Theme Boom 2010
Life is too precious to be squandered in a disenchanted world
Mia Couto
Mia Couto
While travelling the world all members of our team faced an inspirational pulse towards water. Not only the physical element itself, but also the symbolism and that which is invisible in water. It’s amazing adaptation to external conditions and continuous cycles. How its energy is directed downwards in connection to the Sacred Earth. For 2010 we decided to pay homage to water.Water is essential for all dimensions of life. The water we use today has been around for hundreds of millions of years, and the amount available probably hasn’t changed very much. Water moves around the world, changes forms, is taken in by plants and animals, but never really disappears. It travels in a large, continuous cycle. In this sense water stands for a continuous reusing and recycling, a metaphor for one of Boom’s paradigms, the sustainable ethos.
Philosophically, the watercourse-way is an expression that alludes perfectly to what Taoism describes as appropriate behaviour. This “way” is wonderfully described in the Book of Change:
“The water endlessly flows and fills, up to a certain limit, the corners it is flowing through; Under all circumstances, it remains equal to its nature.”
According to Tao belief, water is that which gives life to all and asks nothing in return. The Chinese made from water the residence of the dragon, since all living beings come alive from water. In Chinese medicine, water is an energy that is directed downward to the earth thus connecting to it.
In Hermeticism, water is Nun, the substance of which all gods come from in the first Ennead. Among the Vedas, the water is called mâtriatamâh (primal mother), because, in the beginning, everything was like a sea without light. In India, it is generally considered that the water element keeps life that flows through all nature in the form of rain, sap, milk and blood. Unlimited and immortal, water is at the beginning and end of all things.
In its apparent formlessness, in ancient cultures we found the distinction between the upper waters and the down waters. The former symbolize the possibilities of virtual creation, the latter correspond to the completion of nature. The fire element acts, in this case, as the modifier of water and, therefore, the sun (spirit) makes the water from the sea evaporate (subliming life).
The water condenses into clouds and returns to earth as fertilizing rain. This double virtue derives from both its aquatic and celestial nature. Lao-Tzu paid great attention to this phenomenon of rotating water, both physical and spiritual, and said:
“The water does not stop day or night. If it circulates on the heights, it leads the rain and fog. If it circulates underneath, it forms the streams and rivers. The water stands for doing good. If a dike is opposed to it it holds up. If you open a pathway, it runs along it. That’s why we say that water does not fight. However, nothing compares to it to break the strong and the tough.”
The alchemists called water the mercury in the first stage of transformation and, by analogy, the fluid body of mankind. Current psychology interprets it as a symbol of the universal unconscious where all symbols come from.
The theme for Boom 2010 is an embodyment of the concept of immersion in water. It symbolizes a return to the pre-formal, with a sense of rebirth and new movement, as immersion multiplies the potential of life. The symbolism of baptism, always related to water, is central in Christianity or Hinduism. When he dives into the water the old man is completely immersed. When he leaves the water, the new man suddenly appears.
The Water On the Planet We Have Today
Since the Industrial Revolution, most of our world’s rivers have been treated unwisely as a convenient way of transporting waste to sea, affecting the biodiversity of thousands of kilometers of waterways, harming human health, and in the end polluting coastal and marine waters.
Of all the trends to watch, James Lovelock maintains sea level rise is the most important. Given the complexity of the millions of interactions within the Gaia system, Lovelock argues it is best to ignore year-to-year temperature fluctuations and instead watch the oceans. The seas, he says, are the lone trustworthy indicator of the earth’s heat balance. “Sea level rise is the best available measure of the heat absorbed by the earth because it comes from only two things. These are the melting of the glaciers and the expansion of water as it warms. Sea level is the thermometer that indicates true global heating.”
Lovelock argues that oceans will expand fuelled by feedback loops such as loss of reflective ice cover, replaced by heat absorvent dark water; the death of carbon-eating algae as oceans warm and acidify. These cycles will explode in the coming decades, and we must stop the fashionable rhetoric about sustainable development and “weave the sound of the alarm clock into our dreams. We will need to respond more like the inhabitants of a city threatened by a flood. We have to stop pretending there is a way back to that comfortable and beautiful Earth we left behind in the 20th century”
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