Snow Flakes & Weaver Birds

May 9, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Scaling ourselves down has the promise of something truly magical. Not just the magic of becoming smaller but magical in the sense of real transformative knowledge. If small, we will be able to come closer to, or even enter, what is now often beyond our grasp. Our present plus-size denies us factual and poetic knowledge of the world we’re part of. Our understanding and experience of, let’s say, the surface tension in a drop of water or the spatial beauty of a weaver bird’s nest is limited. What will The Incredible Shrinking Man learn about raindrops and snowflakes, flowers, beehives, and termite colonies? We think we know but we don’t. Their small size only allows an abstracted perception.

The adventure of downsizing the human body doesn’t end with exploring air conditioning vents. On the contrary, it only begins. The real adventure will be in renegotiating, re-envisioning and rebuilding our place in the order of things, both big and small.