Unseen Beings (Erik Jampa Andersson)
OVERVIEW
How do we solve our current ecological crisis? The climate change, the coral bleaching, the deforestation… the Great Pacific garbage patch?! How do we solve the rampant, profit-driven commodification and exploitation of the natural world? Maybe by taking shorter showers, buying local, or going vegan? Erik Jampa Andersson argues it will take something far more revolutionary to overcome our current “dogma of disregard.” Reducing our consumption and living more ‘sustainably’ is still geared toward the goal of protecting our ‘resources’ for future use, and that’s the problem: our anthropocentrism, our human-centric worldview. We treat nature as a mere backdrop (maybe a place to visit on vacation), and we view the natural world and its occupants as objects for our use. We have learned to unsee everything but Homo sapiens, have come to regard man as separate, special, and entitled, and have upheld man’s desires as ultimate and sovereign. In Unseen Beings: How We Forgot the World Is More Than Human, Andersson challenges us to dismantle this lethal (and mostly delusional) worldview, and to instead re-orient ourselves within the natural world (of which we have always been a part). He argues that what’s required is a radical shift in our mentality, even going so far as to call it a necessary change to our mythology… the one that tells us we are exceptional and that the world was made for us. As such, this book is part history of anthropocentrism and part re-enchantment with nature. “Recovery is not a matter of saving the world, but transforming our relationship with it.” Andersson posits that such a transformation would indeed be a recovery – a recovery of our primal desire for engagement, connection, and embeddedness; a re-situating of ourselves within “the full symphonic grandeur of the living world.”
Now, let me tell you why I loved this book as a mortal atheist, and why I think it has important messages for other secular materialists.
What’s your mythology?
It was John Vervaeke who first convinced me that even atheists have myths, and the myth under fire here is our anthropocentric story – that man is entitled to dominion of the world, that man is the only “ensouled” being, and that man is exceptional. This anthropocentrism legitimizes exploitation and colonization, it tells us that only our desires matter and that we are the supreme authority on earth. We could, of course, tell ourselves a different story, and that’s what Andersson argues is necessary to remedy our situation. It may not even be a new mythology that we need – it could instead be returning to an older mythology, one where man was forced to acknowledge the natural world and his place in it if he wanted to survive (you could make the case that that was the more functional mythology, given our current predicament). So, whether you’re religious or non-religious, your culture is full of mythologies that you enact… and if you fail to recognize and examine them, then you are trapped inside them like everyone else.
What Unseen Beings also explores is the role that religion has played in spreading the mythology of anthropocentrism. If as an atheist or other secular planetary participant you really are trying to break free of religion, you should acknowledge how it has been central in sanctifying the disregard for the planet, has been central in setting human beings apart as the only special and entitled beings, to the detriment of every other being. Consider also that science continues to demonstrate that plants and animals have sentience, have goals and purposes, and are more alike to us than we think (did you know that there are some plants that can ‘see?’ I don’t know why I’m stunned by that discovery).
It’s worth pondering on which mythology of man you want for yourself – one that is destructive, arrogant, and deeply religious, or one that is thoughtful, humble, and more congruent with science. (If you still need help choosing, consider that only one of them is conducive to our continued survival on this planet).
Secular thoughts on “animism”
Let’s talk more about the mythologies our ancestors used to occupy, the ones that invested us in the more-than-human world. Our hunter-gatherer forebearers considered themselves deeply embedded in nature and had important relationships with non-human beings (as friend, foe, or food). Their existential identity was grounded in an essential recognition and appreciation for the agency and sentience that surrounded them. “This relational approach to the living world is what most scholars now call ‘animism.’” Our ancestors were animists, not because they had unsophisticated ideas about plants and animals, but because recognizing the sentience around them was critical to their survival. If you distill animism down to “a paradigm of more-than-human relationship,” or even an evolutionary adaptation that grounds the acknowledgement that plants and animals are sensate… then it’s obviously true. Andersson would prefer animism rendered not as a religion or system of ‘belief,’ but something that fundamentally shapes your relationship with a world that is animated and alive.
Now, as a materialist/naturalist, I would not extend animism to a paradigm of all living and non-living things possessing some sort of spiritual/immortal essence or soul (because then I am departing from reality). But it does seem plain to me that the natural world is animated and alive and sentient, and that we mostly live our lives as if it is not. It also seems plain to me that re-incorporating that understanding into our existential identity would compel us more to mutual care and compassion for the beings around us. I’m also intrigued by Andersson’s suggestion that we be more flexible in defining a “being,” which we usually take to mean some individual unit that possesses consciousness. I’m attracted to the idea that we should expand the definition to include holobionts… ecological units that may not possess any unified sentience but are comprised of interconnected sentient parts. A forest is a holobiont, a river is a holobiont, and a human is a holobiont – we could, then, conceive of forests as beings and rivers as beings in the same way that humans are beings (without the singular self-awareness). If all the plants and animals and fungi and microbes in a forest depend on each other for survival, then there’s something to be said for granting personhood (or being-hood, if you prefer) to the forest, for protecting the interests of the forest with the recognition that all the sentience it contains is dependent on the integrity of that whole. I wonder if this expansion of a “being” to something beyond an individual sentience might encourage re-enchantment with nature, might re-enrapture us with the living world in a way that would inspire us to protect it.
The role of death anxiety
Because this is a death blog, whenever I find a death-related thread I do have to pull it. Unseen Beings gives plenty of opportunities for that. Firstly, there’s the obvious: we’re on a collision course with extinction. Our dominant capitalist norms of consumption are sending us straight into a sapiential apocalypse (not to mention the epic of extinction occurring in the non-human world). We’re running toward a future of mass death at frightening speed. Secondly, there’s a case to be made that what we’re running away from is our mortality. Our highly evolved self-awareness comes with a cost: the perennial terror of death. And there’s a whole field of study within psychology, backed by a growing body of evidence, that suggests humans manage this constant death anxiety by looking for ways to confirm their own importance and significance (see Terror Management Theory). The belief that we are special, unique, and exceptional is our psychological protection against mortal terror. If that’s true, then anthropocentrism has always had a ready foothold… we were born predisposed to anchor on our specialness and to ratify any myth that suggested we were distinctive and important. The irony is that we want to live, but we alone know that personal project is doomed to failure. The further irony is that we manage this non-dischargeable anxiety by imagining ourselves as separate and special, which is now hurtling all life toward extinction.
(What an iconic moment for the species.)
But let’s focus on another, more optimistic option. What humans want, and want all sentient life wants, is to live. Our evolved self-awareness means we know death is inevitable, and so we struggle for significance and hope for immortality; we look for ways to ‘live on’ and to prove to ourselves that we are not small and unimportant. But we don’t have to turn to exceptionalism as the answer. We could, instead, re-inspire an animistic worldview, re-situate ourselves within it, and derive our significance from being part of the unfolding narrative of cosmic life. Our importance could come from our embeddedness, not our separateness. Our sense of immortality could be inspired by our participation in the legacy of life… from not just feeling but deeply understanding that we are part of something bigger, something that will outlast us.
For a species with a penchant for storytelling, we can choose our stories, and if we want to survive, we need to choose differently. The good news is that natural selection carved into us a desire to live and the intelligence to know this requires the survival of the more-than-human world. Further, our morality is a survival mechanism – our ability to find the overlap between self-interest and group-interest is a natural skillset that has always been critical to our flourishing. We simply need to expand our “group.”
In conclusion
We may have always been destined by biology to travel down a path of arrogance and self-importance, to dominate and to colonize. But we can chart a different course; we can aspire to transcendence into the world, not above it; we can elect to see ourselves as a part of life, not apart. We have the intelligence and the self-awareness, and we have the inclination to compassion and care. What’s required is a humbler storytelling and an acknowledgment that the human story is just one small narrative among millions of others; we’re supporting cast, not protagonists. We can change our worldview, can change our minds, and we can choose the mythologies that best serve the interests of the world, which has always been more than human.
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
If you liked this, try ‘religious naturalism’
If you’re still with me, you may be an atheist/skeptic who laments the loss of enchantment that often accompanies the loss of faith. To many, an atheistic view of the world is cold and uninspiring. But if you’ve loved everything so far, loved the suggestion that we live within a cosmic mythology, loved that forests and rivers are “beings,” loved the idea that we can merge into something bigger… then I would encourage you to explore “religious naturalism,” which is having a religious orientation toward nature, taking nature to be sacred, supreme, and sovereign, but not appealing to any reality beyond the natural world. I would consider it a haven for atheists, agnostics, and skeptics who are interested in secular enchantment and spirituality. Other books you might like in this genre include The Sacred Depths of Nature by Ursula Goodenough and Nature is Enough by Loyal Rue (you may also enjoy The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley, and you should definitely check out my Books about Spirituality for Atheists).
Speaking of genres, try epic fantasy fiction. Andersson became enraptured with the natural world by reading Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings and other works. If what we’re after is a different perspective, then of course fiction has always been a lens that allows us to see the world from a different vantage point, to explore alternate realities.
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? No.
If I had to describe the book in one sentence? To address the ecological crisis we need to ditch anthropocentrism and pick a humbler mythology that can re-enchant us with the natural world.
Who should read this book? I’m inclined to say everyone.