The right amount of weird (maybe)
A large conifer tree trunk is seen to the lefthand side of the photo. Long branches come off the tree, and other decidous trees are in the foreground.
Welcome back to this little corner of the interwebs!
As a language nerd, I try to notice ways our culture, our thinking, and our lives are shaped by (and shape) the words we use. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the word it - often used to describe most anything that’s not human (sometimes folks default to he instead). We see a tree, rock, or squirrel and refer to them as it (maybe the squirrel gets the he).
I’ve been wondering - how does it shape the way we interact with the world, when everything that’s not human becomes it? When only humans are people? What happens when humans are always subject, and everything else object?
Many cultures, across the world today and throughout time, live and breathe a deep relationality, even kinship, with other-than-human beings. Humans aren’t at the center, they aren’t smarter than everyone else. Other beings are people too - not human, but their own kind of people (bear people, tree people, stone people - so many people!).
This isn’t an anthropomorphized Disney fantasy. It’s not about turning everything cute, and tamed. Instead, it's a recognition that other beings have lives that mean something to them, are important to them, and matter in and of themselves, not just as those lives serve (or don’t) humans.
If this feels unfamiliar or strange, what kind of sidestep might it take to imagine that the ant matters to herself and her sisters? Or that this dandelion wants to grow right here, and wants to live a full life cycle - to go to seed and send the next generation out on the wind?
For me, it sometimes feels overwhelming to let these possibilities bloom. If other existences matter in this way, do I then owe them something? If they are my kin somehow, what obligations does that kinship carry? Would I need to change my behaviors - perhaps in ways that are inconvenient, uncomfortable, or even… scary?
I don’t know my friend. It’s a lot to think about. I do wonder though (and lots of people way smarter than me are wondering) - would our world be burning, and toxic, and flooded, and way too freaking hot and cold in the way it is now, if a vast swath of humanity hadn’t spent the last few hundred years actively denying their place in this larger earth family?
What if the folks we encounter in the forest, at the ocean, or in our yard became they/them instead of it (or even, maybe, us)?
How might that shift the way we see and interact with them? Noticing a crow calling from the powerline, what would it be like to say - hello, good morning? Or “what’s up?” to the worm crossing the sidewalk? How would it feel to wave back, to those leaves fluttering in the wind?
Is that too weird? Or is it maybe just the right amount of weird? Maybe it’s the kind of weird we need, if we are to make beloved this world which so cares for us, the world on which our lives depend.
If you’re interested in further exploration, some folks/resources to check out are the For the Wild podcast, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bayo Akomolafe, Ursula Le Guin, Sophie Strand, Weaving Earth, the Kinship With The More Than Human World project (as just a start).
You are also, of course, very welcome and invited to come play with these ideas in the forest, with me!
For now, I’ll leave you with this:
Everything I encounter permeates me,
washes in and out, leaving a tracery,
placing me in that beautiful paradox of being
by which I am both a solitary creature and
everyone, everything
-Susan Griffin
