A group of my friends and I decided to take a cruise to Progresso and Cozumel, Mexico this spring break. When we first boarded, I was extremely excited, and decided to explore every corner of the ship. Everything seemed to be exactly the way it was in any urban area—restaurants, shops, casinos, nightclubs, lounges, etc. However, there was one major detail that made the whole experience different from anything else I had experienced. Once I stepped out onto the deck and looked over the rails, all I could see was open ocean, no land in sight. I began to think about our discussions of wilderness in class; how wilderness is a vast area in which humans are unable to survive without the necessary skills. Based on this definition I concluded that what I was seeing was indeed wilderness, and that the only way I was experiencing this was by means of human technology. In other words, I was able to experience this beautiful “natural” world only by standing on the “synthetic” world—a cruise ship engineered and built by humans. This struck me, because although I was seeing wilderness, I was not exactly surrounded by or “in” wilderness. Instead, I was doing exactly what most people do everyday; I was completely surrounded by a synthetic, human world, only seeing a glimpse of what wilderness really is.
When we arrived at Cozumel, we had the opportunity to snorkel along the beach with tour guides. As we began to snorkel, I noticed an artificial (human made) reef, surrounded by hundreds of beautifully colored fish. Once again I recognized a paradigm between the two worlds—natural world and synthetic world. Here I was, along with about 75 other people, surrounded by the “natural” world—open water, fish, stingrays, sea urchins, and other marine organisms—but the “synthetic” world—the artificial reefs, the food the guides were feeding the fish, the fact that there were 100 people simultaneously snorkeling in the area—was unavoidable. The two worlds, as in the example above, were intermeshed; I was unable to experience the “natural” world without the interference of the “synthetic” world. This is a struggle I feel that humans have daily, we are unable to experience the true beauty and awe of nature because we are unable to escape the synthetic parts of our lives.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
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