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  • 《景觀設(shè)計(jì)學(xué)》2021年第2期

    作 者：
    羅濤（LUO Tao），黃圳（HUANG Zhen），劉江（LIU Jiang）等
    類 別：
    景觀
    出 版 社：
    高等教育出版社有限公司
    出版時(shí)間：
    2021年4月

俞孔堅(jiān)?大歷史視野中的人類景觀——《景觀設(shè)計(jì)學(xué)》2021年第2期“主編寄語”

Human Landscapes in Big History, by Yu Kongjian


長(zhǎng)達(dá)一年多的新冠肺炎（COVID-19）疫情，留給我許多不快甚至悲痛的記憶，也帶給我許多難忘的經(jīng)歷和難得的思考機(jī)會(huì)。身處遠(yuǎn)離大城市的鄉(xiāng)村—江西省上饒市婺源縣一個(gè)叫做巡檢司的村莊，在疫情隔離狀態(tài)中，令我擁有了體驗(yàn)“寧靜以致遠(yuǎn)”的機(jī)會(huì)；同時(shí)，也借由突破了空間和時(shí)間限制的網(wǎng)絡(luò)，擁有了“寬大以兼覆”的時(shí)刻。

由于疫情原因，原計(jì)劃在瑞士召開的全球頂級(jí)科學(xué)家會(huì)議“前沿論壇”不得不改為每月線上舉辦的學(xué)者系列演講。第一場(chǎng)演講已于3月2日舉辦，由全球著名教育家和歷史學(xué)家大衛(wèi)?克里斯蒂安主講，其演講主題為“大歷史：培養(yǎng)能管理星球的下一代”。克里斯蒂安顛覆了狹隘的傳統(tǒng)歷史觀，以一種前所未有的高度和視角引導(dǎo)我們從異常壯闊的大歷史視野來審視人類及其存在的時(shí)空。非常有意思的是，他還借助了一幅桂林鄉(xiāng)村田園風(fēng)景照片來表達(dá)其廣闊視野的觀點(diǎn)。

克里斯蒂安將大歷史概括為8個(gè)關(guān)鍵階段。他通過將宇宙學(xué)、天文學(xué)、化學(xué)、地質(zhì)學(xué)、生物學(xué)、人類學(xué)、狹義歷史學(xué)等浩瀚繁雜的學(xué)科知識(shí)系統(tǒng)地聯(lián)系在一起，形成了一種認(rèn)識(shí)世界和人類自我的全新知識(shí)體系，以作為培養(yǎng)人類下一代的教育框架。[1]在這樣的視野下，無論人類如何自詡其歷史的驚天動(dòng)地，相較于大歷史而言，依然是如此地微不足道，人類始終只是在一個(gè)變化規(guī)律的棲居環(huán)境中適應(yīng)、進(jìn)化與繁衍。直到約100年前，尤其是近50年來，人類活動(dòng)產(chǎn)生的過度碳排放將在人類時(shí)空中產(chǎn)生全球性的、超越自然規(guī)律和地球韌性的突變。在宇宙的歷史長(zhǎng)河中，這也不過只是瞬時(shí)變化而已，但卻可能演變?yōu)槊煨∪祟惖臏珥斨疄?zāi)。

當(dāng)我合上筆記本電腦，穿上高筒雨靴，走入沾滿露水的田埂時(shí)，卻又獲得了星空般神奇的變換體驗(yàn)，韌性且恒常，而這，正是人類的土地歸屬感與認(rèn)同感的基礎(chǔ)。2020年7月，這里經(jīng)歷了一場(chǎng)幾十年未遇的洪水。如今，蜿蜒的嚴(yán)溪上那些被沖毀的水堨已得到修復(fù)；坍塌的千年古道也已用舊石板進(jìn)行修補(bǔ)；但是，溪邊不遠(yuǎn)處那幾棵千年古樟和溪邊那口南宋時(shí)期的古井至今依然保存完好，令人感嘆奇跡的同時(shí)，也不由地感慨其間的艱辛。僅僅過去半年，眼前的景觀就已仿若未曾發(fā)生過災(zāi)害一般。

從今年2月初開始，田埂上便有我熟悉卻并不知曉學(xué)名的鄉(xiāng)土野草陸續(xù)開花了。先是稻槎菜（Lapsana apogonoides）、碎米薺（Cardamine hirsuta）、阿拉伯婆婆納（Veronica persica）等；到了2月中旬，則是擬鼠麹草（Gnaphalium affine）、雀舌草（Stellaria alsine）、鵝腸菜（Myosoton aquaticum）等；時(shí)至2月下旬，田野里的油菜花也已開始零零星星地吐黃，并迅速進(jìn)入盛花期；而到我寫作的今日（3月11日），放眼望去，三千多畝的田野已盡染金黃。而田埂也被夏天無（Corydalis decumbens）的紫色花朵所覆蓋，在燦然的油菜花中顯得異常美艷；而天葵（Semiaquilegia adoxoides）的白色小花則總是被忽視。可以想見，去年疫情期間，在人們的無限留戀與惋惜中，田野很快便會(huì)卸下油菜花盛裝，換上綠色的水稻外套，接著披上沉甸甸的、金色的稻穗秋裝，之后便是在晨霧中裹緊泛著銀光的冬襖。如此，周而復(fù)始，年復(fù)一年。

當(dāng)我再次撥開山邊那些高高的茅草，閱讀一處處墳冢前的墓碑銘文時(shí)了解到，從在北亞熱帶茂密叢林中破荒開基的第一代先輩算起，他們?cè)诖朔毖艿臍v史已近千年；即便如此，他們每一代人所看到的宇宙星空想必與我今天所見相差無幾，他們所見到的應(yīng)時(shí)令而發(fā)的野草和田間作物，也與我今天所見幾乎一樣；就連這田埂和水堨，亦是如此。但是，他們所經(jīng)歷的洪水可能比去年我所見到的還要嚴(yán)峻，他們所經(jīng)歷的瘟疫可能也比今天的COVID-19更為肆虐。盡管如此，這些先輩和他們的家族依然得以繁衍至今—因?yàn)樽匀簧冀K跟隨著宇宙運(yùn)行規(guī)律生長(zhǎng)、繁衍，生死交替。正是這份對(duì)土地和生命的依賴和適應(yīng)，使得浩瀚宇宙中的一方土地和棲居其上的人類及社區(qū)—亦可理解為“景觀”（landscapes）—得以以相對(duì)恒常的狀態(tài)存在。人類和社區(qū)憑借一定的韌性，適應(yīng)并利用自然，并形成了對(duì)這方土地的認(rèn)同感和歸屬感，最終體現(xiàn)為獨(dú)特的鄉(xiāng)土景觀。

然而，從小生長(zhǎng)在這片田野上的我，卻已看到一種遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出這方土地、這群人、這個(gè)社會(huì)，以及生命韌性范圍的全球性災(zāi)難正在醞釀，并在迅速積蓄能量，甚至預(yù)感到它爆發(fā)在即。今天，水溝中已經(jīng)沒有了魚，田野里已經(jīng)沒有了泥鰍、蚯蚓，就連青蛙也寥寥無幾；水田已經(jīng)板結(jié)，即使是在位處上游的小溪里，富營養(yǎng)化現(xiàn)象也已開始泛濫。農(nóng)民兄弟背著藥箱向田野一遍一遍地噴灑農(nóng)藥和除草劑，大把大把地施撒化肥。當(dāng)然，這并非他們的錯(cuò)，是生存的壓力使他們不得不如此。田野上的生命系統(tǒng)正在快速發(fā)生巨變，這種巨變將超出自然生命系統(tǒng)的韌性而導(dǎo)致系統(tǒng)崩潰，其災(zāi)難性的后果遠(yuǎn)非去年的洪水和延續(xù)至今的瘟疫可以相提并論。

這便是“大歷史”告訴我們的：由于人類的無度開采，地球生命積聚了千萬年的化石能源正被用來滿足人類各類發(fā)展欲望，釋放了超出自然規(guī)律的溫室氣體；人類用化學(xué)方法合成了超出自然生命系統(tǒng)韌性的新物質(zhì)，包括各類化肥、農(nóng)藥和塑料，使人類賴以生存的自然系統(tǒng)面臨崩潰。即使是在140億年的“大歷史”視野下，這也是一種可能改寫人類歷史的巨變，是當(dāng)前人類所面臨的致命的生存挑戰(zhàn)。


Experienced too much bitterness in the COVID-19 pandemic, I have also been deep in thought from the lessons learned in the past year. Being in Xunjiansi village in Wuyuan County, Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province, remote from China’s metropolises, I owned an opportunity of “keeping calm and carrying on” in the quarantine, as well as a moment of “holding the world with an open mind” via the Internet, across the boundaries of time and space.

Due to the COVID-19, the Frontiers Forum, an academic conference gathering global top scientists scheduled to be held in Switzerland, had to be changed into an online-lecture series every month. On March 2, the first lecture titled “Big History: Equipping Our Children to Manage a Planet” was delivered by David Christian, a famous educator and historian. Challenging conventional views of history, Christian offers us a magnificent, unprecedented Big History perspective to re-examine human beings and the space-time where they survive and develop. Interestingly, he presented a photo of Guilin’s rural scenery to illustrate his ideas.

Christian generalized 8 thresholds of Big History. Combining various disciplinary systems such as Cosmology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology, Biology, Anthropology, and Literary History, a new vast knowledge system that helps us understand the world and human beings and serves as an educational framework for next human generation can be created. [1] Under the view of Big History, human history, no matter how earthshaking it is praised to be, is just barely even worthy of mention, in which man has always adapted, evolved, and reproduced in a regularly changing environment. In the past century, especially in the recent half, human carbon emission has posed the planet an unprecedented environmental crisis to its natural resilience. Although only a transient variation in the earth’s long history, it may lead to a catastrophe to human beings ourselves.

Turning off laptop and putting on my rain boots, I walked into a ridge covered by dew, experiencing the resilience and constancy of nature—the root of people’s belonging and identity for land. In July 2020, this area suffered from the most severe flood in decades. On the winding Yan Stream, weirs destroyed by the flood have been restored, and the collapsed thousand-year ancient path repaired with old slates. Amazingly, those several ancient camphor trees standing for over 1,000 years and the ancient well built in the Southern Song Dynasty near the stream remain so intact that I cannot help imagining how many natural disasters they survived from. Only half a year passes by, the landscape has self-restored, seeming to have experienced no impact.

Since the beginning of February this year, native plants, familiar to me but not known by academic names, have been blooming on the field ridges, including Lapsana apogonoides, Cardamine hirsuta, and Veronica persica; Gnaphalium affine, Stellaria alsine, and Myosoton aquaticum in the middle of February; by late February, rape flowers began to sprout and soon turned the fields into a yellow meadow—on March 11 when I write this article, it became a stunning landscape covering an area of nearly 200 hm2. Covering the ridges, purple flowers of Corydalis decumbens look gorgeous among bright rape flowers sea. In contrast, Semiaquilegia adoxoides’ small white flowers are often ignored, so were the beautiful landscape during the pandemic last year—people missed the attractive seasonal sceneries from yellow meadow of rape flowers in spring, green crops in summer, golden paddy fields in autumn to sparkling mist and snow in winter. Come and gone, year after year.

Behind the tall grasses at the mountain foot, there are the tombs of my ancestors, with the inscriptions on the tombstones. Since the first generation began to settle in the dense forests of northern subtropics, human beings have been living here nearly a thousand years. The landscapes of starry sky, vibrant grasses, and crops growing in season, as well as the ridges and weirs, are persistent over centuries, just as what we see today. Although I guess that the ancestors must had suffered from more severe floods or pandemics than what we are facing today, life continues—birth, grow, thriving, death… all follow the laws of universe. The dependence on and adaption to land and life allows the earth, human beings, and their communities (which can also be understood as landscapes) to exist in a relatively constant state. By virtue of resilience, humans and their communities adapt to and make use of the nature, forming a sense of identity and belonging to the land which finally is manifested as unique vernacular landscapes.

However, as a native growing up on this land, I can see a global disaster that begins to take shape and is quickly exacerbating and even to break out, which will go far beyond the resilience of the land, of the entire human beings, of the whole society, and even of the planet living system. Now, fish is disappearing from streams, and loaches, earthworms or frogs are disappearing from fields; the soil of more and more paddy fields are hardening or salinizing, and eutrophication is increasingly seen in upstream water bodies. Farmers spray the fields with plenty of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers—they have to do so, of course, down to the pressure of survival. The rapid changes on the fields are challenging the resilience of natural living system, and will eventually lead to a complete collapse and result in unpredictable disasters, far worse than the floods and the pandemic we have been suffering from today.

Big History is warning us: To satisfy human beings’ desires, the immoderate exploitation of fossil energy resources that are accumulated by lives on Earth for millions of years has aggravated greenhouse gas emissions that exceed the carbon sequestration capacity of the nature; Humans have chemically synthesized new substances exceeding the resilience of natural living system, e.g. various sorts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics, which are causing environmental damages and threatening the natural system mankind rely on. Even in the Big History of 14 billion years, this is a critical moment to humans’ survival that may rewrite human history.


REFERENCES

[1] Christian, D. (2021, March). Big History: Equipping Our Children to Manage a Planet. Frontier Forum 2021. Symposium conducted at the meeting of Frontiers Media S.A.. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?index=3&list=PLpCH1XIO3lYtRELTupGHOfrbylNlPhPKR&v=JhowXxz_uAs


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