Flowing and Adjusting
The reason we should engage with the regimes of existence that are made real through our own observations, gentle adjustments and the social collectivity, as Teil has put it, is that if we do not engage with it, it is still engaging with us.
Flickr: Justin Kern
Terroir vintners are essentially practicing enviraikido (a term I have just created). They first accept there is a complex regime of existence defined as terroir and they then attempt to observe, engage and communicate with that existence so that the wine expresses that existence as completely as possible. They are observers forever adjusting the observed in constant and modest call-and-response ways.
Human Terroir
The problem with scientism’s denial of complex systems of influence that cannot be measured readily through assessing their separate elements, is that the reality of the complex system does not disappear simply because we cannot measure it.
Perhaps human beings themselves have something akin to a terroir as do wines and foods. It can be overridden, ignored and denied but it is there as an underpinning regime of your existence.
When we reduce our lives to specific biomarkers, data, discrete inputs and outputs, then we have overpowered the complex human terroir of our existence. Overpowering it could be good, bad or maybe even irrelevant to your existence. But I would argue no matter the outcome, it makes for a less resilient system overall if the complexity of human terroir is overpowered and condensed down to a scientifically-relevant object or lone data point. That is not to say that brittleness is not sometimes a pretty decent outcome, all things considered. It may not be possible to recover a human terroir that has been so thoroughly reduced to discrete objects and data points over its lifetime.
However, the beauty of regimes of existence is that they exist concurrently. While someone may need to stay very rooted in biomarkers and pushing and pulling on discrete medical levers, to include human terroir (where observers actually engage with and respond to the observed) in the mix, will only serve to broaden the options.
If we do not have some sense that a human being is its own regime of existence (its own human terroir), we are also refusing to doubt, to learn, to discuss, to change our minds, to grow, and perhaps even to heal.
In 2015, I wrote about only a piece of human terroir— relationship interactions: Countermoves: When a Recovery Effort Generates a New You and They Want You to Change Back.
Human terroir is greater than relationship interactions alone; it is: origins (personal history, experiences, memories), you (physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual), physical environment (home, office, transportation, manfuctured and natural spaces), relationships (professional, collegial, familial, intimate, other), interactions (environments, humans, animals, flora), status (socioeconomic, minority, intersectional, etc.), society (nation state, media, marketing, history, dominant social norms), and anything else that I am forgetting here.
Does this Bread Crumb Trail Lead Anywhere?
Yes I believe it does.
Looking at those who may have navigated the pandemic challenges well and poorly through a scientific lens is going to yield nothing that can be duplicated.
Looking at it all through a terroir lens yields more applicable value for us all. Even though we have many aspects of our terroir in common, no single person has the same terroir as the next person. What those who navigated it well will likely have in common their ability to recognize, engage with and respond to the specificity and uniqueness of their own terroir.
Do those looking to recover from any chronic condition need to see a psychologist? I think I would now rephrase the question altogether: how does seeing a psychologist facilitate and enable us to begin to see our own terroir in order to assess it, tweak things and then respond to its response?
If you have friends and family that engage you in the doubt, the conversation, the reassessments and the learning of your terroir then perhaps a psychologist is not necessary. However, colleagues, friends and family are far more likely to reinforce the denial of terroir. Of course, that usually does not happen very consciously and is rather due to two natural human tendencies: social conformity (for base survival) and the restriction of cognitive thought (as it is energetically costly). Basically, it is easier to take all the aspects of your terroir and boil it down to an immutable fact because then you maintain your social conformation and mete out cognitive effort judiciously.
Friends and family may be willing to assess certain facets of a terroir as malleable, but others will be dismissed as discrete immutable facts. So where might you go to get a handle on your entire terroir as a regime of existence in which you must not only exist, but with which you must engage? Well wherever that might be and with whomever you might start the conversation and the jostling of ideas, it would be there that your enviraikido practice may begin.
In the next series in August, I will look at what is chronic illness within this regime of existence or human terroir.