When I sat in my rocker yesterday evening I was distracted by a persistent, up-lilting “Tweeet! Tweeeet! Tweeeet!” I’m used to a few quick ones when I water the hanging fern where the house finches have built a nest. Normally there’s a light squeal as the mom flies away as a distraction. But this time the sounds were more emphatic. First the soft maroon-colored male popped onto the chain of the plant beside it; in an instant the female alighted on the adjacent chains and both chirped firmly. It took me a few minutes to realize the youngins have hatched.
Were they chiding the babes to keep quiet, or telling me about the new brood? Or both? I recently re-read “Becoming Animal” by David Abram, a very intriguing and insightful author. He proposes we are missing a crucial, life-giving rapport and much-needed wisdom by minimizing our communication with other life forms. It’s a radical concept, with far-reaching possibilities, and the failure to make this vital connection has contributed to our terrible environmental circumstances.
We’re familiar and accept dialogue with our pets, but in our culture we’re bound to get odd looks if we dare listen (or worse, speak) to wild critters. Those of us who spend time in our gardens (which is very different from “maintaining a lawn”) might occasionally make casual conversation with a random butterfly that floats a onto our hat, a beetle we dig up, or spider that crawls out; the gnats or groundhogs might receive a few choice words; we may even offer some supportive comments to a seedling struggling to grow. But few of us have the courage to publicly discourse with bugs, trees, rivers or the land that sustains us.
Yet in fact, in the history of humans, a case can be made that modern society is the odd one out. My mother used to say of my dad “He hears what he wants to hear” and this seems generally true for us all. How can we hear what we are not listening to? This is exacerbated if we have not learned (or more accurately, our culture has forgotten) the many dialects of the more-than-human world, so we mostly tune out the chorus we’re immersed within.
“Sensory perception is the silken web that binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem.” D. Abram
Our science acknowledges our senses filter out sensations, but then we ignore the implications and consequences of what we are missing. Consider that “Never having separated their sentience from their sensate bodies—having little reason to sequester their intelligence in a separate region of their skull where it might dialogue steadily with itself—many undomesticated animals, when awake, move in a fairly constant dialogue not with themselves but with their surroundings.”
For sure our “human-focused” brains have offered many conveniences in communicating, like me sharing this via this medium. It’s fairly established that in direct encounters with other humans, 80% of our communication is nonverbal. (It’s easy to identify the many missteps and to critique all the issues digital texting and social media promotes!) Still we rarely have bothered to assess the ledger of what’s gained by ease and speed vs what we lose through these technological wonders. In broader strokes, the net losses in terms of our relationship to the planet are becoming terrifyingly obvious.
Cultures which are not (or minimally) reliant upon writing as a means of communicating, sometimes referred to as oral cultures, generally site humans within ecosystems, and further, appreciate everything as holding, or a manifestation of, “intelligence.” To me it feels the height of arrogance for us to define “intelligence” in such a way that it narrowly confines the idea to humans.
Sometimes folks like to romanticize this into certain things or species having special wisdom; or another compromise is allotting gradations of smarts, of course humans at the pinnacle and then steps down by some abstract measurement. But I feel both miss that we exist as manifestations of Consciousness, not as beings that possess or “have” consciousness. The latter seems built on an a flimsy premise and false foundation. I’ve never felt comfortable with the arbitrary definitions of our culture’s science that attempt to pin down what is “alive” and what’s “inert,” or what is sentient and what isn’t.
A malformed root is our notion we are separate. It seems more consistent to me that if I view all that exists as interwoven and impermanent, then the very concept of “things” needs to be reconsidered. Is it valid to call a tree an isolated “thing” when the integrated mycelium network and micro-ecosystem of life within the surrounding topsoil are all sustaining it in a mutually essential, ongoing exchange? Are the cells in each “thing” (our body, a sesame seed, algae) more “alive” than the relational aliveness of an ecosystem or planet or star or galaxy as a whole? Is this energy holding spacious atoms together any less vital than the energies within a cell? What are the boundaries of thing-ness?
I appreciate our sciences create convenient categories and divisions of various types for practical purposes. There are pragmatics to sustaining life. But it also seems our values ought to influence our conduct, and if we are inter-being with other life, how we treat it reflects how we are treating our selves.
I’m also aware there are huge limitations and a degree of hypocrisy in attempting to articulate some of the faults in our subject/object way of treating the world, through our language which is based upon nouns (aka: things). Categories and labels and words are useful tools; the thing is, they should not be mistaken for reality. Reality is an indivisible, unquantifiable, timeless whole; in spiritual terms: “God”, “Consciousness”, “Awareness.”
We constantly apply categories and names, because having known identities gives us a sense of control: to humans, animals, plants, mountains, rivers, storms, galaxies—essentially all of what we know and define as “things.” But we tend to mistakenly assume this makes them fixed and self-contained; even as all that we can know is vibrating and affecting all else. So while we are constantly in exchange with and responding to the energies expressed in all our interwoven experiences, generally we refuse to even acknowledge our continuous, unconscious rapport.
Yet most “un-modernized” cultures view human life in relation to this world (and the cosmos) as an ongoing dynamic exchange. For me this fits more neatly with our understanding of contemporary physics, and somewhat ironically, validates our scientific understanding. The crucial point is that we already exist in a dynamic relationship with the world (and universe), so, in a sense, we are already “communicating” with non-human forms. The crux of the matter is the arrogant notion we like to insist communication must be in our culturally-ingrained “language.” But this is like assuming if someone speaks French and you only speak English, they must not be capable of speaking! It also fails to consider all the nonverbal means of communication!
Only in the last few decades have we put in the time and effort to studying how various animals communicate without presuming it must be less sophisticated than us. The nascent beginnings in this fertile field have focused on “social animals” (elephants, wolves, orcas, etc—of course because these are more “like us”) and even so they reveal elaborate hierarchies, emotional discrepancies, and personalities as robust as humans. The key was we needed humble and patient researchers, willing to take the time to listen and learn a non-human language. Accepting the findings breaks down walls of human-specialness (a foundational aspect of several major religious institutions—hence its relatively recent and still hesitant acceptance). Excitedly it’s begun to expand into all sorts directions as we look into and explore with more open-minds communicative capacities in the world of fungi, insects, and plants, as well as interspecies exchange.
Our linear-minded, writing-based society required such validation, but embracing the full implications still seems far off. I suspect because it rattles almost all aspects of our society, which has long been a way of living that views all non-human life solely as a resource for us to use. If we humans are within it, and only as important as all other forms, it deflates so many concepts of ego and power that are the bedrock of the modern way of life. Yet it takes the briefest glance, through the eyes of our own science, to recognize where this guide-map of “humans as sole possessors of intelligence” has brought us: suicide by ecocide.
I don’t know if our modern culture can accept and adapt to a less human-focused society. I only know I’m content and evermore eager to be open to absorbing the language of the sparrows, the trees, and the landscape, rivers, and winds into my being, where it resonates and vitalizes me without a need for words and explanations.
Were they chiding the babes to keep quiet, or telling me about the new brood? Or both? I recently re-read “Becoming Animal” by David Abram, a very intriguing and insightful author. He proposes we are missing a crucial, life-giving rapport and much-needed wisdom by minimizing our communication with other life forms. It’s a radical concept, with far-reaching possibilities, and the failure to make this vital connection has contributed to our terrible environmental circumstances.
We’re familiar and accept dialogue with our pets, but in our culture we’re bound to get odd looks if we dare listen (or worse, speak) to wild critters. Those of us who spend time in our gardens (which is very different from “maintaining a lawn”) might occasionally make casual conversation with a random butterfly that floats a onto our hat, a beetle we dig up, or spider that crawls out; the gnats or groundhogs might receive a few choice words; we may even offer some supportive comments to a seedling struggling to grow. But few of us have the courage to publicly discourse with bugs, trees, rivers or the land that sustains us.
Yet in fact, in the history of humans, a case can be made that modern society is the odd one out. My mother used to say of my dad “He hears what he wants to hear” and this seems generally true for us all. How can we hear what we are not listening to? This is exacerbated if we have not learned (or more accurately, our culture has forgotten) the many dialects of the more-than-human world, so we mostly tune out the chorus we’re immersed within.
“Sensory perception is the silken web that binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem.” D. Abram
Our science acknowledges our senses filter out sensations, but then we ignore the implications and consequences of what we are missing. Consider that “Never having separated their sentience from their sensate bodies—having little reason to sequester their intelligence in a separate region of their skull where it might dialogue steadily with itself—many undomesticated animals, when awake, move in a fairly constant dialogue not with themselves but with their surroundings.”
For sure our “human-focused” brains have offered many conveniences in communicating, like me sharing this via this medium. It’s fairly established that in direct encounters with other humans, 80% of our communication is nonverbal. (It’s easy to identify the many missteps and to critique all the issues digital texting and social media promotes!) Still we rarely have bothered to assess the ledger of what’s gained by ease and speed vs what we lose through these technological wonders. In broader strokes, the net losses in terms of our relationship to the planet are becoming terrifyingly obvious.
Cultures which are not (or minimally) reliant upon writing as a means of communicating, sometimes referred to as oral cultures, generally site humans within ecosystems, and further, appreciate everything as holding, or a manifestation of, “intelligence.” To me it feels the height of arrogance for us to define “intelligence” in such a way that it narrowly confines the idea to humans.
Sometimes folks like to romanticize this into certain things or species having special wisdom; or another compromise is allotting gradations of smarts, of course humans at the pinnacle and then steps down by some abstract measurement. But I feel both miss that we exist as manifestations of Consciousness, not as beings that possess or “have” consciousness. The latter seems built on an a flimsy premise and false foundation. I’ve never felt comfortable with the arbitrary definitions of our culture’s science that attempt to pin down what is “alive” and what’s “inert,” or what is sentient and what isn’t.
A malformed root is our notion we are separate. It seems more consistent to me that if I view all that exists as interwoven and impermanent, then the very concept of “things” needs to be reconsidered. Is it valid to call a tree an isolated “thing” when the integrated mycelium network and micro-ecosystem of life within the surrounding topsoil are all sustaining it in a mutually essential, ongoing exchange? Are the cells in each “thing” (our body, a sesame seed, algae) more “alive” than the relational aliveness of an ecosystem or planet or star or galaxy as a whole? Is this energy holding spacious atoms together any less vital than the energies within a cell? What are the boundaries of thing-ness?
I appreciate our sciences create convenient categories and divisions of various types for practical purposes. There are pragmatics to sustaining life. But it also seems our values ought to influence our conduct, and if we are inter-being with other life, how we treat it reflects how we are treating our selves.
I’m also aware there are huge limitations and a degree of hypocrisy in attempting to articulate some of the faults in our subject/object way of treating the world, through our language which is based upon nouns (aka: things). Categories and labels and words are useful tools; the thing is, they should not be mistaken for reality. Reality is an indivisible, unquantifiable, timeless whole; in spiritual terms: “God”, “Consciousness”, “Awareness.”
We constantly apply categories and names, because having known identities gives us a sense of control: to humans, animals, plants, mountains, rivers, storms, galaxies—essentially all of what we know and define as “things.” But we tend to mistakenly assume this makes them fixed and self-contained; even as all that we can know is vibrating and affecting all else. So while we are constantly in exchange with and responding to the energies expressed in all our interwoven experiences, generally we refuse to even acknowledge our continuous, unconscious rapport.
Yet most “un-modernized” cultures view human life in relation to this world (and the cosmos) as an ongoing dynamic exchange. For me this fits more neatly with our understanding of contemporary physics, and somewhat ironically, validates our scientific understanding. The crucial point is that we already exist in a dynamic relationship with the world (and universe), so, in a sense, we are already “communicating” with non-human forms. The crux of the matter is the arrogant notion we like to insist communication must be in our culturally-ingrained “language.” But this is like assuming if someone speaks French and you only speak English, they must not be capable of speaking! It also fails to consider all the nonverbal means of communication!
Only in the last few decades have we put in the time and effort to studying how various animals communicate without presuming it must be less sophisticated than us. The nascent beginnings in this fertile field have focused on “social animals” (elephants, wolves, orcas, etc—of course because these are more “like us”) and even so they reveal elaborate hierarchies, emotional discrepancies, and personalities as robust as humans. The key was we needed humble and patient researchers, willing to take the time to listen and learn a non-human language. Accepting the findings breaks down walls of human-specialness (a foundational aspect of several major religious institutions—hence its relatively recent and still hesitant acceptance). Excitedly it’s begun to expand into all sorts directions as we look into and explore with more open-minds communicative capacities in the world of fungi, insects, and plants, as well as interspecies exchange.
Our linear-minded, writing-based society required such validation, but embracing the full implications still seems far off. I suspect because it rattles almost all aspects of our society, which has long been a way of living that views all non-human life solely as a resource for us to use. If we humans are within it, and only as important as all other forms, it deflates so many concepts of ego and power that are the bedrock of the modern way of life. Yet it takes the briefest glance, through the eyes of our own science, to recognize where this guide-map of “humans as sole possessors of intelligence” has brought us: suicide by ecocide.
I don’t know if our modern culture can accept and adapt to a less human-focused society. I only know I’m content and evermore eager to be open to absorbing the language of the sparrows, the trees, and the landscape, rivers, and winds into my being, where it resonates and vitalizes me without a need for words and explanations.
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