Participation, Society & Conservation

Things go round in circles! Was here in 2004. It was an idea at the temple while I was president of the youth group to focus on "participation" as a means of strengthening the youth group. The idea was that being "involved" by itself would constitute the youth group. I also wanted a "reason" to be involved (i.e. for Buddhism to become something tangable like knowledge, experience) but this led to disharmony with the temple heirachy (familiar situation ;-) and was never resolved. In the absense of any "reason" we were left with participation itself.

Now this I realise is actually a great idea. I'm useless as implementing ideas probably because I don't understand what I'm learning here. Participation (for better or worse) is what keeps "society" together. It is why the government keeps badgering on about employment a hundred years after it became a real issue in western society. By participating in an economic system the people are kept loyal to the status quo. Have people "dropping out" and the society starts to fragment and those who depend upon the status quo are in for a bumpy ride. (This is why I'd call myself anarchist at the moment because why not?)

For better however this crops up in our relation with all things. I have a casual interest in astronomy. It began after I discovered the B stop on my dads camera. Staying up late in the crisp, biting air of frosty December nights capturing star trails was really exciting. Getting the pictures developed for free (cos they didn't charge for the negatives if pictures came back blank) and then using the photo labs at school to produce prints got me looking at the stars. I know the constellations for no reason other than I tried to photograph them. But then I began to look at them for their own sakes. I still don't get completely blown away by these extraordinary creatures - the 4 moons of saturn, the nebulae and galaxies mostly I guess because its a lot more imagining what you can see than actually see. And I just can't comprehend these distances - it's just off the scale to my small mind. We've even an 8" Newtonian reflector in the back garden made from a off cut of drain pipe when they redid the drains in the street here. But M31 is still just a smudge though. The mirrors are faded and maybe I should get it all working again.

In religions: the solitary monastics do so on the understanding that their contemplations of God, their self realisations, or their enlightenments, are for the enrichment and benefit of all the world. No-one retreats into contemplation to get away from the world, rather to get closer to it. And no-one who find the world sits in silence, they preach and teach to others. The whole process is one of inclusion not exclusion, involvement not isolation. But notice the deeper meaning of society - it is not about the actual contact with others. One can be more richly included in society while alone than when physically with people. A guy from Groove Amada was comparing to Alexa Chung (she's strangely geeky don't you think?) the values of writing and performing and valuing them both: when you're in the studio and you know you've got a massive tune that is quite an experience too. I know this experience - sort of (never quite I see you baby) - and my mum always says why don't you publish your music. Well I give it as birthday presents normally. But my trial argument has been: why go to the shops to look for music when you can write exactly what you want yourself? Like why go to the restaurant when you can cook just how you want at home? The answer I am realising is "society". People don't listen to music or write it even primarily for its own sake but to be part of a community. Thus kids group based upon their music choices. They sit in their room listening to a tune and feel the inclusion in that group. But it's not everything. Van Gogh never got to be part of physical group from what he did... there is authenticity outside the group... he was displaying for a greater group, not of peers but of something abstract. Physical humanity caught up with him after his death - he is now very much part of physical society, but who was the audience when he was alive? God? Society (with a big 'S')? He was participating in something, or was he just trying unsuccessfully and that is why he went mad? Is that why I feel I will go mad?

Springwatch this year interviewed these two kids who'd made some pretty nifty footage of a barn owl. It became clear that it was the camera that had got them up close to the owls and through the work to capture them on camera they had learned about the owls and come to appreciate them in their own right. The BBC is brilliantly working at the moment to increase participation in the countryside. They are absolutely right. If the city folks can be given a means or tool to get involved with nature, then they will come to appreciate it. It is not just a matter of cleverly worded arguments as I have tried for as long as I can imagine - it is the whole gambit of arts, conservation works, sciences, farmings, walkings, out-door sports and dare I say it hunting that mediates between nature and man and creates participation and inclusion. That is the key to conservation.

In my own case my interest in animals and nature goes back as far as I can remember but like Gerrald Durrell it did involve a lot of putting bugs in jars, and now has developed from keeping animals in cages to photographing them in situ, identifying them properly and being generally more studied. It is about capturing and hunting in essence; not physically capturing but capturing the experience and the wonder. A moment that sticks in my mind was descending into the bay of Golspie in Scotland while walking to John o'Groats. It was afternoon and the sun was settling on the bay. I had incidentally written a song on the road down the hill so was in good spirits. Arriving on the road past the bay I was enthralled to be enveloped in a swirling cloud of curlews that has lifted off the mud flats to fill the whole sky. Like a huge squadron of spitfires they flew about me, so gracefully that I could see the individual beaks of these odd birds as they made their characteristic siren song. A moment of absorption into the world, extraordinary. An experience captured, an involvement, a participation in their (the) world!

By converse then it is the loss of participation in nature that has driven the wedge between man and nature. A combination of machine and capitalism has driven us from the land and that has fuelled the collapse of relationship with nature (Even when God put man in dominion over the animals he was in relation to the natural world). But what is needed then is the evolution of new relationships with nature and that is what the BBC and others are prophetically working in. Congratulations to those who have been working on what seems the sound foundations of a healthy world!

OK so I'm a bit slow in getting the wind here, but this is very good stuff. But, note it can be used for good and for bad. There were so many people "involved" in the German regieme that they could not stop what happened. And so it does seem a balance is still needed between the blind inclusion in societies (like the temple seemed to advocate at grass root level at least, and my previous work advocated to) which while they may sail very well require direction and the individual conscience and understanding of their members.

This remains the rub that keeps me seated at this juncture. Rather than run out to join the throng in activity and participation (which is a very attractive option certainly), the call for quiet personal reflection still seems to be wisest. What in the end is the point, or direction of this great journey of history, or do really we just sail around a endless sea? Like a planet in orbit I sway between these, and so many other poles at the moment.