Day 27 - 27th Jan
THE PERFECTION OF NATURE
The bodies of trees—that’s how we got out.
Out of our own place.
Absolute madness.
The first time to float
under stars
and watch the last sliver of land
slip away.
Why?
With craned necks,
we looked up,
children with nothing.
What now?
The fruits of the trees
stuffed inside their own hollow.
This is how we grow:
so alien to both flora and fauna,
estranged from land and our own hands.
Born that night into a watery Eden.
We then found other shores,
and more, and more, and more,
round the globe.
But we had looked up,
tried to bury ourselves into the sky,
nuzzle into her and her starry children.
Forsake the land,
floating,
pink and useless,
and asked to be picked up
by our deep mother.
Gaia—a wet nurse
we fuss against.
Niall Campbell
Today, I picked up Gulliver’s Travels and randomly read a passage from pages 280–281. In this excerpt, Gulliver describes his interactions with the Houyhnhnms, a rational horse-like race. He recounts his efforts to learn their language, which amazed them, as they considered it miraculous for a brute animal to display such rationality. They taught him eagerly, perplexed by his clothing and his capacity for reason, traits so unlike the brutish Yahoos, whom Gulliver physically resembled.
The passage struck me—how unimpressed other animals might be with our so-called “endeavours.”
My principal endeavour was to learn the language, which my master (for so I shall henceforth call him), and his children, and every servant of his house, were desirous to teach me; for they looked upon it as a prodigy, that a brute animal should discover such marks of a rational creature. I pointed to every thing, and inquired the name of it, which I wrote down in my journal-book when I was alone, and corrected my bad accent by desiring those of the family to pronounce it often. In this employment, a sorrel nag, one of the under-servants, was very ready to assist me.
In speaking, they pronounced through the nose and throat, and their language approaches nearest to the High-Dutch, or German, of any I know in Europe; but is much more graceful and significant. The emperor Charles V. made almost the same observation, when he said "that if he were to speak to his horse, it should be in High-Dutch."
The curiosity and impatience of my master were so great, that he spent many hours of his leisure to instruct me. He was convinced (as he afterwards told me) that I must be a Yahoo; but my teachableness, civility, and cleanliness, astonished him; which were qualities altogether opposite to those animals. He was most perplexed about my clothes, reasoning sometimes with himself, whether they were a part of my body: for I never pulled them off till the family were asleep, and got them on before they waked in the morning. My master was eager to learn "whence I came; how I acquired those appearances of reason, which I discovered in all my actions; and to know my story from my own mouth, which he hoped he should soon do by the great proficiency I made in learning and pronouncing their words and sentences." To help my memory, I formed all I learned into the English alphabet, and writ the words down, with the translations. This last, after some time, I ventured to do in my master's presence. It cost me much trouble to explain to him what I was doing; for the inhabitants have not the least idea of books or literature.
In about ten weeks time, I was able to understand most of his questions; and in three months, could give him some tolerable answers. He was extremely curious to know "from what part of the country I came, and how I was taught to imitate a rational creature; because the Yahoos (whom he saw I exactly resembled in my head, hands, and face, that were only visible), with some appearance of cunning, and the strongest disposition to mischief, were observed to be the most unteachable of all brutes." I answered, "that I came over the sea, from a far place, with many others of my own kind, in a great hollow vessel made of the bodies of trees: that my companions forced me to land on this coast, and then left me to shift for myself.”
This passage made me think about the first moments of seafaring, a time lost to recorded history. There must have been a moment when a human floated so far from land they could no longer see it. That moment wasn’t planned; it was likely chaos, a kind of madness. Evolutionarily, it’s as significant as when humanity becomes a multi-planetary species. I think it is more important than a moon landing. Terraforming Mars is a fractal echo of that first leap.
Gulliver’s explanation of this—“I came over the sea, from a far place, with many others of my own kind, in a great hollow vessel made from the bodies of trees”—reminds me of how humanity’s journey on this planet mirrors our evolutionary arc. As a parent, I often find myself explaining things in their most rudimentary forms, which reveals just how absurd they can seem. Humanity’s ability to adapt, while remarkable, has allowed us to rapidly evolve across countless environments. But this same adaptability to insanity, also leads to apathy and compliance, where we accept things we perhaps shouldn’t, both individually and as a society.
Our desire to go into space and beyond what we can see is so deeply ingrained in us. The fuckwits amongst us were probably the first people who lost sight of land. Kids on the beach ona piece fo driftwood caught in a rip and pulled out past the reef. This will probably be the case with those who really push the whole Mars thing as we move forward. Elon Musk has a sort of an ‘inbetweener’ vibe to him.
The movie Interstellar deals with this tension of love for our home planet and the deep urge to expand really well. It makes no conclusions and pulls no punches. Like all good movies, it makes you root for the heroes whilst also questioning their motives at times.
A friend of mine told me how, during a psychedelic trip, she had the clichéd realisation that “everything is trying to grow.” We both had a good groan and a laugh at that, but it is right. We want to grow across all possible boundaries. Whether that growth is cancerous or expansive, perhaps remains to be seen.