What Do We Lose When Experiences Go Extinct? | On the Commons - The Diigo Meta page

• 28 Jul 12
  

  Todd Suomela

  commons experience decline losing nature connection art

  • My mind’s eye conjured dusty vitrines in forgotten museums preserving relics of extinct experiences, and shelves lined with long gone creatures in yellowed formaldehyde. But I also registered an immediate emotional reaction: the human consequence of the diminution of sense experience felt tragic to me. I moved from the idea of extinct experience to the feeling of a less colorful, less fragrant, less delicious, less sensual world. I considered the possibility of the loss of experiences that had had a deep effect on me: Not to stare in wonder at myriad stars in the sky? Not to slake my thirst with water directly from a stream? To never again witness, with a shiver of fear, a stalking tiger? To know the fragrance of sandalwood only through an old novelty fan, ever less redolent, that my grandmother brought back from India? It made me deeply sad.
  • My purpose most emphatically is not to reify extinction, but to point out that this escalating loss of species has consequences for consciousness, for our very being. My hope is that offering opportunities for such experiences will create a resonance with what is, a deeper knowing of the world and our place in it. A more subtle awareness arises from such knowing, and with that, perhaps a greater sensitivity to the visible and invisible world in which we are embedded. With this knowing may come a finer sensitivity to the world in which we live; a release from our sense of separateness, —a visceral understanding of our place in this interconnected whole and how the damage that we are doing is very terrible for the evolution of our own species as well.

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