variety. Fewer plants and animals. Less colours, fewer spaces. Interestingly you also see little of that most familiar of animals - humans.
Was there really less back then? Was it the middle of nowhere?
Of course I can't say what the place might have looked like a hundred years ago but I imagine a field with a larger variety of plants and insects, birds and maybe small mammals. I imagine an eco-system of some sort. Maybe less humans lived here but those that did likely shared the place with a greater variety of other life forms. It likely was quite a vibrant place if only we happened to take a closer look.
When we walk in a forest, on a mountain top or on a beach are we really in the middle of nowhere? Or is the middle of nowhere someplace more like the cities we live in?
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
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