Dedicated, motivated, and honest are apt adjectives to describe Mr. Seyie from the Angami tribe. The owner of a gas service company and a father of five children, Mr. Seyie believes in running his business ethically. With increasing oil prices and unethical competitors who goad their customers into paying a bribe to jump the gas queue, it is becoming increasingly difficult for him to provide gas to people in an ethical manner. As we drove up “Pagla Pahad” (Mad Mountain) in Mr. Seyie's car, we heard his story. The unfortunate Pagla Pahad has received its name because of the enormous number of landslides that have taken place there during monsoon, effectively blocking the narrow and horrifying national highway. “This has never happened in my father's time and even in my time” said Mr, Seyie about the landslides. His explanation was that since the last six years these landslides that had been occurring were due to excessive logging and plantation of Teak trees on the top of the mountain. With heavy rainfalls, there aren't enough trees to prevent soil erosion. The young mountains of Nagaland are still too weak to withstand such trauma. As we drove, my eyes lingered over uprooted trees, and bamboo washed down the slopes. The mountain sides look scarred as massive patches of a once thick rain forest, have been washed away. The mountain bears scars that may never heal. A story becoming more and more common all over the Nagaland mountains.
2 Comments
I am denied the need to "feel" for the environment as an academic and researcher. But I believe the only way of experiencing is through feeling. Not a touchy-feely kind of feeling, but just experience as an emotional activity and emotions as the fundamental manner of experiencing. Science is often portrayed as being neutral and emotionless. The acts of observation and experimentation supposedly performed as being purely fuction, goal, and data acquisition based. A distinct segregation has been created between the "feeling" activists and the "neutral" scientists. A most facetious assumption on our part to accept such a dualism. As I understand David Hume and John Dewey, the fundamental way of being in this world is through experience and this experience simultaneously occurs with emotional activity. Emotional actions and reactions are embedded everywhere, in the way of things. Thus as I approach the topic of ecological issues, do not mistake me for a scientist nor an activist. I am here to introspect and reflect on the environment as it affects me. I am but a poorly assembled reflection of everything around me.Welcome to emotional landscapes.
So what am I doing here? I am trying to learn how to be in the world without doing very much. I am not really trying to understand anything or convey anything. I am hoping to portray as clearly as possible, the stories of hopelessness, death, and destruction as I cross paths with them. I am hoping to describe my feelings of closeness with animals, the forests, decomposers, and phytoplankton. I am hoping to give you glimpses of hope of people trying to make their lives more profound by living simply. Communities that care. That hope is however not yours and will never be adequate to make you or me feel comfortable. As I proceed on an exploration, I hope to live truly in what is an uncomfortable existence. But I must talk of technical matters and so here they are. I have decided to take a break from my PhD in Environmental Philosophy to do some non-academic Environmental Philosophy. I begin now on a journey that has no beginning or end but exists really as a path that I chose to walk on. I explore without wanting to find anything, and I travel without any particular destination in mind. I hope to learn the way of things without really understanding what hope is. I begin on earth in a country called India. I'll see you in Mars at the end of my journey. I am kidding only! Emerging from my shell
I find this empty space Where have you gone? Lost in this chase… I look around at this Uninspiring landscape Imbalanced landscape Exclusive landscape Surrounded by loss Rape and desertification Excess and over-consumption Greed and self-absorption Who can tell me who I am? Who will show me where to go? What will lead me ahead? What will take away my dread? Where have you gone? Am I just a lost species? In this forest I was lost And now I am found |
Ecology BlogExperiences with environmental organizations and my personal reflections on nature. Archives
February 2019
Categories
All
Traveling Images |