Inhabitation
One very useful way of understanding our environmental impact is to think of “inhabitation.” They are the same thing, for the way we inhabit the earth determines our impact upon its dynamic, living systems.
Perhaps you are keeping your thermostat down in an effort to save some $$. This change in your “inhabitation” reduces the pollution you make. It also causes your body to adapt to the cold, forcing blood into the capillaries just below your skin’s surface. This, in turn, makes you more comfortable when you’re outside in the cold; you can handle it.
I’ve been thinking about this, in part, because I’ve been watching lots of Japanese movies in preparation for a research trip to Kyoto I’ll be undertaking in March. (I’m really interested in Shintoism.) In all those great Kurosawa movies, like Yojimbo and Ran, you see how simple and clean—and cold—their inhabitations were. Before WWII, Japanese homes were built with little insulation; yet, in all the research I’ve done, I haven’t found any record of Japanese people complaining about the cold. It makes me wonder if coldness is a cultural construction.
The Yahgan people of the Cape Horn region of Chile used to live naked along the shores of the Beagle Channel, for example. Now that’s a kind of inhabitation worth pondering—and proof that coldness is determined, largely, by one’s culture.
I wrote this post to get you pondering; check Lloyd’s blog to see the many ways that we inhabit the earth.
living with paper walls
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