Anthropomorphization?

I sat on my garden swing, my body swaying to & fro.

moving back & forth through soft bird sounds and golden late night summer sun rays.

As my body gently rocked forward & back it was jostling something open in mind.

Something I had read a week earlier on a friend’s Facebook page had irked me in some way, it had lingered and niggled at me all week, and I finally decided it was time to dig deeper to understand…

The post was an article about how Trees befriend certain specific other Trees, sending nutrients and other things to their friends. The article talked about the communication and connection amongst Trees.

My friend, someone I actually quite like and usually agree with, had commented that this was obvious anthropomorphism – that trees didn’t have friends and couldn’t choose where they sent their nutrients, that the chemicals released when they were under attack weren’t signals to other trees to warn them. This was human bias trying to make nature be more human-like. This friend is someone who works in Nature conservancy, so I thought it was a bit of an odd stance.

I read this and something in me immediately felt off…but as I live in a sensory way, the journey from experiencing & understanding to being able to articulate is long…very long.

It takes me a lot longer to wrap my words around an understanding than most people, which is why I need a good deal of contemplation time. The journey to wording is inordinately long for me.

As the rhythm of the swinging lulled my lingering irritation, what came forth was a series of confusion and questions.

What EXACTLY are human-specific only traits? What characteristics belong only to humans that would lead us to think that communication and choice are solely humanistic?

It couldn’t be memory…I recall reading studies about Crows holding grudges for years; about animals (fawn, whales, shark, squirrels) who were helped by humans, and then came back to visit those humans each year…clearly this is memory, gratitude and…I think a sign of friendship.

Compassion and choice aren’t human-specific at all. I think of the study where a previously caged Raven helped another Raven escape before getting readily available food; or the study of healthy rats who helped an injured rat to safety.

What about the ability to emote? Is that humanistic as well? Nope! I recall studies about how mice will choose non-drugged water when they have a community of other mice, or a dog’s tail wildly thumping when their human is near (surely if ever that were a sign of love it would be that?!).

How about curiosity and play belonging solely to humans? Damn, not that one either as I think back to last week when a fawn came up to me and we had a few moments of play together. Or look at any dog who is just itching to play…fox cubs clearly play together…and so on.

Hmmm…

Well, what about a sense of family and responsibility? Ahhh, just look at any mama, bear or otherwise, protecting, teaching, caring – all family traits, traits of responsibility.

The sweet breeze blows through me rocking me back & forth on that swing as I wrestle with this concept of anthropocentric, which posits that humankind is the central or most important element of existence, especially as opposed to animals. What a weird blind paradigm we live in.

As I sit on my swing watching the hummingbirds playfully dive around each other, and then take a few moments to drink from the flowers in the yard, I sit even more perplexed by this concept of anthropromophization…

When I sit and truly watch and listen with Nature, the only thing that I can see that would be truly human is the ability to abstractly think, to think of something that is not in this moment, to create a story around that thought, which then becomes a belief, and then to use that belief as a weapon (to separate, divide, and then to say something or someone else is less-than).

We use these beliefs as weapons and to create a way of thinking that implies a fundamental hierarchy.

It is the same paradigm that says that one gender is superior, more worthy than another, that one colour of skin is better than others.

It is the same paradigm that says someone with money is more divine and righteous.

There was a time when we humans used our beliefs as weapons by saying that animals don’t feel anything, that one gender isn’t capable, or that a colour of skin meant no soul?? Is this not that same paradigm but just a different expression of it?

Are we doing this with plants? I think back to the original point of my contemplation: Trees having choice.

And then I think of the studies about how plants do better with certain music than others, whether that’s from the vibration or a process called cytoplasmic.

I think about how when plants are being attacked by predators they will release compounds into their environments to warn other plants nearby.

And I think about my own interactions with the plants in my house: they communicate, not in English or words, but there is sentience, there is life…

How do we know if plants have choice, friendships, if they emote, or if they struggle? Just because it’s not in a way that we can (currently) understand, it is lesser-than?

We call it “animism” to describe the notion that beings other than humans have souls, personality, and spirit. But to me this idea that we humans get to decide whether something has a soul or spirit, whether it is alive and sentient, is hubris of the highest order.

Humans are so quick to assume that something has to fit into the way we understand things to be capital-t True. Which is odd, when we are the ones studying based on the parameters that we set, which are based on what we experience, so of course there’s a huge bias and limitation to that!! It’s so obvious…and yet not! Is that not truly what anthropromiphization is? That all things are measured against humans?

You don’t get to vote yourself the best. How ridiculous is that?

As I sit swaying in the breeze, the golden grasses and my swing in time with each other, the soft light dipping behind the mountain.

And I’m still as confused as when I started this contemplation.

But now that confusion is clear to me, the confusion has shifted: it’s no longer the confusion of the niggling inside of me about the post. I find myself shaking my head at my species mates as I get up off the swing, setting down the contemplation.

How much we don’t see in this colonial, Capitalism paradigm…