A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how amazing octopuses are. This week, it’s all about trees: “a simple machine needing no fuel and little maintenance, one that steadily sequesters carbon, enriches the soil, cools the ground, scrubs the air, and scales easily to any size. A tech that copies itself and even drops food for free. A device so beautiful it’s the stuff of poems.”
That’s a quote from Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Overstory - a book about the relationship between humans and trees. I can’t recommend it enough.
The more respect and appreciation I have for the natural world, the more important I realize diversity is for human progress. I mean, a lot of diversity - more than we currently think is useful. Trees being a good example: there are tens of thousands of different tree species, each with its own unique solution to solving the problem of living. But we’re destroying them at a rapid rate to make room for things we deem more important: monocultures, livestock, urban development.
This might seem like progress now, but could be a catastrophe looking back. Without the willow tree, we wouldn’t have aspirin. Without the yew tree, we wouldn’t have key forms of chemotherapy. Who knows what other types of magic are out there to be found in over 60,000 different trees species, most of which we know so little about.
Greater diversity creates the potential not just for steady incremental progress, but giant, unpredictable leaps in human understanding and wellbeing. Diversity defines the possibility space for potential progress. We should protect the trees - as well as the natural ecosystems and the indigenous cultures they stand at the heart of - because, one day, they will protect and nourish us in return.
Ezra Klein explores a diverse range of topics in this podcast interview with Annie Murphy Paul, author of The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. Murphy Paul’s thesis is simple, but profound in its implications: that your mind is not just your brain. You are not simply a computer, abstracted from your body, movement, relationships, and environments. Your mind “extends” into all these things.
Klein and Murphy Paul spend a good deal of time discussing the implications this has for how we work. Many of the things we think are superfluous or distractions from work - such as taking a break or having an aesthetically pleasing working environment - may actually be a crucial part of the process. Going for a walk, for example, gives your mind the opportunity to “loop” various cognitive processes - run over the same problems and ideas within a different context, seeing what comes up as a result.
Paying attention to the aesthetics of your everyday life can literally change your mind. Putting reminders on your desk of who you are and what you care about can make the work you produce more meaningful. Talking out loud can make you explore something in more detail than thinking about it in your head. Walking with a problem can make you think up more creative solutions. Your successful habits, routines, and rituals are often complex interactions between you, your body, and the world you inhabit.
Take beauty seriously - whatever makes you feel at ease and alive. Take conversations and rest and movement seriously. A mind without these things is a contracted mind.
I’m a big fan of the psychotherapist and writer Mark Vernon. In this essay on Dante’s Divine Comedy, Vernon analyses what this medieval masterpiece still has to teach us 700 years on from its conception. I must admit, I’ve not actually read the Divine Comedy, but I’m definitely intrigued after reading Vernon’s take on it, much like I was after reading his excellent thoughts on the enduring vision of William Blake.
But it was one thought in particular that I found interesting in the linked article. Vernon argues - via Dante - that suffering can be valuable because of its relationship with perception. It’s only when you suffer greatly, but are still able to see beauty and good in the world, that you can come to love and trust in life more fully. Poetically put: even within the dark, you can see the light.
Of course, this is easier said than done. Many people suffer without also being able to see beauty and goodness in their situation. Sometimes suffering is just suffering - there’s simply nothing valuable about it. But, in thinking about when suffering is valuable, I prefer Vernon’s take over other ideas such as suffering makes you stronger or suffering shows you what it means to be human.
In my own life, suffering has always been something I’ve tried very hard to avoid. But, in the times I have suffered, and have still been able to see how beautiful life is, it’s been a transformative experience. This way of perceiving life - seeing life for what it is, being under no illusion that “everything will be okay”, and yet still valuing life deeply - is a real blessing. If that’s the good that can come from suffering then so be it.
I’d love to hear how suffering has transformed your own life - for good or bad. Feel free to write a comment below or send me a direct message if you like. And thanks so much to everyone who wrote to me over the past week with their misogi experiences - wonderful stuff! It’s been a busy week so I haven’t had time to reply to everyone yet. But I will do and keep ‘em coming in the meantime! It’s great to here from you all :-)