Since I have this amazing track record of inventing something in my mind and then finding out a few moments to a few years later that this novel idea was independently invented by someone on the other side of the planet XX moments-to-years ago (aka I suffer from the "independent origins of common thought" syndrome), I am going to relish this split moment for inventing a word that will fly beyond "Commonsenseologist" that (though may be a joke) may possibly be legitimatized within the university. The word is called ECOPISTEMOLOGY, which is a combination of "eco" (house, relationships, interactions), "episteme" (knowledge), and "logos" (reason, the study of). So, ecopistemology is the study of the structure and organization of knowledge in concern of human relationships with the environment. Epistemology and western philosophy have historically been anthropocentric, and this is now the golden opportunity to be ecopistemological, especially since there is documented fragmentation of knowledge and lack of communication within multiple systems at multiple scales, from language systems, perceptual cognitive maps, and value systems within and among universities, government, and business.
This all started when Dr. Chianese (an English professor at Cal State Northridge) told me that I was into "shifting consciousness" and that I was "epistemologizing" and I didn't even know it. He also claimed I was a Gregory Batesonian, an "Ecology of the Mind" type of person. Mind-mirrors-environment are one in the same. I was driving along towards Isla Vista, when the word ecopistemology whapped into my head. I called my dad a minute later and we talked a lot about it. It's all a joke, but this could become legit.
To me, organizing knowledge ("spacetime") is like my organizing my closet full of schoolwork. Which is a hobby I have been doing... intrinsically. So, ecopistemologizing is within my neurological blood anyway.
I bet Alexios will be thrilled. I heard he was into inventing a new field of study anyhow... along the lines of environmental psychology. But ecopistemologizing is dah-bomb to me. Toastmasters members stared at me as if I were whacko for inventing the word. Grace mentioned that the word is so long that I would be tripping myself up and probably going to the moon and back faster than even trying to say the word.
I want a t-shirt that says I'm an ecopistemologist. Besides, commonsenseologist.
Now will be the fateful moment. All my hope in originality will be pulverized as I look up the world wide web, only to find that ecopistemology already exists. Boohoo. One second please.
I have phenomenal news folks. Just with my musical name "Stokastika," I have invented a word that does not exist on google. I now have given birth to the word and field "ecopistemology." God bless the trees or the trees bless the construction of god, I have the most noble news, my efforts upon the Questioning of Reality shall be classified as a work of ecopistemology. I am going to make up the rules to. This is flippin' fun!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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"I admit. I have no shrink to talk to." "What is it dear?" "I have an ecopistemological relativistic identity crisis." "It's okay dear. Why don't you just go on a boat with me, and go fishing. You can look at humans from out here. Maybe things will become more clear." Well, I am placing my old Commonsenseology Monologue away (as well as the Matrix Reality monologue), and I came to realize that I need to write a Monologue about Ecopistemology. Basically, I want to make Ecopistemology a PsychoFreaky Graduate Student Horror Film in which this graduate student (much like Charlie Kaufman) is pondering on the entire history of the universe, and life on earth, and her humanly place in the universe--and she didn't know what to call it. She couldn't call it the "theory of everything" because that would be arrogant. She's going through a massive relativistic identity crisis because she's a holistic thinker amidst a fragmented academic university system. Everything seems organized at the departmental veneer, but once you go-cross disciplinary, you start to realize how everything is a mess. The university as a conglomerate has become a Collective Compulsive Horder, in multiple dimensions, especially in terms of human relationships to the environment. There is such a drastic mass accumulation effect of bullshxt knowledge in the library that perhaps 50% is out of date, 50% has been falsified, and then maybe 25% (non-mutually exclusive) may be worth a dxmn reading but more so 1% pertains to me because the rest is about irrelevant esoteric foo foo and .5% may be of pragmatic common sense use in everyday life that wouldn't otherwise be sold to corporate pubishing houses in New York that may have profound meaning in one's existence and sense of purpose in a very chaotic modern world by contributing to advancement of science and philosophy, but where in the hxll is that dxmn book? I can't find it, so I had to write it, and it's so long, no one's reading it.
And the library is so dxmn stuffy from collective intellectual compuslive hording, and now it's being horded onto the internet via electrons--bless the world if the grid goes down--that I NEVER work in the library anymore because even though it's corporate I am surrounded by blank slate paper and supplies so that I can play cut and paste with my mind and paper and glue and crayons and I can create the whatever the hxll I want for a hefty fee but I pay 10 dollars a month to get free internet at Kinkos, but nevermind it's not free...
The graduate student goes department hopping into about 20-25 different departments, and tries to understand their "hats" and see the world from their point of view, but starts to come to realize "it's all the same even though it seems different." She starts playing games with toys, like legoes and silly putty and play dough, and she wears different types of clothes--that identity is seen at the surface just on the skin, but the identity is highly dependent on the environment. Since humans have so much environmental control, humans can wear their environments like changing coats (like changing bgfriends, like wearing coats). She sits in an ecological anthropology class in which human relationships to the environment is defined and labeled about 25 different times with 25 different names and slightly different points of views and perspectives (e.g. ranging from Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems to CHESS, she started playing), and she started going to first stage nuts. And then she saw how science and scientists were cloaked with numbers and fancy equations without experiencing reality (collect data, eliminate outliers, filter the data you use, make a neat line, if no statistics works, then invent a statistic, and now no one in the universe fuddha mucking understands what scientists do!) (phase 2 nightmare), and it was just a way of framing their conclusions to the way how they wanted it for their own professional and/or political development (still on phase 2 nightmare),
But then it's hard to be an ecopistemologist because all you're doing is room-cleaning the university and you talk to anyone in the bar and tell them frankly I am spending my scientific career "rediscovering the obvious" but you can do it to. Doesn't require high level of intelligence, just a level of intelligence that has the ability to filter through bullshxt and organize a lot of information. Ecopistemologizing is like tail-bw-the-legs-anticlimactic-scientific-esoteric-bullshxt-to-socity-because-the-standard-social-norm-is-to-not-know-what-the-hxll-scientists-are-saying-and-therefore-they-are-genius but if people understand what you
And then I'll never get any funding. Funding. But I just can't. I just can't sell my soul! I'll be homeless! Crash at my cousin Mike's house and be lucky if I can be a PA for a corporate Hollywood film shindig with a blah blah co-star like Patrick Dempsey or soemthing. Maybe then I'll just be the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systemologist. Maybe that won't compromise my soul!
And then as all graduate students do, they worry about the future and what the hxll they want to stare at and do for the rest of their lives--stare at humans who stare at the environment--like what to do about TAing and then having to get a Ph.D. and not get a dead end job (stay sane) but still be employed given the economy and then have to become a professor or SOMETHING I want to be proud of, but WHAT?!! What do people know and not know? Why do they know what they know? How did they come to know it? And how does this knowledge influence their individual behavior? WHY CAN'T I JUST BE AN ECOPISTEMOLOGIST?!! Because, it doesn't exist dear. If you can't seem to find your place in the world, you might as well invent it. But I'm not sure how people will respond. Have at least ten responses of people in ecopistemology--like Grace and *riel and Bub and, and this was phase three nightmare of absurd stoic responses and smirks and laughs and in the end the poor graduate student grabs her hair and screams: But How Can I Construct an Individual Identity within a powerplay Mass-produced Society? (The Mission Statement of Roadtrip Nation).
And the poor graduate student is breathing heavily. Am I awake? Am I dreaming?
The person who is saying "dear" will be wearing a black mask like when I will be filming him I will be wearing a black mask in which I will be his alter ego.
And in the end, the poor girl, all frazzled, is taken out to see to go fishing with the crabs and the lobster and the fishes and the alter-ego, and everything is fine, and then the alter-ego fishermen says while listening to the sirens, "I'm not too impressed with the human species." And I say, "How profound, and you didn't need a university education to come to such a profound, universally conclusive... conclusion."
Endangered species scale versus landscape scale. Leap of logic. Social context. University--natural and social scientists not working with each other. Environmental problems are social problems. Most ecological research is small. Disconnect of scale, small-scale topics seemlessly integrated into larger-scale topics. Panarchy. Compromise of scales. Not that one scale is right or wrong. Scale crisis. Water rights, indigenous cultures, endangered species. NGOs or university research.
Precisiology. Fuzziology. Fluffology.
DEFINE ECOPISTEMOLOGY.
War words. Jargon words. Environmenal problems are social problems are perception problems.
Theme is SCALE.
What do you study?
Well, in short, I'll just say I'm an ecopistemologist. Ecopistemology is an investigation of the structure and order of knowledge in concern of human relationships to the environment. At school, I study D-CHESS. Basically, in the past environmental scientists and social scientists never talked to each other but they recently and gradually woke up to the notion that environmental problems are social problems are perceptual problems and so they started to talk to each other and learn how to collaborate despite one is talking Academic Chinese and one is talking Academic Greek. Well, that's silly. Home come they never connected the dots before? It's so obvious that environmental problems are social problems. Ya, well, I say so too. Academic egotism always override common sense. Basically, I feel like I have entered the university at its peak of collective compulsive hording, genius at collecting, and a tragic stupidity in terms of cross-disciplinary organization. Mental institute that will make you go NUTS.
Conflict and compromise of value systems, whether academic to NGOs, from fundamentals of human needs (air, water, food, mineral extracton), to gem luxuries of sparing lives of academic species... at the expense of water rights.... (down the food chai / ecosystem, it's all linked, don't sacrifice a child's life over endangered species).
Bub talked about a situation in which endangered species overrided basic human needs, like home safety in the wilderness (Idyllwild) and water rights to certain cities (up north, Sacramento).
Compromise of Values / at Compromise of Scales (1) human survival/replication values (2) esoteric values (3) small scale to large scales, near to far, present to distant past…
Rare form of trout found in the delta. Some judge is imposing the Endangered Species Act, cannot send water to southern California because of a flippin' trout.
Stockton, Sacramento Delta.
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