A World Awash with Consciousness
I recently returned from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota. The only way to get into the nature preserve is to canoe in via a series of lakes, portaging between lakes on small hiking trails cut between them for this purpose. Limited permitting ensures it is never packed with people. No hiking trails in, no motorized boat access, and no flyovers enhances the feeling of solitude. It is officially designated as a dark sky sanctuary, and indeed there is no faint glow of nearby cities washing out the stars you see.
While a beautiful departure from city life, my time off grid amplified every element of what it means to live: meeting basic needs suddenly required more thought than daily life. Don’t get me wrong, the campsites are well established (complete with latrine, though still outdoors) and no exceptional outdoor skills or experience are required. It is simply that something like canoeing in open water requires a sensitivity to weather that normally only informs my outfit choice.
Wrapped in a few layers — in fact every article of clothing I brought — comprising one practical outfit that I would never wear in “real” life, I sat near the camping stove blocking the wind so the water would finally boil. Cooking took on a different form of stress. More steps, more consideration of rationing, more effort to effectively cook. It was not actually difficult, just more to think about. And in thinking about more in that moment, I was thinking about less outside of it. Stress-induced mindfulness.
Such outdoor adventures are perhaps an overall more objectively stressful experience in terms of physical demands, potential risks, and effort to meet basic needs. Nevertheless, they are a less stressful experience in terms of… well something. But why, when there are more risks to my survival in this scenario than my daily life, do I feel less stress? The normal survival-of-my-selfish-genes explanation does not seem to suffice here.
I found distinguishing between types of stress helpful: eustress versus distress. Eustress is good stress, typically experienced in exercise, facing challenges you can meet (cf. the flow state), or other situations of moderate stress interpreted as beneficial for the experiencer. Distress, then, being situations of detrimental stress whether from harm or intensity of the stressor. In this framework, my outdoor adventure provided eustress — physical and situational challenges that I could successfully meet. Coupled with mindfulness, this meaningfully captures my experience.
This framework does not, however, capture why my everyday life is not experienced similarly. I regularly take on physical and situational challenges that I am able to successfully meet. While not always in a flow state (nor was I in the boundary waters), I nevertheless could describe my everyday life with similar terms to the eustress above. However, I far more regularly experience these stressors as distress.
Perhaps I’ll return to the component of eustress that it is “interpreted as beneficial for the experiencer.” I certainly opted into the boundary waters trip, so it was self-chosen stress. I enjoy the outdoors, and appreciate the many benefits time outdoors has. I recognize the importance of unplugging. The framing for my entire experience biased me toward eustress. And perhaps this is useful. I have seen similar benefits to reframing experience from gratitude journaling, after all, so it could just be a function of my ability or willingness or innate beliefs about the positivity of the experience. A trip into the wild is positive. Mundane life is not. Perhaps intentionally shifting my beliefs about the stressors of my everyday life could bias me toward eustress too?
Perhaps. But apart from the framing, the actual context is quite different. It was only my partner and me in the boundary waters. Any social context was specifically eliminated. Any capacity for productivity was removed, and there was no consumer performance of identity in that moment. Moreover, the stressors — those basic life needs suddenly requiring all of our attention — are purely pragmatic.
Maybe this is the real difference: pragmatic versus performative stressors. Pragmatic stressors are the purely practical steps we take to remain alive. The basic needs we focus on while camping, and that occupy so much of our workaday lives. While having to think of something to cook and go shopping and do laundry and etc., can feel stressful, they are certainly distinct from attending meetings and answering emails and writing reports. With pragmatic stressors, it is easy to reframe, practice mindfulness, and be grateful for the resources to meet those basic needs.
Performative stressors are essentially for those of us with any amount of social anxiety. They are the reason public speaking is such a fear for so many. Our performance in front of others can be distressing. It is not only the fear of judgment or embarrassment or shame, but that our very identities are instantiated by the people around us.
Identity is the reification of separation. The embodiment of our consciousness forces this impression of separation on us: I am me because I am not you. Physically. Measurably. We perceive separation. That identity is then interpreted through the same instance of separation: I am X because I am not Y. I am tall because I am not short. The consciousness of this newly formed Self becoming aware of its existence at the same time becomes aware of the possibility of its nonexistence. Amidst whatever Angst and other Existential theory you’d like, the easiest way to distract from death is to focus on affirming life, the existence of Self, the affirmation of our identity.
We rely on the people around us to witness our performance of identity. Performative stressors are the transference of our existential anxiety into our social anxiety. It hurts to be criticized by others. It hurts more to catch a glimpse of the Abyss behind the shell of identity. There is a dissonance here in the judgment of others: it both affirms the core of our Being and reduces us to an Other.
It seems framing may at last be the important takeaway from all of this. Reframing my everyday stress as the wild privilege it is can be helpful for stress reduction, yes. It is in reframing my everyday context as a misperception of Self that will eliminate that stress, though. Reframing my performance of identity as nothing but a further separation from others, particularly when branded to boost my professional credentials or commodified into a consumer performance, built on corporate logos and displays of wealth and status.
Going into the wild is helpful to escape this performative social context — to reset, to focus on basic needs, to reduce the noise. And whatever necessary evils there may be to meet our basic needs each day ironically maintaining the embodiment separating us from others, perhaps at least mentally transcending the social context of Self contra Selves can eliminate this performative stress.
A world awash with consciousness is not so bad a thing, so long as we do not use it to isolate Self and self-isolate.
