musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

What is it thinking…?


I have to confess -admittedly with a little blush- that I sometimes wonder what things are thinking about: things, not the people in government, or those who are members of different countries, not even the people down the road, although I often wonder about the old, wooden house that seems to be shrugging in despair each time I walk past…

I realize it’s far more acceptable, or at least more understandable, to hear anthropomorphisms from the lips of a child not yet acclimatized to their resident adult’s anthropocentric hubris -two similar words with divergent views.

To many children up to a certain age (and to some adults over a certain age, perhaps) it may seem entirely possible that living things express themselves in different ways, with different languages, and under different conditions. Bedtime faery stories certainly promote the idea, as do cartoon characters on TV or the internet; schools seldom do, however -and after a while, neither do adults. It seems that only the poets, the visionaries, and the strangers among us cling to the notion that we are not alone in running the world; that were we simply to listen we would understand. Or perhaps, as in any discussion, we would at least become acquainted with another viewpoint and feel the need to re-examine our own; we might even concede that there is another perspective: Nature’s, for want of a better word.

But, does Nature even have a perspective? Does it really have agency? What about the view of the Judaeo-Christian god noted in the Biblical Genesis chapter: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth? Does that suggest that Nature has no agency (apart from God’s, if you’re inclined to read it that way)? Or does it leave room for considering humans, who are obviously a part of that ‘earth’, to be simply one aspect of the whole?

Unless we consider Truth to reside in only one faith system (in this case, the one outlined in the Bible) what are we to make of what I understand to be Islam’s view that humans should act as guardians, or khalifah, of the planet, and that they will be held accountable by God for their actions? Or, Hinduism (as interpreted by Nanditha Krishna, a PhD in Ancient Indian Culture from Bombay University, and also a professor affiliated to the University of Madras): Hinduism believes that the earth and all life forms – human, animal and plant – are a part of Divinity, each dependant on the other for sustenance and survival. All of nature must be treated with reverence and respect.

Obviously as a non-theologian, and only a superficial reader of possibly mistranslated religious texts, or searching only in my own confirmation bubble, I may be way off base, but it seems that even in this admittedly small sample of the world’s religions, there are hints that Nature should be accorded respect and even some form of agency. Or have I simply been cherry-picking my sources? Padding my opinion? Relying on equally unfounded religious teachings? But I am not endorsing the worship of Nature, but merely according it the respect and the reverence I think it deserves.

I am old now, and what I once termed New Age -as in unconventional, unproven, and largely unscientific beliefs- has largely withered, although there is no vacuum of substitutes for it. The replacement I find tempting is the also unproven contention that all living things are enlivened by spirit (as, perhaps, are non-living things, but I’d better leave that for another time). This is dangerous territory, albeit with such historical philosophers as Baruch Spinoza endorsing a proto-concept that, even in these times, I hesitate to affirm publicly: pantheism, which, depending on the source, believes that god, or spirit, or divinity is manifested in all things. It is a short step from there to the attribution of agency, and the obligation to consider this in our dealings with them.

Obviously I cannot speak with any authority about Indigenous belief systems, but many of them seem to approach Nature with reverence and kinship -feelings which may even blur the boundaries that seek to divide human from non-human.[i] ‘Indigenous and other land-based cultures around the world often view water not as a ‘what’ but a ‘who’ – a friend or relative, a collaborator in a reciprocal relationship. That perspective changes our relationship with water, fostering a willingness to care for systems that provide for us. In some parts of the world, this perspective has become enshrined in law: the Whanganui River in New Zealand, the Ganges in India, and the Magpie River in Quebec have won legal personhood.’

But, this calls into question whether we can even think of the rights of Nature in human terms[ii]. ‘After all, it is a hubristic belief in our own singularity and exceptionalism that’s partly responsible for destroying the planet. One thing seems certain: if the law is to respond to the multiple crises afflicting the Earth, and if rights are to be deployed, we need to get rid of the notion of a rights-bearer who is an active, wilful human subject, set against a passive, acted-upon, nonhuman object. The law, in short, needs to develop a new framework in which the human is entangled and thrown in the midst of a lively materiality – rather than assumed to be the masterful, knowing centre, or the pivot around which everything else turns.’

Trees aren’t human, nor are creeks, bears, or even snakes, for that matter, so how could we think that human rules would (or even could) even remotely provide for them? It’s a step in the right direction no doubt, but tinged with that anthropocentricity I spoke of above. ‘The ‘human’ cannot continue to be the sole benchmark against which other beings must be measured in order to count. In the predatory global order of the 21st century, it seems better not to deploy human rights as a blanket of protection for nonhuman animals and other beings and systems – precisely because such varied partners in the dance of life deserve their own types of entitlement.’[iii]

I realize that my acknowledgment of a solitary spruce in a grove of Douglas firs with a smile and an appreciative nod of my head, is not going to change anything either, but perhaps it’s like recognizing a friend passing otherwise unnoticed and unrecognized in a crowd; for a moment, she is special; for a splinter of time, she is a person again…

[i] https://psyche.co/ideas/what-does-water-want-most-humans-seem-to-have-forgotten

[ii] https://aeon.co/ideas/its-wrongheaded-to-protect-nature-with-human-style-rights

[iii] Ibid.

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gozzter

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