WEBVTT - CZM Rewind: Hyperobjects & Our Liminal Reality 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:03.120 Hey, welcome to It could happen here. This is Garrison. 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 We'll be taking this week off from work so we 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:11.079 can finally have a break from the daily grind of 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:15.120 putting out, putting out episodes. So we're gonna be playing 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:19.560 some reruns for you of some choice older episodes that we, 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:23.280 you know, still think about. The one that I chose 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:27.240 is my old Hyperobjects and Liminal Spaces episode from Geez, 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:30.640 almost like two years ago. Now. I think it's a 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:33.400 it's a fun one. It's it's it's a very simple 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.920 overview of a very complex topic. I've been working on 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:40.480 a sequel to this episode ever since it first came 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.680 out that kind of goes more in depth into the 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.800 other kind of more niche aspects of Timothy Morton's Hyperrobjects 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:50.599 book and other kind of object oriented ontology types of stuff, 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:56.040 along with like hontology and Uncanny Valley like theories. It's 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:58.520 I don't know, it's I've I have been slowly building 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:01.440 out a Google doc which will eventually resultant and probably 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:04.440 a series of sequels to this episode. So I thought 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:07.000 I might put this one back in circulation in case 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.200 some new listeners haven't heard it. To prepare you for 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:17.240 the unbridled, and to prepare you for the next batch 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:21.720 of kind of a kind of unhinged. Garrison reads very 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:25.880 silly kind of ontology books, series episodes that I have 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:28.760 planned in the works. So yeah, here we go, hyper 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:37.880 objects and our liminal reality. Hey, welcome to it could 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:42.199 happen here. I'm Garrison, and today I'm gonna be talking 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:47.760 about some really big things and ideas, but hopefully I'll 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.760 be talking with them in a way that contextualizes them 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:54.720 and makes you remember that, despite their magnitude, there's still 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:59.040 very real things that you can interact with. Anyway, I'll 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:01.760 get started an event. It will kind of make sense. 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.800 So right now we are all living in one massive 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:11.120 liminal space. For those less online than I am, I'll 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:14.839 explain what I mean. Liminal spaces became an online meme 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.320 around late twenty nineteen as a term to describe a 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:21.720 certain type of picture that features architecture or like just 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:30.120 a place that looks off familiar, eerie, lonely, yet mesmerizing 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:34.440 and beautiful. I've been an avid lurker on the liminal 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.239 space subredit for a while now, and there's an undeniable 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:42.880 allure to these dreamlike photos of buildings and rooms and 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:47.200 the effect that they have on me. Describing what makes 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:51.040 a liminal space photo a liminal space photo as opposed 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:53.560 to just any other regular photo of a building or 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:57.680 a room can be tricky because, in part the point 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:00.480 is to elicit a certain feeling without thinking thinking too 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:05.360 much about the why they're not spooky or scary in 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:09.080 the traditional sense. The gist of a liminal space photo 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:11.960 and where it gets its name liminality, is a good 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:15.919 place to begin to understand what type of feelings these 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:20.919 pictures are supposed to produce. Liminal refers to a transitional 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:26.480 phase and the ambiguity and disorientation associated with being inside 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:30.000 of a threshold, not on either one side, per se, 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:35.480 but somewhere in between. Now, that threshold can be many things. 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:40.320 A literal transitionary threshold between certain places is a common one. 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:45.160 This can include stuff like hallways and airports. One of 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:49.800 my favorites, though, is a threshold between time, an ambiguous, 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:54.840 unspecific nostalgia you can't quite place, but it feels awfully familiar, 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:59.960 like a dream from childhood. Pictures of weird indoor square 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:04.400 playgrounds do this for me. The other threshold is a 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:08.480 threshold between purpose and use, like a building or room 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:13.200 designed for a very specific special purpose but now no 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:16.640 longer serving that it's empty and out of date, an 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:20.560 abandoned mall, or cheery birthday party room at an arcade 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:25.320 photographed desolate and in the dark. There's two other aspects 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:29.640 of liminal space photos that complement the various thresholds we've mentioned. 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:33.520 Usually they have no visible people, and there's a sense 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.960 of artificiality, like a lot of fluorescent and artificial lighting, 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:42.159 and even when there is a sunny outside, it looks fake, 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:46.800 like a Windows computer screensaver. One of the most popular 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:50.240 liminal space photos is of an underground bunker in Las 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:53.800 Vegas that was painted and decorated to look like it's 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:58.400 outside despite being buried deep within the ground. It's such 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:01.160 a great example of liminal space is because it elicits 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.640 a certain type of cognitive dissonance and a distinct lack 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:09.680 of synchronicity that is difficult to describe. Otherwise, almost never 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:14.120 is quote unquote nature the subject of these photos. They 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:19.160 nearly exclusively focus on very human constructs, particularly ones that 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:23.160 no longer serve their intended use, or maybe never did 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.720 in the first place. So what do I mean by 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:31.200 we're all in one huge liminal space right now. Well, 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.600 we are in between a historic economic and technological boom, 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:39.120 one that's produced machines that resemble the magic of old. 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:42.400 But on the other side of this valley is global 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:46.320 climate catastrophe and destruction and change, the likes of which 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:50.159 humans have possibly never seen or at least remembered. We're 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:54.320 in the transitionary period between these two states, and that 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.599 dissociation of not being fully in either one, that that 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.560 cognitive dissonance can be kind of minding. It's like the 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:05.440 nervous anticipation right before the roller coaster goes over the peak, 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:09.040 or that weird feeling of being alone in an empty 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:14.400 church nursery at night. Similar to liminal space photos, climate 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:18.920 change transcends a regular perception of time space, and with 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:24.560 that cause an effect. It's more than just a regular thing, phenomenon, 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:30.039 or object. While specifically thinking about climate change, philosopher Timothy 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:37.039 Morton dubbed these massive space time altering objects as hyper objects. Now, 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:41.000 Morton often writes about things that can't be talked about directly, 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:43.159 so really the only way to discuss it or get 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:46.800 into the topic is to orbit around it, associating with 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:50.440 adjacent ideas or words, to get close enough to the 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:53.240 topic to partially understand it even if you can't get 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:58.320 quite there. Other possible examples of hyper objects besides climate change, 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:02.360 can include stuff like black holes, the biosphere, or the 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:06.440 solar system. But hyper objects don't need to be just 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:10.120 massive celestial things. They can also be the sum total 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.520 of all nuclear materials on Earth, or the very long 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:17.200 lasting product of direct human manufacture, such as all of 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:21.280 the styroformoplastic bags in the world. It can also be 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.480 the sum of all the whirling machinery of capitalism or 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:29.400 the state. Hyper objects, then, are hyper just in relation 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:33.240 to some other entity, whether they're directly manufactured by humans 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:38.800 or not. And hyper objects aren't just collections, systems, or 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:43.800 assemblages of other objects. They are things in their own right, 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.480 and they affect more than just humans. They don't come 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.720 into being just because humans notice them. They will have 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:55.440 effects on the world whether or not they are observed. 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:59.600 One of the more obvious differences between hyperobjects and ordinary 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.560 objects is that you can't ever actually see a hyper 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.080 object in its totality. You can only ever witness a 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:11.040 small extension or piece of a hyper object. Now, this 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.240 makes thinking about them kind of intrinsically tricky. It's like 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:17.720 only seeing a fragmented shadow of a thing and the 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.960 effects that that thing has on all other things. Now, 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.960 the more contrary listeners might protest that we never see 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:29.840 all of any object, even ordinary ones. Now, it's obviously 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:33.280 true that everything we see has a negative side, the 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.680 part behind that we can't actually always look at, but 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:41.000 can reasonably assume is there. Now, the difference is that 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:45.920 hyperobjects transcend not only a regular conception of physical reality, 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:50.200 but more so our temporal reality. You can hold a 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.000 coffee munk and rotate it around in a pretty short 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:57.120 amount of time and witness each side an angle, Or 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.160 if you wanted to get really fancy, you could make 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:01.520 a three to sixty scan so you could see a 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:05.160 projected version of the entire object, Or you know more, 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:08.199 simply just get three people in a room to all 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:10.560 look at different sides of the mug, thus forming a 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:16.000 consensual reality based understanding of the whole object. Now, not 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:20.199 only can you not hold a hyper object, but even 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.239 if you could, the temporal effects would make it impossible 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.600 to rotate it around to witness the totality of what's 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.280 being held, and it would be way too big for 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:33.160 multiple people to ever witness all sides of the thing. 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:39.760 Quoting from Morton's book Hyperobjects, The Philosophy and Ecology after 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:44.680 the End of the World, quote, consider rain drops. You 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.360 can feel them on your head, but you can't perceive 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:51.160 the actual rain drop in itself. You can only ever 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:56.520 perceive your particular anthropomorphic translation of the rain drops. Isn't 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:58.760 this similar to the rift between weather, which I can 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.360 feel falling on my head, and global climate, not the 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:07.760 older idea of local patterns of weather, but the entire system. 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:10.920 I can think of and compute climate in this sense, 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:14.800 but I can't directly see or touch it. The gap 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:19.479 between the phenomenon and the thing yawns wide open, disturbing 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:23.360 my sense of presence and being in the world. Humans 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:27.079 have been aware of enormous entities, some reels imagined, for 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:29.559 as long as we have existed, but this book is 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:32.880 arguing that there is something quite special about the recently 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:37.480 discovered entities such as climate. These entities directly cause us 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.400 to reflect on our very place on Earth and in 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:45.040 the cosmos. Perhaps this is the most fundamental issue Hyperobjects 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:48.600 seem to force something on us, something that affects some 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.440 core idea of what it means to exist, what Earth is, 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:57.760 what society is. There's no doubt that cosmic phenomenons such 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:02.600 as meteors and blood red moons, tsunamis, tornadoes, and earthquakes 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:07.560 have terrified humans. In the past, meteors and comets were 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:12.560 known as disasters. Literally, a disaster is a fallen, dysfunctional 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:17.760 or dangerous or evil star disaster. But such disasters take 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:23.160 place against a stable backdrop. There is the Ptolemaic Aristolian 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.880 machinery of the stars, which hold fixed stars in place. 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.240 It seems as if there's something about hyperobjects that is 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:38.280 more deeply challenging than these disasters. The worry is not 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:41.559 whether the world will end, as in the old models 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.520 of the disaster, but whether the end of the world 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:49.240 is already happening, or whether perhaps it might have already 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:55.440 taken place. A deep shuddering of temporality than occurs. For 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.240 one thing, we are inside hyperobjects, like Jonah in the whale. 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.120 This means that every decision we make is in some 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:07.120 sense related to hyperobjects. These decisions are not merely limited 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.880 to sentences and texts about hyperobjects. When I turn the 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:13.560 key in the ignition of my car, I am relating 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:17.120 to global warming. When a novelist writes about the immigration 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:22.160 to Mars, they are relating to global warming. I am 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.520 one of the entities caught in the hyperobject that I 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:41.679 here call global warming. Different hyperobjects have numerous properties in common, 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:44.760 but for our purposes we're going to discuss the five 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:49.600 main points of similarity. Hyper Objects are viscous, meaning they 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:53.320 stick to beings that are involved with them. They are nonlocal, 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:56.679 in other words, and any local manifestation of the hyperobject 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:02.920 is not directly The hyperobject involve very different temporalities than 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.040 the human scale ones that we're used to. In particular, 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:11.239 some very very large hyper objects have a genuine Gaussian temporality. 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.880 They generate space time vortex is due to general relativity, 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:20.120 and hyper objects occupy a higher dimensional phase space that 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:24.280 results in their being invisible to humans for stretches of time, 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:28.480 and they exhibit their effects inter objectively. That is, they 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.280 can be detected in a space that consists of inter 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:36.320 relationships between aesthetic properties of objects. The hyper object is 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:39.600 not just a function of our knowledge. It is also 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:44.800 hyper relative to worms, lemons and ultraviolet rays as well 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:48.920 as humans. Now I'm going to go into the five 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:51.840 different points of similarity in more detail to kind of 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:56.400 help flesh out what these things hyper objects, what they are, 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.160 and how they might actually be a useful way to 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:04.480 think about really big stuff. So, first off, viscous hyper 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:08.160 objects adhere to any object they touch, no matter how 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:12.120 hard the object tries to resist. In this way, hyperobjects 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:15.960 overrule ironic distance, meaning that the more an object tries 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.480 to resist a hyperobject, the more glued to the hyper 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:23.080 object it becomes. Now, the more you learn about any 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:25.840 big topic, the more you'll end up noticing it in 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:29.480 the world. This is the law of synchronicity. But the 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.080 more you know about climate change, the more you realize 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:36.120 how perversive it is. The more you discover about evolution, 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.960 the more you realize how much our entire physical being 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:44.840 is caught in its meshwork. Immediate intimate symptoms of hyperobjects 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:49.520 are very real, vivid, and often painful, yet they carry 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:54.520 with them this trace of unreality. A good example of 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:59.880 hyperobject viscosity would be radioactive materials. The more you try 0:14:59.920 --> 0:15:02.320 to get rid of them, the more you realize you 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:09.000 can't they seriously undermine the notion of away. There is 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:13.320 no away. Flushing vomit down the toilet doesn't make it disappear. 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:15.640 It makes its way to the ocean or the water 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:20.480 treatment facility, and eventually just back to us again. I'll 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:24.480 quote from the book Hyperobjects quote light itself is the 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:28.320 most viscous thing of all, since nothing can surpass its speed. 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:33.720 Radiation is Sartra's jar of honey par excellence, a luminous 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:38.880 honey that reveals our bone structure as it seeps around us. Again, 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.800 it's not a matter of making some suicidal leap into 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:45.520 the honey, but discovering that we are already inside it. 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:50.840 This is it, folks, This is the ecological interconnectedness. Come 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:53.240 in and join the fun. But I see that you're 0:15:53.280 --> 0:16:00.360 already here. Unquote. Yeah, that is a that's fun. The 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:03.040 next point of similarity we're to discussed is the molten 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:08.480 or Gaussian quality. Hyper Objects are time stretched to such 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:12.280 an extent that they become impossible to hold in the mind. 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:15.920 Hyper objects are so massive that they refute the idea 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:20.240 that space time is fixed, concrete and consistent. The size 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.240 of hyper objects can make them basically invisible, just because 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.760 they're so big. It's like swimming in Crater Lake in 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:29.760 southern Oregon, one of the deepest lakes in the world. 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.840 But it's not just deep, it's also very very clear. 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:37.920 So the water is so deep yet so clear. It's 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:40.160 like you're swimming in the sky. It's like you're swimming 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.320 in nothing. It'd be like if you approach an object 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:47.720 and more and more objects emerge because we can't see 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:52.040 the end of them. Hyperobjects are necessarily uncanny. They have 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:56.440 to be. Just like my favorite liminal space photos. Hyper 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:00.760 objects seem to beckon us further into themselves, making us 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:04.879 realize that we're already lost inside them. The recognition of 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:08.639 being caught in hyper objects is precisely a feeling of 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:17.200 strange familiarity and a familiar strangeness. Next up is non locality. 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:20.720 Hyper objects are massively distributed in time and space, such 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:26.160 as any particular local manifestation never actually reveals the totality 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:29.680 of the hyper object. For example, climate change is a 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:35.600 hyperobject that impacts meteorological conditions such as tornado formations. Objects 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:41.160 don't feel climate change, but instead experience tornadoes as they 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:46.160 cause damage in specific places. Thus, nonlocality describes the manner 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.840 in which a hyperobject becomes more substantial than the local 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:55.640 manifestations that they produce. Putting Morton again. For a flower, 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:59.880 nuclear radiation turns its leaves a strange shade of red. 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:04.240 Global Warming for the tomato farmer rots the tomatoes. Plastic 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:07.199 for the bird, strangles it as it becomes entangled in 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:10.600 a set of six pack rings. What we are really 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:13.360 dealing with here are just the aesthetic effects that are 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:18.080 directly causal. The octopus of the hyperobject emits a cloud 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:21.879 of ink as it withdrawals from access. Yet this cloud 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:25.159 of ink is a cloud of its effects and effects 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:30.840 these phenomenon themselves are not global warming or radiation action 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:34.680 at a distance is involved. It's like confusing the map 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:40.200 with the territory. Hyper Objects cannot be thought up as 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:44.560 occupying a series of now points in time or space. 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.560 They confound the social and psychic instruments we use to 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:53.159 measure them. Even digital devices have trouble. Global warming is 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:56.640 not just a function of our measuring devices. Yet, because 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:00.520 it's distributed across the biosphere and beyond, it's hard to 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.840 see it as a unique entity. And yet there it 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:07.080 is raining down on us, burning down on us, quaking, 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:12.000 the earth spawning giant hurricanes. Global warming is an object 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:16.439 of which many things are distributed pieces. The rain drops 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:19.199 falling on my head in northern California, the tsunami that 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:23.520 pours through the streets of Japanese towns, the increasing earthquake 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:27.359 activity based on changing pressure on the ocean floor. Like 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:30.879 a moving illusion picture. Global warming is real, but it 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:35.520 involves a massive, counterintuitive perspective shift for us to see it. 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:40.080 Convincing some people of its existence is like convincing some 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:44.720 two dimensional flatland people of the existence of apples based 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:49.000 on the appearance of a morphing circular shape in their world. 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:54.800 Next point of similarity is phasing. So our sense of 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:59.919 being in a time and inhabiting a place depends on 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:04.040 forms of regularity, the periodic rhythms of day and night. 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.919 The sun coming up, Only now we know that it 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:12.119 doesn't really come up. It's now common knowledge that the 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:15.639 Moon's phases are just the relationship between the Earth and 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:20.520 the Moon as they circumnavigate to the Sun. Hyperobjects seem 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:23.440 to phase in and out of the human world. They 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:27.480 occupy a higher dimensional phase space that makes them impossible 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:30.720 to see as a whole. On our regular three dimensional 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.919 human scale basis, but they might appear differently to an 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:39.560 observer with a higher dimensional view. We can only see 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:42.600 pieces of a hyper object at a time. The reason 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:46.520 why they appear non local and temporarily foreshortened is precisely 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:51.639 because of this transdimensional quality. We can only see pieces 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:54.520 of them at once, like a tsunami or a case 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:58.080 of radiation sickness. If an apple we're to invade a 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:02.400 two dimensional world, veristic people would see some dots as 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:05.359 the bottom of the apple touched their universe, and then 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:08.600 a rapid succession of shapes that would appear like an 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.720 expanding and contracting circular blob, diminishing into a tiny circle, 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:17.240 possibly a point, and then disappearing. That's why you can't 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.520 directly see climate change. You would need to occupy some 0:21:20.600 --> 0:21:24.960 higher dimensional space to see the hyper object unfolding explicitly. 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:28.800 Like the people in the two dimensional flat land, we 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:32.320 can only see brief patches of this gigantic object as 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:36.560 it intersects with our world. The brief patch called hurricane 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:40.680 destroys the infrastructure of New Orleans. The brief patch called 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:43.879 drought burns the planes of Russia and the midwestern United 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:48.399 states to a crisp our body's itch with yesterday's sunburn. 0:21:49.480 --> 0:21:53.840 But don't relegate hyper objects as a simple abstract notion. 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:59.639 The gay hyperobjects as transdimensional real things is valuable. Global 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:03.480 warming is not simply a mathematical abstraction that doesn't really 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:07.639 pertain to this world. Hyper Objects don't just inhabit some 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:11.680 conceptual beyond in our heads or out there. They are 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:15.960 real objects that affect other objects. We tend to only 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:19.520 think about hyperobjects as they phase in and connect to other, 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:24.040 more static objects. This is a mistake and contributes to 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:28.320 non action. Whether or not we perceive objects and hyperobjects 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:33.000 connecting doesn't affect the existence and the inevitable effects of 0:22:33.119 --> 0:22:37.480 the hyper object. What we experience as the slow periodic 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:41.280 re occurrence of a celestial event such as an eclipse 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:46.040 or a comet is a continuous entity whose imprint simply 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:49.280 shows up on our social and cognitive space for a while. 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:53.960 The gaps I perceive between moments at which my mind 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:56.760 is aware of the hyperobject and moments at which it 0:22:56.880 --> 0:23:02.320 isn't do not matter in relation to the hyper object itself. Okay, 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:06.639 and now onto our final point of similarity. Inter objective 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:12.840 hyperobjects are formed by relations between more than one object. Consequently, 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:17.040 objects are only able to perceive the imprint or footprint 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:23.320 of a hyperobject upon other objects revealed as information. It's 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:29.200 all an ecological mesh of interconnectedness and interobjectivity. For example, 0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:33.840 climate change is formed by interactions between the sun, fossil fuels, 0:23:33.960 --> 0:23:40.040 carbon dioxide, economic growth, among other things. Yet climate change 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:44.119 is made apparent through emissions levels, temperature changes, and the 0:23:44.240 --> 0:23:48.240 sea level rising, making it seem as if global warming 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:51.720 is a product of scientific models rather than connected to 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:57.000 an object that predates its own measurement. Hyper Objects exist 0:23:57.240 --> 0:24:01.440 in and between objects and things we deal with every day, 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:06.320 but it's not simply those objects. Plastic bags are not 0:24:06.560 --> 0:24:11.520 climate change, but those things are both intertwined. Hurricanes are 0:24:11.520 --> 0:24:15.040 not climate change, but they can be a shadow like 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:21.399 local manifestation of it. A mesh consists of relationships between 0:24:21.520 --> 0:24:26.080 criss crossing strands and the gaps between strands. Meshes are 0:24:26.080 --> 0:24:30.560 a potent metaphor for the strange interconnectedness of things, an 0:24:30.560 --> 0:24:35.800 interconnectedness that does not allow for perfect, lossless transmission of information, 0:24:36.280 --> 0:24:40.320 but is instead full of gaps and absences. When an 0:24:40.320 --> 0:24:44.560 object is born, it is instantly meshed into a relationship 0:24:44.840 --> 0:24:49.840 with other objects in the mesh. The mesh isn't inside 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:53.359 of all things, but it's on the edge or floats 0:24:53.440 --> 0:24:57.720 on top of all things. Inter objective mesh is the 0:24:58.040 --> 0:25:02.240 extra connecting layer between the mass and the mask of 0:25:02.480 --> 0:25:09.440 all objects, almost like a universal skin Fashia. Interobjectivity provides 0:25:09.440 --> 0:25:13.679 a space that is ontologically in front of objects in 0:25:13.720 --> 0:25:18.720 which relational phenomenon can emerge. The massiveness and distribution of 0:25:18.760 --> 0:25:22.240 hyperobjects simply force us to take note of this fact. 0:25:23.040 --> 0:25:28.200 Hyper objects provide great examples of interobjectivity, namely the way 0:25:28.200 --> 0:25:31.720 in which nothing has ever experienced directly, but only as 0:25:32.000 --> 0:25:37.359 mediated through other entities in some shared consensual space. We 0:25:37.440 --> 0:25:41.359 never hear the wind in itself, only the wind in 0:25:41.400 --> 0:25:45.120 the door, the wind in the trees. This means that 0:25:45.280 --> 0:25:48.639 for every objective system, there is at least one entity 0:25:48.720 --> 0:25:53.000 that is withdrawn from the relationship. We see the footprint 0:25:53.119 --> 0:25:56.440 of a dinosaur left in some ancient rock that was 0:25:56.480 --> 0:26:01.320 once a pool of mud. The dinosaur's reality exists inter objectively. 0:26:01.960 --> 0:26:06.280 There is some form of shared space between the rock, ourselves, 0:26:06.640 --> 0:26:11.360 and the dinosaur, even though the dinosaur isn't there directly. 0:26:12.359 --> 0:26:15.520 The print of a dinosaur's foot in the mud is 0:26:15.560 --> 0:26:19.080 seen as a foot shaped hole in a rock by 0:26:19.160 --> 0:26:24.000 humans sixty five million years later. There is some sensuous 0:26:24.000 --> 0:26:28.159 connection then, between the dinosaur, the rock, and the human, 0:26:28.720 --> 0:26:34.040 despite their vastly differing time scales. The dinosaur footprint in 0:26:34.119 --> 0:26:39.080 fossilized mud is not a dinosaur. Rather, the footprint is 0:26:39.320 --> 0:26:44.359 a trace of the hyperobject evolution that joins me the dinosaur, 0:26:44.640 --> 0:26:48.480 and the mud together, along with the intentional act of 0:26:48.600 --> 0:27:01.320 holding them in the mind. I found the hyper object 0:27:01.440 --> 0:27:04.640 banner as a useful tool to help my brain think 0:27:04.640 --> 0:27:07.600 about things that are just too big, things that have 0:27:07.640 --> 0:27:11.400 effects so spaced out in time that using our ordinary 0:27:11.440 --> 0:27:15.399 models of thought are just inadequate. It can also reconcile 0:27:15.440 --> 0:27:18.720 the opposing views that cast climate change as the very 0:27:18.720 --> 0:27:22.720 real series of disasters or a complicated, interlocking mesh of 0:27:22.760 --> 0:27:27.280 systems that can feel very unreal and overwhelming. Just thinking 0:27:27.320 --> 0:27:30.560 of big things as abstract systems has the habit of 0:27:30.640 --> 0:27:34.560 divorcing you from the real world impacts things like hyper 0:27:34.600 --> 0:27:38.680 objects can cause. Sometimes we forget that climate change is 0:27:38.720 --> 0:27:42.080 a thing we interact with every day and can inform 0:27:42.240 --> 0:27:49.400 choices we make now. The almost impossible to comprehend totality 0:27:49.480 --> 0:27:52.800 of our situation is not great for mental well being. 0:27:53.400 --> 0:27:56.040 You can end up tail spinning down a black hole 0:27:56.080 --> 0:28:01.399 of fate, conspiracy, coping, denial, and doom. It's very easy 0:28:01.440 --> 0:28:04.680 to trip and fall into a void of negation. Things 0:28:04.680 --> 0:28:08.440 that are hyperobjects fundamentally break our conception of reality temporality 0:28:08.480 --> 0:28:12.480