“Vergeten waar de wind vandaan komt”
Forgetting where the wind comes fromWhy has our universal connection to the weather and the wind, which used to be so common worldwide, almost completely disappeared today? Enlightenment thinking and the emergence of the scientific method have brought us more knowledge and certainty that we have ever had before. We cannot deny that this has also made us, as humans, more resilient to extreme weather conditions. Nature is explained, measured, and categorized, with rationality replacing the symbolic relationship with the world around us.(29) An ever-growing gap is emerging between scientific knowledge and the everyday experience of weather. I do not think this is due to science itself, but rather to the lack of diversity in forms of knowledge in daily life, where we could also make use of symbolic or magical methods. In doing other wise so, we reduce our environment to objects rather than a web of interconnected relationships.31 During the Industrial Revolution, the wind gradually became obsolete to us, and we slowly replaced it with coal and steam. In the Netherlands, this took quite a while because we were still so dependent on windmills, and this was deeply rooted in our culture. Steam engines arrived much later in the Netherlands than in Belgium, for example. For a long time, there was even a hybrid between steam engines and windmills. (30) Windmill-driven production can be less power-dense than that powered by steam or an internal combustion engine, and our demand for power is infinite. This turns the classic windmills into educational museum pieces or souvenirs on the Dam Square. Fortunately, the old windmills have been preserved and remain a source of Dutch pride; it’s only in the innovation of new windmills that we’ve hit a wall. Their contemporary three-bladed successor is far less well-loved.30 In addition to being less dependent on the wind, we’ve also simply become very good at spending a lot of time indoors and simply ignoring the elements. Even when we do go outside, people hop on an electric bike and ride with their noses first in the wind to the next destination. Wouldn’t it be nice, just for once, to have to work to cycle hard against the wind? The article “From Cave to Cage”(33) describes how we’ve slowly transitioned from being hunter-gatherers living in outdoor settlements to conducting all our activities and entertainment indoors; contact with the outside world has been minimized, making our dependence on the weather and the wind feel somewhat unnecessary. Even though living this way costs us an incredible amount of energy.
The digital age is, of course, a great highlight in this regard. The enormous amount of data available everywhere blinds us to the real interactions with the weather and wind that we could be having around us. We look down all day long, even when we’re checking the weather. At the same time, the only real risk we face if we misjudge the weather is having to walk home with a pair of soggy shoes. We can unlearn the habit of accepting only facts and learn how to form magical, mythical, and mindful relationships with the weather and the wind philosophers have been exploring this for years, and there are already several different theories on the subject.