Charles Darwin’s landmark book On the Origin of Species was first published on this date in 1859.
We haven’t been the same since.
As E. O. Wilson tells us, science provides “more solidly grounded answers” to life’s mysteries. Not only has the theory of evolution transformed science, it has also given us a powerful lens for examining ourselves. Sadly, we remain blind to Darwin’s foundational message, that humans are not invaders but a part of nature. This continued isolation from the natural world has dire consequences, as this recent article from Science Daily warns us:
“A new study by evolutionary anthropologists Colin Shaw (University of Zurich) and Daniel Longman (Loughborough University) argues that the pace of modern living has moved faster than human evolution can follow. According to their work, many chronic stress problems and a wide range of contemporary health concerns may stem from a mismatch between biology shaped in natural settings and the highly industrialized world people occupy today.
That means the mismatch between our evolved physiology and modern conditions is unlikely to resolve itself naturally. Instead, the researchers argue, societies need to mitigate these effects by rethinking their relationship with nature and designing healthier, more sustainable environments.”
What to do? We must recognize our relationship with nature. The places we live must be reimagined and revamped so they resemble our hunter-gatherer past. More green spaces, more walkways, less dependence on cars, more opportunities to see nature maturing and blossoming before us.
But the first, most essential step is to open our eyes and see what we truly are.
“The kids say you gotta touch grass and that’s a real thing. I just came from the forest in Japan, and I’m in awe, like, ‘What are the birds doing? What is the little bug doing on the grass?’ It’s something that was here before us and will be here when we go away.”
Earth Day reminds us there are responsibilities to being the apex predator. Many fool themselves into believing being on top means we have the right to gorge ourselves. It does not.
Others imagine we’re ghosts trapped in physical form who should dominate and use the Earth according to our will.
Those are delusions. Harmful delusions.
For one thing, Homo Sapiens’ self-serving narrative of being nature’s capstone is as fanciful as the name we gave ourselves. (Man the wise? Spare me.) Dinosaurs dominated the planet for 165 million years. Homo Sapiens has been around for about a quarter million years, and for most of that time, struggled to cling to a precarious existence.
Maybe a little prudence and humility are in order.
Instead of making choices based on other-worldly criteria –what should be, instead of what really is — maybe we should take the time to reevaluate our goals and choices so they contribute to long-term survival rather than short-term gain.
Here’s an article and some stories to spur that reevaluation:
The Barbarian and the Playwright – We’ve tried fooling ourselves about our true nature, and look where that brought us. In this essay, I suggest it’s time to look at ourselves realistically, with help from the unlikely team of Robert Ardrey and Robert E. Howard.
Hunting Ground – A fantasy tale exploring the dangers of fracking and the mindset that Earth exists to supply us with raw materials.
A Tree Amid the Wood – An inventor finds a way to meet human needs while protecting that which sustains us – if only he could remember it.
Notes from the Underground – A rock-music dystopian tale exploring what could happen to a species that fouls its own nest.
Mirrors – Earth Day shouldn’t be all doom and gloom – we as a species have some good qualities we can build on.
“Civilized man is in danger of losing all contact with the world of instinct — a danger that is still further increased by his living an urban existence in what seems to be a purely man-made environment. This loss of instinct is largely responsible for the pathological condition of contemporary culture.” Carl Jung
According to Norse mythology, all Nine Realms of the cosmos either hung from its branches, or else grew from its massive roots. As the source of cosmic structure, Yggdrasil commanded enormous respect. The Norse revered it as the giver and taker of life and order.
K.M. Weiland is one of my favorite writing coaches, and I never miss her posts. I learn something every time I check her blog. Her latest is on the craft of writing emotional fiction. She acknowledges it’s a difficult art, but there are good reasons for working to master it:
“The good news is that because fiction is an inherently emotional experience, it is well-suited to helping us access and process the very emotions we’re seeking to convey in our stories. … I recognize that my lifelong love of stories has certainly been influenced by their cathartic power to help me feel things in a safe container. For both readers and writers, stories offer the scientifically proven opportunity to expand the nervous system’s capacity to feel and process emotion—and, by extension, to experience life more expansively.”
That’s a worthy endeavor, one I’ve worked on for many years. But then came this:
“If you’re cut off from emotions, it’s because you’re cut off from your body. The act of vocally naming sensations helps promote a mind-body neural connection that makes it easier and easier to raise real-time emotional awareness.”
Absolutely. But why is this so?
The barrier to the emotional awareness that allows us to write honest, evocative fiction is the philosophical dualism that permeates the arts and sciences. Dualism asserts that mind and body are fundamentally different things unnaturally yoked together, with the rational mind trapped in an inferior, unintelligent body. That interpretation of human existence has been critiqued as “the ghost in the machine.” Charlene Spretnak, an ecowriter with compelling insights about the relationship between our bodies and the rest of nature, traces the development of dualism in her book The Resurgence of the Real:
“Rational thought could be exercised only if sealed off from ‘corrupting’ influences of the body (sensations, emotions, desires) and if properly isolated from ‘lowly’ nature. Plato felt that we, that is, our minds, are imprisoned in the dumb matter of our bodies.”
Plato believed the mind was a supernatural entity that made humans separate and above the rest of nature. Nature, according to dualism, is inherently inferior, worthy only of contempt and exploitation. Descartes cast this notion in concrete when he asserted that the mind defines humans. Sensations and emotions, rather than instant, crucial alerts from a knowing body, were regarded as confused, irrational reactions which should be ignored.
I examined the impact of dualism in my latest story, “Due Diligence.” Yes, it’s fantasy, but it gave me the freedom to explore what the unnatural separation of mind and body does to one’s ability to cope and find meaning.
The latest developments in neuroscience show us that thinking is grounded in the body. We now know much more about how neural networks in the brain store and retrieve memories. And if dualism were correct about the mind being fundamentally separate from the body, why are there so many studies confirming that physical exercisestrengthens our ability to remember and solve problems?
The art of writing is more than a craft or a hobby, it’s a path toward making oneself and the world around us a little better. I love the way Weiland put it:
“Learning how to write emotional fiction is, at its core, a journey into the heart of our shared humanity. It is not just an artistic endeavor; it’s an exploration of the human experience.”
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.”
The change of seasons means something different at different ages. There comes the point where we recognize the things that endure despite many changes. The pagan Celts, my ancestors, celebrated the autumnal equinox, when the length of night and day are roughly equal, as Mabon. Not only was it a time for hunting and harvesting, but of appreciating the return of balance. Even today, it’s a time for reflecting on what’s gone by and what we hope for.
It’s been a fine year. The grandkids are growing, and I’ve had a little luck writing and publishing. One of my stories will be published before year’s end by a publisher I’ve long admired and aspired to, and I have four submissions looking for love in the slush piles at various venues.
And I’m working on new stories. The coming of fall is a good time to reassess and rededicate. I love getting out into the wild, taking a few chances, letting myself get a little lost. I need more of that. And when I’m not stomping around in the maritime forests or desert. I also love exploring the wild places in my head and heart. There’s no more productive and exciting means of doing that than the craft and discipline of writing. Here’s to a productive and energizing fall.
“The mercy of the world is you don’t know what’s going to happen.” Wendell Berry
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” H. P. Lovecraft
“Sadness is caused by intelligence, the more you understand certain things, the more you wish you didn’t understand them.” Charles Bukowski
“A 25-year science wager has come to an end. In 1998, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that the mechanism by which the brain’s neurons produce consciousness would be discovered by 2023. Both scientists agreed publicly on 23 June, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in New York City, that it is an ongoing quest — and declared Chalmers the winner.”
Koch made the bet on his confidence that science would pinpoint the exact location in the brain that produced consciousness because of the advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which reveals changes in blood flow associated with brain activity. The wager, a case of wine, added incentive in addition to both bragging rights and the lure of discovery.
So the game was on!
As the Nature article concludes, the researchers confirmed “areas in the posterior cortex do contain information in a sustained manner,” and that “some aspects of consciousness, but not all of them, could be identified in the prefrontal cortex.” Koch admits his theories were not totally proven, and, being a scientist of his word, paid up.
Who says science isn’t entertaining?
What’s distressing, however, is how proponents of dualism are using this story as some kind of vindication. The notion that humans are unique assemblages of mind and matter and therefore outside of and superior to nature goes back to Plato, the Vedic writers, and that notorious rascal Rene Descartes. One commenter claimed Koch’s failure to prove his hypothesis as vindication that we are truly “ghosts in the machine.”
Interesting they used that term, which was coined by philosopher Gilbert Ryle in his argument against dualism. He deemed the position as a gigantic category mistake. I love his illustration: A visitor to a university may see classrooms, libraries, and other parts of the campus, but at the end of the tour, asks, “But where is the university?” not realizing the term refers to all of its components working as a unit. Similarly, the various sections of the brain handle their own functions, and we use the term “consciousness” to refer to all those functions working in harmony.
Why is this important? If our supposedly supernatural minds make us superior, all of nature is dumb matter good for nothing but exploitation. This not only imperils nature but alienates us from the world in which we live. The next step is contempt for our own bodies. A philosophy that leads to ecological ruin and rootlessness is an evil that must be exposed for what it is. And just as Koch and Chalmers could entertain and enlighten us with their little joust for science, we can enjoy stories that both inspire and force us to consider where we’re going and where we could end up.
“What is all the philosophy in the world to the joy of the beautiful swallow? Civilisations have risen and crumbled, faded into nothingness, like footprints in the desert obliterated by sand. The sweet little whispering call of my long-tailed titmice fashioning their bottle nest, so happy in the sunshine, is a wiser and more profound utterance than all the philosophy collected from the books of the world.” Henry Williamson, The Lone Swallows
M.C. Tuggle, Writer 