"It is rather like some farmer who, having sown seeds or even planted a tree, is always setting all the things right that winter rains and sustained frosts and wind-storms have damaged."
Plotinus
Neoplatonist Contemplations
Shifting gears momentarily, we turn to the Enneads, a collection of contemplations by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus. Especially noteworthy among his reflections is a passage that speaks to multiple intersecting themes, ranging from contemplative ecology to resilience in times of hardship.
A Hellenistic philosopher native to Egypt, Plotinus is credited as the founder of Neoplatonism, a new phase in the tradition inspired by the esteemed Greek philosopher Plato. He ventured to modern-day Iran to study Persian and Indian philosophy before retiring to Rome. Plotinus composed the Enneads on a variety of topics, including ethics, cosmology, psychology, epistemology, and natural philosophy, among others.
Relevant to the ongoing environmental crisis and the more recently sparked pandemic, we here investigate the long winter to which Plotinus alludes in a short section from the Enneads, briefly examining the means toward a spring thaw and recovery.
Winter Storms
Broadly, Plotinus distinguishes between three aspects of existence: Soul, Intellect, and the "One." Our passage of interest pertains to the tendency of the soul to "administer the universe," often via comparison, analysis, rumination, and other activities, all overwhelmingly discursive. In characterizing the soul, Plotinus draws on a permacultural analogy.
Keeping a watchful eye over both the spiritual and terrestrial domains, the soul seeks to put objects in their proper order, similar to a farmer mending damages in her garden left by the cold season or inclement weather.
Much of the world remains in an extended winter storm of sorts, characterized by frozen economies, dwindling ecosystems, and a bitter epidemic at large. Interestingly, Plotinus situates the soul below the intellect, and the intellect below the "One." Each is, of course, related to the others. While the soul is concerned with satisfying its externally oriented desires through discursive activity, the intellect contemplates in a less discursive capacity. The so-called "One" is the first principle from which everything else derives, the "Good" to which everything else returns.
Despite the soul's limitations, its acting as a farmer is an image that lends itself to a contemplative ecology with implications for cultivating both mental and physical terrain.
While not the focus of his work, that things can even be set right at all despite damage from winter rains and sustained frosts and wind-storms opens several doors pertaining directly to the challenges we presently face.
On Withstanding Rain And Wind
Although the text itself does not speak explicitly on withstanding rain and wind, or the various other sorts of storms the soul inevitably encounters in its efforts to administrate the universe, we here reference the pandemic and ecological crisis it appears to have eclipsed.
First, the soul's efforts at setting things right ought to be critically scrutinized. Given that its activity, according to Plotinus, is inspired by an effort to satisfy material desires, we should be wary of efforts to fix the present situation through superficial bandages. The causes of these ecological and epidemiological disasters must be deeply probed rather than merely covered up in the name of economic prosperity.
Second, if the farmer's activity is informed by wisdom and thus complementary to the intellect's reunion and reintegration with the first principle (a metaphysical topic deserving of further investigation elsewhere), then we must thoroughly equip ourselves with the knowledge and skills necessary to restore life to frost-bitten, rain-ravaged, wind-torn farmland. Nothing less than the full commitment to revolutionize all systems, both personal and political, from the inside out will do.
Perhaps a similar message of hopeful resilience is echoed further by an additional section from the Enneads, with which we conclude.
"His suffering will not be pitiable, but the light in him will continue to shine like the light of a lantern when the wind is blowing outside in a great fierceness of rain and winter storm."
Plotinus
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