Living organisms play just as big of a role in the environment as minerals, rocks, rivers, and mountains. Without dead animal fossils being compiled into dirt there would be no mountains-- proving the importance of living forms, along with their decaying carcasses. We as humans tend to believe that nature is "over there," in other words nature is outside of our cities and homes. This is a completely inaccurate assumption. Cities have their own environment and nature that they birth on a daily basis-- for example: factories releasing toxic fumes into the atmosphere and traveling into the lungs of birds, humans, and other living beings. Therefore, to assume that humans are separate from nature is completely outrageous.
Now that I have explained, to some degree, what exactly Environment constitutes, it is clear that Environment in Film should be interpreted in the same way. Whatever the camera lens captures in a specific environment, whether the film be a documentary on dolphins or a movie based on the intergalactic colonization of a race of aliens' home planet. It is all Environment, and it is all Nature.
Neglecting to mention that every single environment is a constantly changing form would be a huge faux pas. Every given environment is just as lively as any given organism, precisely because every environment is constructed by living organisms. Environment and Nature is relevant even within the structure of a human body-- we are constructed of cells with nuclei, amoebas, and microscopic organisms that help carry out our functions (such as digesting parts of out food). Therefore it is safe to say that Environment is simply, yet profoundly, EVERYTHING.
- Sam Motsinger
If the environment is everything, is it also nothing?
ReplyDeleteThat does seem to be the question Professor Bell. The more I learn about the Mesh and the rest of Morton's philosophies, the less I am sure about my surroundings. According the the online Webster dictionary, the noun form of nothing is "the abscence of all magnitude or quantity," as well as "something that does not exist."
ReplyDeleteSince our environment as well as the general Mesh cannot be separated, I feel that would make the Mesh one. Therefore we are one with the Mesh. So if something clearly exists (the Mesh), then I do not believe that the environment COULD be nothing. As a matter of fact, I do not even know that "nothing" truly exists. Space exists, but I do not classify it as nothing. The vast black emptiness in outer-space also exists, but I still do not classify it as nothing.
Therefore, in a world, universe, and perhaps even multi-verse of Mesh, how could nothing exist?