246-249

246 of 365 : Braungart and McDonaugh talk of the technosphere and the biosphere. The former is the realm of our technology and the latter the realm of living beings and the biotic processes with which they are involved (such as water purification by wetlands). The problem with our technosphere is that it interferes with the biosphere, rather than being a closed loop with itself that lets the biosphere be. The sailboat, for instance, uses energy in a way that lets the biosphere be, but not the combustion engine. I thought of these things tonight, driving home. My car, out of whack, a poorly designed element in a poorly designed civilization that interferes with the biosphere.

247 of 365 : Seeing a hawk glide above a ridge-line for minutes on minutes -what design!

248 of 365 : Everything has its system, including emotional ecology. Our inner lives are ecological, too. Feelings emerge from long adaptation -both biologically in our gene line disposition and environmentally in our personal histories, ways we coped and ways that coping stuck. Imagine the industrial approach to our feeling -for instance, the new age positive feeling corporate packaged self-help tune up: it is about as fitting to our inner ecology as a tire plant. Its very advice spews out harmful by-products -the annoying mannerism sitting in an unintegrated way on top of feelings with long history and nuance. Even the haste with which we attack ourselves to clean up the mess betrays industrial design -we push and package, when the freaky idiosyncrasy has its long, adaptive reason. The eco-logical world, then, involves patience and understanding of our contexts, our stories, and time to let restorative work emerge within the mess as complex, organic innovation.

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249 of 365 : Looking at kids play reveals our wild inner ecology. How do we let that get ironed out? All that needs trimming are the immoral emotions -the greed, aggression and avoidance of responsibility. The wildness, however, can remain, helpfully, beyond that.

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