Infrastructure
I believe in infrastructure. I believe that almost anything one could name could be considered infrastructure, as everything depends on something else. In some cases, there is building and in other cases there is borrowing and sharing. But almost every process one could name refers back to a dependence on infrastructure. Most of the time we think of infrastructure as hard metal and wiring or stonework used in the construction of bridges and buildings. Indeed, these objects are what we think of when we talk about the invisibility of that which sustains our way of life. We take for granted that there always has been and always will be an interstate highway system and railroads, semi-trucks and trains to haul all the other objects we take for granted, as well as the buildings in which we are treated for disease and into which we go to worship or take refuge from storms. There are the bridges that connect us to land out of reach of our swimming capacities and landing strips that catch us when we come back to earth from our flights.
Books and ideas are also infrastructure, as is the educational system that allows us access to them. Teachers are part of our infrastructure and so are our lineages of ancestors. In a special way, we humans are the infrastructure for the next generation of humans and our own DNA is an infrastructure for the growth and development of who we are and who we become. We are the substrates for viruses and bacteria. Our gut linings (our microbiome) harbor and entertain billions of microbes that are doing things for and to us that we are just now beginning to uncover. The science that is being enlisted for this new frontier is the latest iteration of scientific concepts and sophisticated technology that are themselves infrastructure for future discoveries. Infrastructure implies process and change and growth, even though our first-pass thoughts consider it fixed and finished.
When my hiking partner and I were trudging along the crest of the hill behind the house, we were attracted by the beautiful lichen structures inhabiting the stones tossed up by the millennial-long heaving of the earth. It had rained very recently and that made the lichen colors much more vibrant and beautiful. In researching lichens, I found out that the world of lichens, a symbiotic cluster of algae and fungi, is a very complex world indeed. Even the taxonomic classification of the 20,000 species is complicated and packed with names that won't ever enter the common lexicon. It is believed that lichen cover about 6% of the surface of the planet and species are found in all ecological systems from alpine to hot lava beds. Some species never land and reproduce but travel around the world on air currents. While lichens are not our preferred food, they are the food source for some animals in harsh climates. They, too, are infrastructure, just as the stones and other surfaces onto which they cling.
It is humbling to think that a lowly lichen plant has a longer life-span than I do. It is so common to think of humans as the center of the universe and to think of our own infrastructures as permanent and precious that we don't consider how impermanent we really are. Perhaps, thinking of humans as dispensable is threatening. Perhaps, the thought depresses us. It is not easy to think that sometime in the future (the future begins tomorrow or the next moment) we will no longer be here to take our lives for granted. We live our lives under the illusion that we will live forever. The truth is that we won't live forever, but we will last forever. If one accepts the idea that matter is neither created nor destroyed, then what becomes of us when we die? It is an age-old question that bedevils us even today.
One needn't subscribe to a religious tradition or philosophical dogma to participate in the conversation about what death means to us humans. From the perspective of lichen infrastructure, it may be that some of our atoms will be incorporated into one of those species that floats in and out of clouds and circles the world, much as we once dreamt when we were young and wondered what it would be like to fly so high. Perhaps, we will become part of a smaller community attached to a rock somewhere on a hillside, only to be discovered and admired by some hikers out for a Sunday walk on a beautiful fall day. Who knows?
The idea of becoming something other than what we see in other humans around us is a mentally challenging exercise. But if we take the challenge and think more broadly and deeply about what life means and what interdependence means, then perhaps the idea might become one of freedom rather than one in which we are imprisoned by our limited concepts of birth and death. Perhaps we will be able to see how beautiful the present moment is and how beautiful the world is from the perspective of a bipedal and upright being. Perhaps we will begin to comprehend how beautiful it is that the world is changing with us in it in all our forms. I believe in infrastructure. I am infrastructure.
