Pannanick Pond I

Posted: July 27, 2009 
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This pond and the hills that span the background of this shot are the old proving and roving grounds of my cousin Chris Duguid’s youth in the lethargic town of Ballater, Scotland.  Here, to escape the drowsy strangulation a young, rambunctious man perceives when passing the time in a place where cleanliness and order are pillars of the community’s collective esteem and pride, Chris would clap his heels on the ground with a mischievous smirk as he walked out of a huge mud puddle (metaphorically speaking, of course).

Scotland does not have trespassing laws (so I was informed).  One is free to wander where one pleases, though there are certain rules of etiquette that most will follow in order to avoid some kind of physical showdown with the owner of a certain piece of land who might not want punks and brutes passing through his piece of the world.  However, I have always loved the idea of this.  The land is its own, and we may wander it freely as we may wander our own conscious and unconscious alike.

This squabbling over pieces of dirt is ridiculous when you put it into perspective against what could be accomplished by a humanity that understands the advantages of solidarity.  As John Lennon sung so perfectly in his tribute to the idea for which so many great men have already suffered and/or died, Imagine:

Imagine there’s no Heaven

It’s easy if you try

No Hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

No religion, too

Imagine all the people living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope some day you will join us

And the world will live as one

Imagine no possessions,

I wonder if you can.

No need for greed of hunger

A brotherhood of man

The most depressing thought, to me, is what we could have already accomplished with a worldwide government funded space program.  The U.S, China, Russia, England, just to name a few, spend countless millions on developments in their space programs.  And, in a sense, it is a worldwide community, as the discoveries of one team will, in time, filter out to all the other teams.  Further, one could also argue this is natural way of things, as the competition that is created between each group helps to drive the development of ideas within them, and the necessity to be strong weeds out the weaker components of each group.  It’s evolution; it’s nature.  However, such people are misusing Darwin’s theory of evolution, as such a theory was meant to EXPLAIN behaviours, not CONDONE them.  The reality is problems are not just isolated within specific countries anymore; the world over has to grow up and look around, and I mean that literally: if one compares the cognitive capacities of our civilization as a whole compared to the development of a child’s mental abilities, we would probably be classified as still not grasping object permanence – since we still don’t understand that since we can’t see a problem, it still exists the same way a baby thinks a toy has disappeared completely when it’s been hidden – and we would most likely classify as autistic since we have trouble making direct eye contact with other people, and we have no theory of mind – that is, we cannot directly deal with our problems because politics are so befuddling, and we are basically incapable of thinking from another’s point of view and especially understanding that if we think something, it does not necessarily mean another will see the same situation with the same perspective, hence the tensions between religions and cultures.  With these criteria in mind, then, Western Society as a collective consciousness could arguably be classified as still being in the first stage of infancy outlined by the greatly intellectual and pioneering psychologist Jean Piaget: the sensorimotor stage.

Returning to my point about the space program, although competitive evolution has helped us evolve thus far in the sense of our technologies, such growth-shaping forces will only facilitate our development until a certain point, which we are rapidly approaching wherein an outside pressure could accelerate the existing competitive tensions between groups to a point where such groups consume themselves.  At this point, the tensions between groups will cause their destruction, not their evolution, and when this point is reached, the only way to get groups to work together is by showing them superordinate goals.  These goals affect every group equally and are a threat to their survival as a group and as individuals.  Now, all small groups become one larger group in order to solve this universal problem.  I think most intelligent people in the world now will agree that the world over is facing some very serious threats.  Working together, from now on, is the only way out.  Thus, we must pool our resources, as a humanity, and as a species of animal on this Earth, to stop the horrific cycles we have begotten in our time, learn of our errs before they are too late (though many, many, many already are: think of the millions upon millions of species already extinct that will never return to this Earth again).  Just think of how much we could afford to produce if all governments pitched in on a worldwide space program.  Could terra-forming have already begun on Mars?  Do we really think the Earth is going to last forever with the way we are treating it?  (Most women say it is a chauvinistic idea to think mankind can destroy the world, but the truth is that if man truly put itself to the task, it could accomplish it).  Humanity may need an entirely new home world in the near future, and who can afford to send us there?  Who can afford to even find one, on their own?  The world as a whole could.  And if these possibilities seem far-fetched, then ask yourself this, which one country on its own can afford to clean the whole world of its pollution?  Not a single one on its own.

For more information on Scotland’s history, visit http://www.north-scotland.co.uk/

For information on the great John Lennon, http://www.johnlennon.com/

For more information on Piaget, please read this special from Time Magazine at http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/piaget.html

For more information about the principle of superordinate goals, please visit http://www.angelfire.com/ab6/polepino/Chapter11/Principleofthesuper.html