Month: March 2023

“Bringing Humanity full circle bac into the Sea”

In an essay in which cultural historian HELEN M. ROZWADOWSKI traces the intellectual climate surrounding Jacques Cousteaus aquatic utopias, which he managed to manifest temporarily in his Conshelf-experiments (see my post here), she concludes:

“The story of ‘Homo aquaticus’ (a term invented by Cousteau) reveals the extent to which the future of humanity has become tied to the ocean, including as a font of moral rebirth and, more recently, as a refuge for the human species. […] A discourse about the fate of humanity and of the planet”

American Museum of Natural History: Pearl divers in coral reef, Tongareva, French Polynesia, diorama

According to Rozwadowski, aquatic fiction of the 19. and 20. century also reflected racist ideas of white superiority. According to the evolutionist concept that human evolution started in the oceans, popularized by Darwin and Haeckel, diving humans not only came closer to creation, maritime cultures like the Polynesians, were portrayed as less developed and closer to human origin. A popular trope of science fiction (and pseudo-science) from the 1950s through 1980s was the “insistence on evolutionary reversal to enable survival”. Man would have to develop backwards, grow gills and move back into the sea, if he was to survive the anthropocene.

Rozwadowski paints a picture of society, who’s view of the ocean is deeply connected and guided by “the twin dynamic of technophobia and technophilia”. Going into and mastering the ocean as a habitat was in the 20. Century at the same time a regressive phantasy and a futursit hight-tech adventure. To become aquatic, man either has to regress or he needs more and better technology.

As far as moral renewal is concerned, Rozwadowski quotes one of the divers of Cousteaus Conshelf project, Falco, with the words: “I don’t know exactly what happened. I am the same person, yet I am no longer the same. Under the sea everything is . . . moral.” Frederic Dugan, another diver and close associate of Cousteau and co-author of several of his books, “insisted that ‘the coming undersea life will be inspiring,’ drawing parallels to creative historical epochs such as the Renaissance.”

I find this very interesting under the light of current debates around climate crisis and particularly rising sea levels in the anthropocene. Could the threat of flooding also instigate utopian ideas about a moral and evolutionary renewal of mankind in the sea?

Amog the stories and books the essay quotes are: Jacques Cousteau with James Dugan: The Living Sea (1963), Paul Anderson: “Homo Aquaticus” (Amazing Stories, September 1963), Aleksandr Belayev: The Amphibian. (1928), Kenneth Bulmer: City under the Sea (1957), D.D. Chapman and Deloris Lehman Tarzan: Red Tide (1975), and Arthur C. Clarke: The Challenge of the Sea (1960) and: The Ghost of the Grand Banks and the Deep Range (2001).

Thanks to Lajos Talamonti for the lead.

A Chinese Creation and Flood Myth

(This text is from the site by the University of Pittsburg.)

“The Miao people in Southern China have no written records, but they have many legends in verse, which they learn to repeat and sing. The Hei Miao (or Black Miao, so called from their dark chocolate-colored clothes) treasure poetical legends of the creation and of a deluge. These are composed in lines of five syllables, in stanzas of unequal length, one interrogative and one responsive. They are sung or recited by two persons or two groups at feasts and festivals, often by a group of youths and a group of maidens. The legend of the creation commences:

Who made heaven and earth?
Who made insects?
Who made men?
Made male and made female?
I who speak don’t know.

Heavenly King made heaven and earth,
Ziene made insects,
Ziene made men and demons,
Made male and made female.
How is it you don’t know?

How made heaven and earth?
How made insects?
How made men and demons?
Made male and made female?
I who speak don’t know.

Heavenly King was intelligent,
Spat a lot of spittle into his hand,
Clapped his hands with a noise,
Produced heaven and earth,
Tall grass made insects,
Stories made men and demons,
Made men and demons,
Made male and made female.
How is it you don’t know?

The legend proceeds to state how and by whom the heavens were propped up and how the sun was made and fixed in its place.

The legend of the flood tells of a great deluge. It commences:

Who came to the bad disposition,
To send fire and burn the hill?
Who came to the bad disposition,
To send water and destroy the earth?
I who sing don’t know.

Zie did. Zie was of bad disposition,
Zie sent fire and burned the hill;
Thunder did. Thunder was of bad disposition,
Thunder sent water and destroyed the earth.
Why don’t you know?

In this story of the flood only two persons were saved in a large bottle gourd used as a boat, and these were A-Zie and his sister. After the flood the brother wished his sister to become his wife, but she objected to this as not being proper. At length she proposed that one should take the upper and one the lower millstone, and going to opposite hills should set the stones rolling to the valley between. If these should be found in the valley properly adjusted on above the other, she would be his wife, but not if they came to rest apart.

The young man, considering it unlikely that two stones thus rolled down from opposite hills would be found in the valley, one upon another, while pretending to accept the test suggested, secretly placed two other stones in the valley, one upon the other. The stones rolled from the hills were lost in the tall wild grass, and on descending into the valley, A-Zie called his sister to come and see the stones he had placed.

She, however, was not satisfied, and suggested as another test that each should take a knife from a double sheath and, going again to the opposite hilltops, hurl them into the valley below. If both these knives were found in the sheath in the valley, she would marry him, but if the knives were found apart, they would live apart.

Again the brother surreptitiously placed two knives in the sheath, and, the experiment ending as A-Zie wished, his sister became his wife. They had one child, a misshapen thing without arms or legs, which A-Zie in great anger killed and cut to pieces. He threw the pieces all over the hill, and next morning, on awakening, he found these pieces transformed into men and women. Thus the earth was re-peopled.

  • Source: E. T. C. Werner, Myths and Legends of China (London: George G. Harrap and Company, 1922), pp. 406-408.
  • Edited by D. L. Ashliman. © 2002-2003.

Cohabitation and technical failure

Berlin once had the biggest, cylindric aquarium in the world, the Auqua Dome. In fact it was a hotel lobby dome, a modern cathedral with a giant tank filled with over 1.500 fish in the middle. The architectural concept is a twist on the submarine city, as we can find them in countless sci-fi ilustrations. (Or Jacques Cousteaus Conshelf habitat)

In December 2022 the tank ripped open and 250.000 gallons (1.000 m3) of well tempered salt water burst out into the – luckily then empty – lobby and through the doors into the street. The hotel is located right next to one of Berlin’s many canals, so countless fish probably found their way into the cold sweet water of the canal before dying.

Very few press photos show any of the unfortunate inhabitants of the aquarium. Never the less it’s a rare moment of unexpected human-animal interaction on a massive scale, a na-tech-disaster that did not really involve nature as we know it, but a domesticated, high-tech fantasy of nature.

all pictures are from: https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2022/12/aquarium-berlin-zerplatzt-schaden-wasser-hotel.html

Flooded Buddha

UNESCO World Heritage site in Ayutthaya (Thailand) province – inundated with floodwaters on October 10, 2011. More than 250 Thais have died after two months of heavy rainfall have inundated large swathes of the country and hit provinces on the northern outskirts of the capital particularly hard. AFP PHOTO / Pornchai KITTIWONGSAKUL (Photo credit should read PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP via Getty Images)

Solastalgia

 

In his book Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World (2019), Glenn Albrecht elaborated the term ‘solastalgia’. A portmanteau coinage, embracing ‘nostalgia’ (longing for the past) and composed of the Greek term algos (pain) and Latin solacium (solace), solastalgia alludes to the feeling of being homesick while you are at home. If you have never lived in a house threatened by rising waters, think of how, upon arrival at a pleasant destination when travelling, you can be instantly overwhelmed by homesickness for precisely that place, because you know your stay will be of short duration. The medical journal The Lancet has already referenced ‘solastalgia’ as a useful concept to assess the effect of climate change on mental health. (Quoted from an article by Thijs Weststeijn)

Comparable terms in other languages might be: saudade, banzo, dor [Portuguese], hireath, cwtch [Welsh], momo no aware, wabi sabi [Japanese], ma [Chinese], Sehnsucht [German], tizita [Ehtiopian], añoranza [Spanish], morriña [Galician], regrette [French], also from English : melancholia, sadness, grief, blues, longing, absence, pining, yearning…

Jeff Goodell: The Water Will Come

Lecture by US journalist Jeff Goodell on his book “The Water Will Come” with alot of examples and images around rising sea level and sinking cities. From 2019.

The case for culture

In a very nice, comprehensive and extensive article, Dutch author Thijs Weststeijn, describes the role of culture in forming a climate conscience. The article not only describes the threats to cultural heritage the world over, particularly flooding, and the efforts to save it, but he also makes a case for using cultural heritage to create awareness and ultimately climate action. Here are two short quotes:

“Perhaps an awareness that the building blocks of one’s own civilisation are under threat might mobilise new groups, for whom the disappearing of coral reefs, say, remains too abstract or remote. Behavioural scientists point out that, when confronted with overwhelming amounts of scientific data, such as that continuously produced by climatologists, people actually become less likely to take action (see Kari Norgaard’s book Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life, 2011). Instead, people have to be affected on a deep emotional, psychological and spiritual level, which suggests that the layered sensations we experience in encounters with heritage – historical connection, aesthetic appreciation, and solastalgia – might motivate people in new ways.”

“A focus on cultural heritage also offers new perspectives on human agency in the face of the climate crisis. This heritage has, after all, been made by humans and so by human hands we should be able to save it. Besides, historic heritage, while transcending the lifespan of one or more human generations, is less intractable to us than the ‘deep time’ associated with the evolution and extinction of coral reefs and other endangered creatures.”

Weststeijn also sketches future scenarios for cities and cultural sites. Another excerpt:

“One can imagine the partially flooded centres of Venice, Hoi An or Miami becoming particularly attractive tourist destinations for the duration of their disappearing (in a state of ‘dark euphoria’ described by the futurist Bruce Sterling in 2009), before turning into a diver’s paradise. And perhaps from the perspective of ‘deep time’ the man-made polder landscape was never a feasible project to begin with, and Dutch hydrologists might eventually, with a sigh of relief, surrender their lands back to the sea. Such visions are not necessarily long-term scenarios since, now, even the possibility of handing our heritage to the next generation appears impossible.”

M-o-s-e

The flood protection system that was installed in 2021 to protect Venice from rising sea level effects is named MOSE (for Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico). The name was chosen to allude to the story of Moses dividing the Red Sea to save the judaic tribe in the Jewish and Christian Old Testament. The plans for MOSE were already introduced in the 1980s but it’s completion took amlmost 40 years.

A flooded St Mark’s Square by St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, 15 November 2019. Photo by Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty
Venice during highwater. © Andrea Merola/dpa
The M-O-S-E Sea Barrier

In the same manner is the sea wall that is currently in planning for Jakarta named – and shaped – after an ancient myth: The giant bird Garuda.

Both projects show, that the municipalities believed in the role of cultural history in the political communication of climata adaptation measures.

Why water?

Most ancient cultures share the idea of creation out of water. Be it a cosmic ocean, primordial waters or a more abstract idea of fluid, amorphous chaos. But why is that so? How come that so many creation myths that were formed long before any scientific knowledge about the role of water in biology or physics, agree on the central and fundamental role of water. This article by Morgan Smith gives an overview of the many traces of primordial waters and offers some explanation on the prominent role of water in ancient creation myths.

The egypt god Nun, god of the waters of chaos.

Churning the Ocean of Milk

In Hindu cosmology there are seven oceans. One of the is the Ocean of milk. In one of the most colorful episods of hindu scripture, the Samudra Manthana, the devas (gods) and asuras (demi-gods) team up to churn the ocean of milk to gain the nectar of immortality. The whole enterprise includes the uprooting of a mountain, a giant snake, lethal poison and an array of herbs and spices. Eventually the nectar of immortality is brought up from the sea and seized by the devas.