I mentioned in the first part of this series that within our corral, during this ceremonial agistment of our destructive relationships (or surrogacies), Psychology begins to dissolve its foundations or begins to show its very non-clinical, non-material reductionist, non-secular roots - of which Psychology has many. I have decided to shift my focus to the discussion of subjectivity, which features heavily in Psychology and has been contoured by the discipline.
As we allow the relationship of Human persons to objects, in the case of individuals to their object of obsession, it is not so far to flip this and allow the relationship of objects to Human persons and a certain amount of agency therein or making space for the ways that such relationships can alter each party. Subjectivity is not a perceptual paradigm exclusive to Humans. It’s a matter of quality not a question of who is or is not subject.
An alarm bell rings, a red light flashes, 'He's getting all anthropomorphic on us!'
I don't see a problem but I see the trouble. I am already in the habit of turning standards inside out in this series so here I go again - ‘Anthropomorphism’, as a disapproving term, is the reflexive jerking motion of someone who comes across Animism, carrying with them the well-trained eye of a disenchanted nihilist, hoping to dismiss it. Harsh words? I'll explain.
There is this sense that presuming a Human-like consciousness for beings of other species is some imposition of childish whimsy. (Where is it engraved that what we claim as our own animating-agentic inspiration has anything to do with us? What even are we? What are the parameters of a Human? Are all Humans conscious in the same way?..) I have to make a concession, that when I talk about Anthropomorphism and discuss agency of other beings I am not taking Ravens to have their own version of Disney, yet they surely tell stories. I am assuming that your dog has a sense of humour and just as you can interpret his jokes, he can interpret yours.
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Why would it be an improper perspective to take, to give the same powers of agency we afford ourselves, to others? The stuckness of this term is writ large in who would be against it.
This is not something that indigenous people, nor children, nor a self-metabolised Buddhist would worry about when speaking on the world. It's not impositional to speak of the songs of whales, a Queen bee, a beaver’s dam. These are anthropocentric terms denoting Human inventions (Are they, though?) and it may seem tedious to split definitional hairs but let me disturb things a layer deeper.
A song is rhythmic melodic transport for information (I would like to pull in Nora Bateson’s term warm data here as it speaks to the aliveness of context enmeshed information, not isolated bits) - by the inclusive notion of animacy I am exploring in this piece, a song itself is a being.
A Queen, in Human worlds (an intentional demarcation denoting the fields of influence that generate the limitations of our perceptual playgrounds), does not birth the citizenry in the biological way of a Bee but is in a sense the mother of a nation. In this way she births the national body, which is a body of bodies. The nation itself is a being.
A dam, in Beaver worlds, is not to store water for use later as is the case for a Human made dam. A Human being is not an extended organ of the body of the River when creating dams. But a Beaver is. Beavers essentially create mangroves by flooding the riverine banks, slowing the flow of the river such that it ekes out across the surrounding land. This makes homes for crustaceans, fish, insects, reptiles, birds and other mammals. Ongoingly this extends the flow of the River throughout dry spells, periods of reduced glacial melts and rains. By slowing the water down and spreading it out across the land, it is taken up by the land, and through this caress, this distraction of flow to meander at the Beaver’s gallery and invitation to know the land deeper, the entropic duties of the River are halted for a moment. This imbues the land with storage and creates reverse springs. The cascade of ecology blooming at this supposed isolated decision of Beaver’s to create dams, which create ponds that hold their homes, become food storage and a place of protection for the Beaver, suggests that it is a function of the River and the land surrounding - some kind of merging of the two in the shape of a rodent, whereby they act as an organ of both systems, improving the livelihoods of both by creating a third body which is neither and both. In this way the dam is a being through its relationship to so many other beings.
To consider that me and my little nervous system is engaged in a perceptual matrix that is completely distinct from the rest of our Earthling kin is to be a nihilist. Our eyes come from the mammalian ancestral line, our wombs from bacterial indigestion, our gut biome is the soil. Our ears are the shape of the world sounding and also the body unfolding. Our taste is a mineral and enzyme conversation. Our languages carry the same contours and landmarks as the ecologies they formed around and within.
If we are unable to say that our customs and traditions and perspectives have inter-species counterparts, it is not due to the fact of this stance but due instead to a thought exercise around being alien at home. It also depends on these notions we are supposedly inoculating the world with having purely Human origins, that is that they turn up isolated to the Human world and we are simply casting them toward the ‘Other’ place, like a netting trap made of words and bad faith. If you can give me something that is in no way produced by any other force or being and that you can say is done by Humans who are free of any microbial, energetic or divine influence - I’ll concede that I’m farting into the wind with this one.
For me, a notion that the myriad expressions of Earthly lifeways share a sense of subjectivity or that they do not, come from a similar evidential base - which is to say that we are invited to believe which ever perspective suits us. Empirically speaking it would be insanely difficult, nigh impossible, to prove a sense of subjectivity for a Nat or a wave or a cloud or deep carbon or whatever, beyond a shadow of a doubt - because the definitions, the framing, the process, the categorisation are all imprints of a belief in a de-animated, Human-centred universe.
Yet put another way, every Human culture, every ceremony, every religious text, every spiritual practice, every prayer, every pre-enlightenment painting or song carries with them the animate progenitor which is the more-than-us - Humanity has forever been shaped around this and our interoceptive keenness about our body of bodies was once obvious and common speak. More often than not it is not a false or whimsical sense but the anchored core of being our Art, Cultures and ways have spun around. Forever this has been the case. I'm not willing to dismiss every single one of my ancestors as some simple idiot. Maybe I'm being naive?
So if objects can have an impact on subjects, subjects an impact on objects (eventually generating the need for a category which has these two dancing together) and relationships can form that pass these back and forth - then how does Psychology function here? If Psychology is the study of the mind, the mind forms around relationships and associations and if these are not exclusive to Humans, then is Psychology actually the study of the ways in which objects and subjects and transjects create, maintain and disrupt relation? If so, then someone needs to tell Psychologists because they happen to be in the business of exploring dynamics of relationship within an Animated world of other-than-human agents - There are silent and unseen forces or ways shaping our bodies that are not being acknowledged. Our bodies are actually relational and not anatomical or psychological.
It behooves them to expand the scope of influences, the affective contours of who is catalysing change and onto whom and how to instruct someone as to how they approach these forces.
There are a few Psych’s (or recovering Psychologists as the case may be) who are aware that this is their role, or atleast would entertain the idea, and of the three I know of, two no longer practice. Perhaps the field is too far gone down the rabbit warren of the capitalistic crusade for The Cure, that even as it undermines itself, turns inside out and becomes a vehicle for spreading the good gospel of animacy it is simply too individual-focussed to notice what it’s doing and is liable to miss the opportunity to become a force of enchantment and regeneration, playing instead the role of capitalism’s policeman.
Thanks for reading,
Ryan
I hope this series so far has been an interesting exercise in challenging the standard shape of our worldview and re/introducing some Animism into the mix.
I see this series threading into many other subjects and undermining many more standards of thinking. If there are any subjects you can spot that could be explored with this Animism lean, please feel free to leave them in the comment section.
Thank you as always for reading. For me to grow on this platform and to spread, like good news, through the interwebs it really helps if you share, comment or like (but only if you’re being honest).
Some questions to explore and discuss below:
What could be a problem with anthropomorphising the world?
What is a supposedly inanimate object or lower creature that you speak of or to as you would a friend or family member?