That Cartesian disdain for feeling and emotion was not, I think, restricted to the non-human world. It found expression in the 'stiff upper lip', the 'weaker sex', mental asylums, the invention and use of weapons that could could kill hundreds or even thousands at a stroke. More recently it seems to have found its apotheosis in the trans humanist cult.
Earlier in my life I used to view the belief systems and stories of indigenous and ancient civilisations as almost childish, wondering how people could believe something so obviously untrue. I had been a child of rationality, curious about how things worked, taken apart and reassembled. It's been very useful for me in mending and making things - I've saved thousands! But I have come to value metaphor and the allegoric which Iain McGilchrist contends is one of the few ways we can transcend the limitations of language to express the otherwise inexpressible. It's very possible that the legends that tribes used were not believed as fact but were accepted as they expressed important values and attitudes to the world around them. Spirits, such as the spirit of the forest, are necessarily vague entities as they deal with the non-corporeal ideas of respect and the complex interactions of the natural world.
I so appreciate this conversation. So much resonates with what I have observed in my book, Being Restorative—to be in right relationship with all beings as co-constituent cells in the body of earth. This conversation elucidates the deep harm that emanates from what I call the Original Wound—the moment when humans cede our belonging to the earth, replacing it with the arrogance that the earth belongs to us. At that point, the commodification and othering begin. We are no longer in right relationship which is to say kinship. We devolve into ownership and possession, supremacy and the deepest expressions of violence.
So much here to notice, wonder, acknowledge, and appreciate—the four verbs of being restorative.
If you're looking for books on EcoFeminism i would highly recommend "Ecofemism; feminist intersections with other animals & the earth. Edited by Carol J Adams & Lori Gruen
Before there was ecofeminism, there was Dolores LaChapelle "Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep" and "Earth Wisdom" I don't know if people read these anymore but they should.
I look forward to reading both of your books. You are right that the problems we face seem intractable at the moment. Wherever you look, the decisions being made don't seem to reflect in any way the feelings of the people, who are increasingly confused by what is going on. I'm reminded of the George Monbiot quote "We are a society of altruists, governed by psychopaths." The altruists are beginning to understand what the psychopaths are up to, but any resistance is being dealt with more and more harshly, or just ignored.
In the mid-1990s Daniel Quinn wrote about this in his Ishmael trilogy. And since he was a seminarian and worked for a while with Theillard de Chardin, he knew much more than secular people about the old and new testament. While his writings were, in some circles, pretty controversial, the bottom line of the "human story" the salvation religions drummed into us was that "The Earth was made for man (literally) and for man to rule it." So that was it. As Kate Raworth, Otto Scharmer and others that end on on a hopeful note, Quinn did, too. "Vision is the river, and we who have been changed are the flood...The world will not be changed by old minds with new programs. If the world is saved, it will be saved by new minds with no programs. " "The contagion has spread (Story of B)." Thanks, Christine and Rachel for being part of "the flood."
As one of the others commented, the awareness and respect of the interdependence of all life has apparently been part of indigenous cultures throughout history. But we were knocked off our own knowledge by our excitement over what we eventually figured out how to do with our opposable thumbs and our noggins, making gadgets none of the other animals had. Then later, that none of the other people had, and by then we were in love with ourselves. The rulers of the world still are. We should never have grown into ever larger groups where we could hide and become leaders and priests who decided that it wasn’t for anyone else to know God. Until they no longer did either.
Once again, Rachel Donald, you have given us and woven an important and mind-filling conversation. Thank you for that. I was fully present and paying attention as I listened, visualized the flow of the ideas. The book of Christine Webb will shake the world, I look forward to it. And to your book as well Rachel D. New ideas. Starting with Marx. Divine.
By pure coincidence, I am currently reading a book that touches on all of the ideas mentioned in the Planet Critical conversation, a sister work published in 2022 called "How To Be Animal: What It Means To Be Human" by Melanie Challenger. She starts the book:
"The word is now dominated by an animal that doesn't think it's an animal. And the future is being imagined by an animal that doesn't want to be an animal". It documents human exceptionalism beautifully and with academic rigor.
As an author myself and supporter of sister and brother thinkers who have put forth key ideas that I draw from or re-work, I listened for some mention of M. Challenger in this conversation. "The Arrogant Ape" is definitely akin to this previous work and takes some of the ideas to then branch into a new body of water or thesis -- nourished by the same idea sources. As a writer, thinker and activist, I believe it is so important to take care to lift up and make visible published writing that came before ours. Everyone is richer for it. It's such a wonder way to pay respect and care for each other. And educate people on the confluent rivers of thinking. Perhaps her name and work would have come up if there had been more time.
And, yes, bird song is a delightful way to create new narratives about the art and pleasure and creativity of different animals. Thank you for that M. Challenger! I just ordered a book written in 1992 called "Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song" by a
philosopher, Charles Hartshorn.
Born to sing ... what a lovely idea — for birds, opera singers, jazz singers, yodelers -- a long list of different types of creatures. Once we remember how to be animal, we might just remember how to take care of each other and our planet.
The problems persist because we aren't aspiring to and doing the buying of land, localising food, we have relationship with our co workers supermarkets and banks but not our food growing neighbour. What relationship really is, was distort and malformed by being schooled at too early an age, torn from safety, to an authoritarian meat grinder when you learn to be a them, a rat for a rat race, all the protesting and fighting it wastes valuable resourses that could build the new thing.
That Cartesian disdain for feeling and emotion was not, I think, restricted to the non-human world. It found expression in the 'stiff upper lip', the 'weaker sex', mental asylums, the invention and use of weapons that could could kill hundreds or even thousands at a stroke. More recently it seems to have found its apotheosis in the trans humanist cult.
Earlier in my life I used to view the belief systems and stories of indigenous and ancient civilisations as almost childish, wondering how people could believe something so obviously untrue. I had been a child of rationality, curious about how things worked, taken apart and reassembled. It's been very useful for me in mending and making things - I've saved thousands! But I have come to value metaphor and the allegoric which Iain McGilchrist contends is one of the few ways we can transcend the limitations of language to express the otherwise inexpressible. It's very possible that the legends that tribes used were not believed as fact but were accepted as they expressed important values and attitudes to the world around them. Spirits, such as the spirit of the forest, are necessarily vague entities as they deal with the non-corporeal ideas of respect and the complex interactions of the natural world.
The Unknowable - but not the Unfeelable.
I so appreciate this conversation. So much resonates with what I have observed in my book, Being Restorative—to be in right relationship with all beings as co-constituent cells in the body of earth. This conversation elucidates the deep harm that emanates from what I call the Original Wound—the moment when humans cede our belonging to the earth, replacing it with the arrogance that the earth belongs to us. At that point, the commodification and othering begin. We are no longer in right relationship which is to say kinship. We devolve into ownership and possession, supremacy and the deepest expressions of violence.
So much here to notice, wonder, acknowledge, and appreciate—the four verbs of being restorative.
We ar not special but our arrogance and and rather large brains makes us assert that we are
If you're looking for books on EcoFeminism i would highly recommend "Ecofemism; feminist intersections with other animals & the earth. Edited by Carol J Adams & Lori Gruen
Before there was ecofeminism, there was Dolores LaChapelle "Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep" and "Earth Wisdom" I don't know if people read these anymore but they should.
I look forward to reading both of your books. You are right that the problems we face seem intractable at the moment. Wherever you look, the decisions being made don't seem to reflect in any way the feelings of the people, who are increasingly confused by what is going on. I'm reminded of the George Monbiot quote "We are a society of altruists, governed by psychopaths." The altruists are beginning to understand what the psychopaths are up to, but any resistance is being dealt with more and more harshly, or just ignored.
In the mid-1990s Daniel Quinn wrote about this in his Ishmael trilogy. And since he was a seminarian and worked for a while with Theillard de Chardin, he knew much more than secular people about the old and new testament. While his writings were, in some circles, pretty controversial, the bottom line of the "human story" the salvation religions drummed into us was that "The Earth was made for man (literally) and for man to rule it." So that was it. As Kate Raworth, Otto Scharmer and others that end on on a hopeful note, Quinn did, too. "Vision is the river, and we who have been changed are the flood...The world will not be changed by old minds with new programs. If the world is saved, it will be saved by new minds with no programs. " "The contagion has spread (Story of B)." Thanks, Christine and Rachel for being part of "the flood."
Spinning wool offers a pre-socratic meditative practice that brings us back to the three fates and our common thread with sheep or flax.
As one of the others commented, the awareness and respect of the interdependence of all life has apparently been part of indigenous cultures throughout history. But we were knocked off our own knowledge by our excitement over what we eventually figured out how to do with our opposable thumbs and our noggins, making gadgets none of the other animals had. Then later, that none of the other people had, and by then we were in love with ourselves. The rulers of the world still are. We should never have grown into ever larger groups where we could hide and become leaders and priests who decided that it wasn’t for anyone else to know God. Until they no longer did either.
Once again, Rachel Donald, you have given us and woven an important and mind-filling conversation. Thank you for that. I was fully present and paying attention as I listened, visualized the flow of the ideas. The book of Christine Webb will shake the world, I look forward to it. And to your book as well Rachel D. New ideas. Starting with Marx. Divine.
By pure coincidence, I am currently reading a book that touches on all of the ideas mentioned in the Planet Critical conversation, a sister work published in 2022 called "How To Be Animal: What It Means To Be Human" by Melanie Challenger. She starts the book:
"The word is now dominated by an animal that doesn't think it's an animal. And the future is being imagined by an animal that doesn't want to be an animal". It documents human exceptionalism beautifully and with academic rigor.
As an author myself and supporter of sister and brother thinkers who have put forth key ideas that I draw from or re-work, I listened for some mention of M. Challenger in this conversation. "The Arrogant Ape" is definitely akin to this previous work and takes some of the ideas to then branch into a new body of water or thesis -- nourished by the same idea sources. As a writer, thinker and activist, I believe it is so important to take care to lift up and make visible published writing that came before ours. Everyone is richer for it. It's such a wonder way to pay respect and care for each other. And educate people on the confluent rivers of thinking. Perhaps her name and work would have come up if there had been more time.
And, yes, bird song is a delightful way to create new narratives about the art and pleasure and creativity of different animals. Thank you for that M. Challenger! I just ordered a book written in 1992 called "Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song" by a
philosopher, Charles Hartshorn.
Born to sing ... what a lovely idea — for birds, opera singers, jazz singers, yodelers -- a long list of different types of creatures. Once we remember how to be animal, we might just remember how to take care of each other and our planet.
We don't even know ourselves completely
The problems persist because we aren't aspiring to and doing the buying of land, localising food, we have relationship with our co workers supermarkets and banks but not our food growing neighbour. What relationship really is, was distort and malformed by being schooled at too early an age, torn from safety, to an authoritarian meat grinder when you learn to be a them, a rat for a rat race, all the protesting and fighting it wastes valuable resourses that could build the new thing.
This is something indigenous people have never stopped saying. I don’t understand why you couldn’t have brought on an Indigenous leader.
Amazing interview!
Another fascinating guest, would love to have heard more from them.
From New Mexico.
a place on this planet we all live, on be well