A question philosophers and scientists have asked since the concepts existed, “what is consciousness?” For some, it is emergent like patterns in the sand on a beach or spiral of a snail shell. But some suggest that consciousness is fundamental like gravity or thermodynamics.
Pansychism is that scientific and philosophical marriage that everything in the universe has some sense of consciousness—from atom to human. While I’ll not write a dissertation here on the subject, it catches my curiosity and resonates with my view of the universe yet has a powerful consequential question: if everything is conscious in even the most simple form, how does that change our relationship when we see everything as somehow kindred and not foreign?
Not to suggest Chicago is full of trash and garbage, we are in fact a very clean and beautiful city, but there are those of us locals and visitors who leave much behind. While Beautiful Garbage was originally, years ago, a simple outset to find beauty in otherwise ugliness, #AYearinPhotographs set out to honor that which was left behind and ask for your imagination to come along with me:
What if everything we left behind remembers us?
