Animism - what is it?

Referenced during this episode:

"Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth" by Wahinkpe Topa and Darcia Narvaez, PhD

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Transcript

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You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours. And I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the. The world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes over the prairies and the deep trees. The mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination. Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things. Mary Oliver. hello, patient friends the last couple months has been so very busy and so very full and happy. And in a lot of ways, I've had a lot of personally good things happen. I've gotten into an exercise routine. That has taken my anxiety way down. I feel like a better mother and a more connected partner. And even though I have more energy, I still haven't had the chance to sit down and concentrate on putting together and finishing this episode. So now I am here. It's finished. It's been marinating over the past couple of months and hopefully it has something in it that speaks to you and opens up your heart. I know, understand why comedians walk around carrying a little notebook because I feel like I do most of my good thinking. And reflecting while I'm sweeping up. In the kitchen or I'm making dinner, or I'm just sort of doing things around the house where my hands are busy, but my mind is open and. Thinking and kind of just wandering through thoughts. Uh, my two internal modes when I'm, when I'm doing something like that, or I'm engaged in a creative activity. Is my brain is either. Kind of full of random ephemera and reflections on the meaning of life and purpose in the universe. Or I'm doing an interview with Terry Gross. When I'm folding laundry or I'm doing something creative. I like to draw, I like to paint. And when I'm engaged in that creative activity in the back of my head, There is a Terry Gross interview happening. And so I will just sort of loop through different thoughts and reflections about the world and popular culture and philosophy. And I'm always, I've got this thing going on and there's this question that says, you know, what do you think about X, Y, and Z? And I always have a little boy saying, well, Terry, and it just sort of keeps going. So I haven't listened to a Terry Gross in a long time, but I'm sure. I'm not the only one who has a kind of chronic Terry Gross interview running in the back of their head when they're engaged in the activities of daily life. So in the spirit of that, let's dive into today's episode about animism, the title of this episode. And about my personal journey and why. And how i currently identify this title with my spiritual self and a little bit of how i got there I'm going to open today's episode with a reading that perfectly encapsulates my current spiritual beliefs. It's written by a man named Jack Forbes who was pal. Paul Hatton and Delaware Lennart bay. Uh, he lived from 1934 to 2011, and I got this excerpt from a book called restoring the kinship worldview. Indigenous voices. Introduced 28 precepts for rebalancing life on planet earth. And I'll put the title in the show notes so that if you're interested, you can go out and you can purchase the book. It's got some really good reflections in it and some excellent teachings. So this one starts. The fact of our absolute utter, complete dependence upon the earth. Is used by native teachers as a part of self-understanding. It is empirically obvious that we are not only children sucking at our earth, mother's breasts all of our lives, but that we are also mixed with and a part of that, which Europeans choose to call the environment for us. Truly. There are no surroundings. I can lose my hands and still live. I can lose my legs and still live. I can lose my eyes and still live. I can lose my hair eyebrows. He knows arms and many other things and still live. But if I lose the air, I, I die. If I lose the sun, I die. If I lose the earth, I die. If I lose the water, I die. If I lose the plants and animals, I die. All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath. Then is my so-called body. What is my real body. We are not autonomous self-sufficient beings. As European mythology teaches such ideas are based upon deductive logic derived from false assumptions. We are rooted just like the trees. But our roots come out of our nose and mouth, like an umbilical cord forever connected with the rest of the world. Our roots also extend out from our skin and from our other body cavities. Nothing that we do do we do by ourselves. We do not see by ourselves. We do not here by ourselves who do not breathe, eat, drink, defecate, piss, or fart by ourselves. We do not think dream invent or procreate by ourselves. We do not die by ourselves. That which the tree exhales I inhale. That, which I inhale the trees, inhale together, reform a circle. When I breathe, I am breathing the breath of billions of now departed trees and, plants. When trees and plants breathe, they're breathing the breath of billions of now departed humans, animals, and other peoples. As lame deer said a human being to as many things, whatever makes up the air, the earth, the herbs, the stones is also part of our bodies. Who was my mother, an egg, who was my father, a little animal called a sperm, but where did this egg and the sperm come from? They grew inside a man and inside a woman, but they had their own life paths distinct from those of the man and the woman, their bodies, that flesh my ancestor grew inside of them. And what was it? It was the earth. It was the sky, it was the sun, it was the plants and animals. We are very lucky to have so many wonderful mothers and fathers. I live in a universe. I'm a point of awareness, a circle of consciousness in the midst of a series of circles. One circle is that which we call the body. It is a universe itself full of millions of little living creatures, living their own separate Bucko dependent lives. They live fight, make love, split, and die. Independent of my consciousness. Most of the time. If some of them get disturbed or get hurt, they might tell me about it so that I can help them so that I can get them some food or scratch them or get rid of their leftovers. Another circle is all of the other things, which I am completely dependent upon. the air, the water. And so on. Another circle is all the things that feel my consciousness, the things I see, smell, hear, and so on. Another circle is the source of my dreams, consciousness, insights, gifts, or powers, ideas, and intuitions, but all of these circles. Or not really separate. They are all mutually dependent upon each other. They are all mixed up with each other. They all overlap and move in and out of each other. And that mutual dependence blurs into the circle of love, that mystery, that glue that holds all of this together. Scientists may call it attraction or affinity or magnetism or gravity. As well as affection, symbiosis, kinship, community, family, compassion, or whatever, but there is that circle, that mysterious circle that makes life possible. Well, I don't think that labeling beliefs is always necessary. Language helps put boundaries and structure in place. For other people to be able to comprehend what we believe. So this excerpt that I read was written by an indigenous author and scholar. And in my last episode, I talked about claiming and developing my own identity as an indigenous person. As a descendant of indigenous persons to the Americas, and also as a descendant of immigrants from other countries to the Americas. And I want to be clear that I don't think that you need to be an indigenous person by descent to adopt and live by this world. View of interconnection and relationship. Blood heritage and relation is used in so many dangerous and divisive ways in our human culture to separate and oppress people. But as I've said before, celebrating and remembering my personal tie to all the people who've come before me also puts me in opposition to the forces of oppression and eraser that are making an effort to. To eliminate the existence of the culture of the people that I come from. so. I think for many people. This kind of connection to the past and a connection to, or looking back to an indigenous heritage may also serve as a gateway to deeper connection to themselves and their ancestors. I also think that there's something special and different about the relationship between peoples who have lived in an area of land for many thousands of years. And I know that blood doesn't confer special powers, but alarm cultural relationship. With plants, animals and land offers a different spiritual and cultural perspective than being an interloper, bringing a philosophy that was constituted and shaped by a different environment, into a place. And I think it's really necessary. For the future of our planet and for non-indigenous people in any place to respectfully learn from the indigenous communities. That live there and to thoughtfully integrate the underlying philosophy of their beliefs and relationships to the land. In the waters and the other people that share their land without misappropriating their culture. They're indigenous people in every area of the earth who have insights into how to live sustainably Henry generatively with the earth as a partner. And not just in an extractive exploitative fashion, wherever you are, look into the beliefs and practices of people. Who've been there for millennia, for inspiration. Look back at your own ancestors for practices that treated the world and the earth with a more reciprocal attitude. As I've done more reading and reflection and exploration. Uh, various spiritual experiences I've had throughout the years. I've settled. On the label of Neo animist for myself. This means that I believe. The animals, plants, oceans, streams, rocks, mountains, the planet itself. Are sentient beings. People worthy of respect. As I once said to my friend who asked me what I believed. And was echoed by my reading today, I contain a galaxies worth, have living viruses and bacteria. And yet the whole of me is sentient and aware. The earth is infinitely more complicated than me. And so why would it not be sentient itself? Even if I can't understand its tensions. Or comprehend it. That doesn't mean that it could not exist. I believe that all of these beings. Our people and worthy of respect. They are at least my equals and in many cases, my elders, and I understand that. I have a relational obligation to other beings, not just humans that I share this planet with. I that means I am not more morally significant as a human being. That any of the other lives that surround me? I am not given food, shelter, air, and water by my relatives who are plants, animals. Fungi bacteria and viruses for nothing. I have obligations. To give back in various ways to the cousins, aunts and uncles who break, open the earth, purify my water, give their bodies to me for food and break down my waste. I am dependent on them for my existence and their people have been on this planet for far longer than mine. When I was younger, I felt that because we're so destructive that human beings had no role on this earth. That we were, we should have just, we should just leave nature alone and retreat to cities and try and kind of preserve. Islands of wildness for other creatures. But now after reading more coming from ecologists and indigenous ethnobotanist and understanding what ecology is and how interconnected our whole planet is. I realized that we do have a beneficial role on the earth, even if we've largely forgotten how to play that role. And we've given free reign to the most destructive and selfish impulses of our kind. And as Jack Forbes writes in the extract. I am not separate from the life around me. I share molecules with every part of this earth. The air around me is not empty. It's filled with viruses, bacteria. Spores molecules of elements, all being traded. And shared between me and other beings on this planet. I believe very strongly that it is important to leave behind the dualistic thinking that separates my human world from the natural Will World I found a beautiful passage in a book I'm reading called a natural history of the Senses by. Diane Ackerman. That speaks very eloquently to this understanding of the world. And it goes. Without thinking we often speak of an empty sky. But the sky has never empty in a mere ounce of air. There are 1000 billion trillion gyrating Adams made up of oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, each M in Azure, you have electrons, quirks, and ghostly neutrinos. Sometimes we Marvel at how calm the day is. Or how still the night yet there is no stillness in the sky or anywhere else where life and matter meet the air is always vibrant and a glow full of volatile gases. Staggering spores, dust viruses, fungi, and animals, all stirred by a skirling and relentless wind. There are active fliers like butterflies, birds, bats, and insects who apply the air roads. And there are passive fliers, like autumn leaves, pollen, or milkweed pods, which just float. Beginning at the earth and stretching up in all directions. The sky is the thick twitching realm in which we live. When we say that our distant ancestors crawled out onto the land we forget to add that they really moved from one ocean to another from the upper fathoms of water to the deepest fathoms of air that excerpt is so beautiful to me because it encompasses. Exactly that feeling that humans are inextricably a part of nature. We evolved on this planet. We shared DNA with every living thing on this planet. Thus, there is only nature, more or less impacted by human beings and operating in the dualistic motive, thinking that there's the human world. And then there's just that natural world kind of out there. Leads to the idea that we just need to kind of preserve enough little spots of less human impacted nature. To be safe when in fact we need to rethink our whole relationship to the living beings and to the living planet that we, evolved together with and realize that we cannot segregate ourselves out from other beings. Or duck our responsibilities and obligations to give back to them. I also want to say that I am not trying to romanticize indigenous relationships with the earth and with animals and plants and around us, obviously human beings are human beings and indigenous communities today. And in previous times there were selfish people and there was conflict and there was deaths and there was famine and there were disagreements and anger. And so i don't want people to take from this that i think that indigenous people have some sort of mystical internal connection to the natural world so i know that's a big danger whenever people start to talk about indigenous communities broadly but I do think that many of the indigenous people in the Americas prior to contact and prior to colonization, And even now I'm surviving in cultures where people are really dedicated to trying to preserve cultural ways of understanding. I think that there is a very strong idea about reciprocity and relationship with the earth and the people around them. And this is an opposition to our current cultural belief and the kind of Christian Western view of separation and human superiority. So I believe that human beings definitely have a role on this earth. We've just forgotten our place. And there is no part of our planet. That's untouched by humans and our activity. There's garbage in the deepest part of the ocean and microplastics in the rain and pollution and the highest and most remote mountain tops that people haven't maybe even ever walked on. Human caused climate change and its effects are all around us. Currently I'm sitting in Chicago, Illinois. And at the time I initially recorded this, it was the middle of February. More than a month before the beginning of spring. And it was 50 degrees and sunny, and we had had several weeks of this very temperate weather. During a time. When it's supposed to be freezing. So we know that there's rapid change coming. We're seeing massive flooding risk, seeing all of the effects that scientists who studied. Studied climate change warned us about. And I learned that actually those warnings go back to the early part of the 19 hundreds and that we have just turned a cultural blind eye to this for so long, and now the effects are here and it's our fault. And it's our obligation and our responsibility as individuals. As a culture as a species to do something about This not just for ourselves. And our children, but to all of the plants and animals and other species. Who depend on this planet for their lives. My spiritual understanding of the planet as alive and aware of the personhood of other living beings on this planet. Is partially underpinned my modern science. I don't think that it would be a controversial statement that the science of biology and ecology supports the view of a world where animals, plants, trees, bacteria, and viruses all exist in a rich tapestry. Of cooperation, struggle, communication and competition. We know that birds and other animals have language and culture. We know that like in bacteria and fungi digest rock to create soil that provides the basis of life where my views diverge and move beyond the scientific understanding of these processes is to emphasize a relational view of my obligations and duties to those other beings, as well as a moral view. The deemphasizes human importance and centrality to the story of life on Earth to put it simply, I think the modern Western cultural and spiritual view of life is like a pyramid or a cone. With humans as the superior organism on top and all other living beings below. And if our culture considers the environment at all, Uh, outside of plants and bacteria, et cetera. It's. It's as just dead material that can and should be manipulated by human people. As we choose. My current view is a flattening of that and a web and interlocking circles of existence and purpose and meaning that of which humans are apart, but we're not the center. We're not the pinnacle. We're not the only thing that matters in that vibrating web of existence. Even though we might want to view it as separate. It's not, we're a part of it and extra cuddly. Now in this Western cultural conception. Of spiritual view of life as a pyramid or a Cone Cohn. The other living beings are really only considered significant in so far as they can be used for food or as a commodity. They are denied and inherent worth just to, just for being who and what that they are. And we like to emphasize our human uniqueness and construct, elaborate arguments to demonstrate our superiority. But I felt like the more I read about the behavior of other animals and the interlocking and complex world of fungi and plants. The less exceptional humans became. Our base skillset is not unique among animals, the lengths to which we've taken some of our gifts. And the combination of skills that we have as humans is interesting and impressive. But I don't think that just sending rockets into space makes us automatically the best or most important species on the planet. We can achieve extraordinary things. But I think that we frequently forget if not always, that we don't do it alone. And I don't just mean that in the cultural sense of everybody stands on the shoulders of everybody else and that community is important. We do it as a species by using thousands, millions of other species and beings to accomplish our. Our accomplishments. And we do it without thought or regard to their own right. To develop and live in harmony with the rest of our world. So I've read a lot of books and articles over the years that have tender, shaped, FIS, personal view, but there, but here are four that really stand out in my mind. That helped me to see our shared personhood with other animals and plants. One is significant others too, is becoming wild. How animals learn to be animals? Three is gifts of the Crow. And the fourth one is entangled life. When I looked up significant others online, it looks like the only one I can find is by Armistead Moffitt mopping. But the one I have is significant others. The ape human continuum. And the quest for human nature by craig stanford I find articles and books about non-human culture. Uh non-human animal culture in particular to be very interesting. Sting. And culture is vital to our survival. And also there's our cousins in the animal world must develop a culture for their species. They must learn their land and their place to be successful. And for most species, a large percentage of that cultural transmission happens from their elders in community and through play just like humans. For example, orangutans teach their babies over 200 edible and medicinal plants. In addition to how to build shelters and construct umbrellas. When we lose wild populations we lose that cultural knowledge and even if those animals exist in sues, they're functionally extinct. I don't think that it would be a stretch to say that in our evolution and throughout our history, that we might have used that animal culture to inform our own. Um, our own development and our own, survival. So I can see that it would probably be something that if we arrived at a new place as a group of humans, We might look around at the other animals and see what they're eating and see what plants they're consuming. And maybe take that as a cue to try those plants in certain ways to discover new properties, new food plants, or new dangers. And I don't think that would be a very radical statement to make that we would look to the other animals around us for cues of things that we might need to try or might want to avoid. Primates are not the only ones who have culture who have language, many others also have this cetaceans, whales and dolphins have complex language. They ask and provide help to people. Uh, elephants more than they're dead and they also have language. All of those, uh, those animals all play, corvids are really intelligent. They have language. They can engage in trades with human beings. They give gifts and recognition and in trade for food. And. A lot of those can actually recognize themselves in the mirror as individuals. Some of them use tools. Just like humans and yet we still deny them personhood and individual rights I think that astute listeners will probably point out that humans are very quick to depersonalize other members of our own species. We torture, kill and dominate human people. So even though that's true. I don't think that that detracts from the urgent need to expand out our understanding of personhood beyond our species. Denying our shared personhood with the living beings around us is isolating and damaging spiritually, psychologically, and culturally human beings. And I think that it is one of the things at the core of our profound disregard for our environment and the environmental crisis that we're experiencing. Modern humans have been on this planet for only 500,000 years or so the cultures that we are thoughtlessly destroying are much bolder in some cases millions of years old and yet we as humans blindly believe that we are the pinnacle of creation obviously, there are a lot of layers and complexities to why we're at this point in our culture. And with the climate crisis, I'm sure that historical books can be written. That would blame it on the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago, or just the discovery of fossil fuels 150 years ago. I'm sure there are compelling arguments to make about why we're in this cultural crisis. Of depression of violence. Of meaninglessness. Um, but I think that for me, from my perspective, from a spiritual perspective, I think a major cause of this crisis of connection, respect, and environmental destruction. Is Christianity and the way in which modern Christianity influences our cultural beliefs about the value of our physical bodies. Uh, Our relationship with the earth and other living beings and our relationship with the whole material world quote unquote I'll expand more on why I believe this in part three of my series on animism. Uh, but for now, let me see that. I I'll just say that no part of our culture is free from the spiritual influence of Christianity and its doctrines of separation, scarcity and apocalyptic. Awesome. And even if you identify as an agnostic or an atheist, you're still surrounded and permeated with Christian spiritual values that have migrated into core pillars of even secular society. Uh, so I'm going to talk, not just about why I have actively chosen not to be a Christian, but also why I have actively chosen not to just identify myself as spiritual, but not religious. Or agnostic or an atheist so i think all of that is folded into the discussion of christianity and why i chose not to be christian So I don't want to fall into the trap of just defining my beliefs in opposition to Christianity. And I know that there are lots of conscientious Christians out there who are concerned about the climate crisis and concerned about the meaninglessness and the violence in our, in our culture. Then community. Um, but I, I do want to say. What my experience has been spiritually in this journey toward animism and i think because the christian had gemini is so strong in our culture that it's important for me to explicitly address why i am choosing to um to seek and to construct my beliefs outside of that umbrella and my next episode, I'm going to be talking more about what living my animist values means to me. And how I'm taking this talk about connection and personhood. And applying it in my life and in my everyday life, in my relationships with my children. And my lived, my lived experience out here in the world. So I hope you stick around for that. Thank you for listening to my podcast. And I hope that we can feel the connection with the living land around us, with the animals and plants. That surround us and that nourish us and make our lives possible. And so I wish you well in your journey, blessings on your journey. And until next time Thank. thank you