In A Land Far, Far Away

Our narrative of progress hinges on the idea of an 'away land.' But our 'away' is someone else's 'here,' and the long-concealed externalities, along with our separation from them are now backfiring

A while back in human history, people came up with the concept of away.

The idea goes as follows: You don’t really have to worry much about where your stuff comes from or where your waste is going. Your things come from far away, and your waste goes somewhere far away.

Away land became this mysterious, hidden non-world, this black box, this sort of conclusion. Away came to mean that one didn’t have to think about it anymore. Away legitimized the end of caring, the end of responsibility-taking.

But the more you think about it, the more away becomes sort of ridiculous. Did nobody ever ask where away is? What away really means? But then you realize that even you don’t really know where your waste goes and where your clothes and all the appliances and furniture you use every day actually come from.

Where is your stuff’s away, your waste’s away?

“Are you sitting comfortably? If so, how much do you know about the chair that’s holding you off the ground – what it’s made from, and what its production process looked like? Where it was made, and by whom? Or go deeper: how were the materials used to make the chair extracted from the planet? Most people will find it difficult to answer these basic questions. The object cradling your body remains, in many ways, mysterious to you.

Quite probably, you are surrounded by many things of which you know next to nothing – among them, the device on which you are reading these words. Most of us live in a state of general ignorance about our physical surroundings.”

Material Intelligence by Glenn Adamson

So, a comedian I quite like once asked the not-so-serious question:

Where are all the chickens?

Humans eat so many chickens; there is chicken-focused fast food everywhere, and supermarkets have entire rows filled with eggs from chickens, but when we travel through the countryside, we never really see chickens. 🤨 Okay, maybe here and there, like 10 or so, but considering the massive amounts of chickens humans eat daily, the fields should be filled with 1,000s of chickens, no?! I see more sheep 🐑 than chickens 🐓. So where are they?

The chickens are, of course 🤪,….away – like all the other things we consume.

The Trend Towards Away