Time slips away….but I'm back now…

On Friday I saw a one-woman play, a story based on the life of Rachel Carson, the great scientist-writer who is now seen by many as one of the founders of the modern environmentalist movement. The show is called,"A Sense of Wonder," and has been made into a film.  Well worth a look.  The writer and actress, Kaiulani Lee, has does a great job, drawing on the words of Carson herself to fashion a two-act, one hour performance that reveals the fullness of Carson's character.

And there are some obvious, and some not so obvious, Taoist resonances there.

Carson's naturalism is consistent, in certain ways, with Taoism (I wonder if she ever read the Tao Te Ching?).  Her love of nature and its beauty, her critique of human-created environmental pollution, and her close observation of the myriad of natural processes around her, all are reminiscent of a Taoist sensibility.  Toward the end of the play, Lee recites lines from one of Carson's early diaries, a declaration of beliefs that she held onto throughout her life.  The notion of the "balance of nature" figures prominently there, as does an embrace of the idea that each thing has its place in Way (which brings Chuang Tzu to mind): birds, insects, worms, etc.  It was quite easy, as the show ended, to think: Carson was, even if not consciously, a Taoist.

But then the counterargument comes to mind: but she was an activist.  She wrote, and fought against the chemical companies, and testified before Congress, and became a very famous public figure until her life was cut short by cancer.  Can such prominence and activeness and effort really be called Taoist?  Wasn't she doing too much to be considered an avatar of the "do nothing" dictates of Taoism.

Ah, here is where the double Taoist reversal comes in.  First, as I have said on various occasions, we shouldn't take the "do nothing" dictum too literally.  But, secondly, in Carson's case she had to do what she did in order to get others to not do what they were doing.  In other words, sometimes we must do in order to not do, or do in order to undo.  That is what her life became, a grand doing to undo.  And it worked, to a large degree.  She was quite influential in the construction of contemporary institutions and legal regimes of environmental protection.  Because of what she did, it is now harder for others to do things harmful to the environment.  Her doing stopped others from doing bad.  And her doing undid some of the bad that had been done.

Doing to not do or to undo – sounds Taoist to me….