Gnosis
And Animals
Our Strange
Inheritance
Regardless, we can look back along the threads of time and see cells, co-operating to evolve into 'unified communities' within membranes, - in short, animals. Animals with an amazing variety of cognitive and active skills. Animals that probably know themselves, in ways we are not aware of, or cannot yet perceive - or so we are told. In the eyes of the animals is the story of their - and our - history, and our future, as well - for our destinies have always been intimately interlinked.
Our Strange Inheritance
It seems our species has come at to a point where we must deal with something I will call 'Our Strange Inheritance'.
Because humans alone evolved conceptual and physical technologies that have placed us effectively in stewardship of the world of 'larger animals', we find ourselves in a terrible dilemma, one where 'industry' and 'commerce' currently hold the keys to the future of the biosphere, and of many if not all of its 'more complex' inhabitants, including ourselves.
Our species was never 'granted' any 'stewardship' over the other beings here. Unless a cow walks up to you and gives itself to you personally - the idea that the 'Cow People' are 'ours to do with as we please' simply because we function and act in a different cognitive domain than they do is completely absurd. If anything, our ability in cognitive and active domains has granted us, in effect, a stewardship we have failed, nearly utterly, to understand or employ reasonably.
The fact that we operate in unique cognitive domains, does give us power. Power to explore and inter-create, or to ravage.
Imagine this: One day a fleet of aliens comes to San Francisco. They can change matter with their minds. They mindspeak.
We, lacking in both of these cognitive domains, are immediately considered 'harvestable animals' - because we don't not function in domains which they consider foundational to being 'sentient'.
As such beings are to us, we are to the many beings that live within and amongst us.
Additionally, we are highly opportunistic, omnivorous, prideful, predatory, and childish with our technologies...
It's time to re-consider, in action, our relationship with the beings around us. As a people. As human people. As people alive in the world independently of nations or labels.
Whether or not any personal God exists - if such a God intended our species to exist in isolation (either conceptual or real) from an entire biosphere - I doubt that such a being would have taken the time to populate earth with quadrillions of different forms of beings - of which our species comprises at best a tiny tiny fraction. And the idea that a God would write something on a piece of paper which would give some class of beings the right to rape and slaughter all other classes of beings is equally absurd.
Because, like the aliens in the story above, we act and perceive in cognitive domains that 'differ' from those of other animals is -in no way- a guarantee that they are not sentient. It does not even mean that our cognition 'is more complex' than theirs.
It merely differs in the domain it acts within. We are not, nor have we ever been - even linguistically - enthroned to judge whether another being 'knows itself' or what the value of that is. Yet, as a species - most cultures made 'summary judgments' about this, and then taught their children thus.
And even if it is true that our sentience is somehow more complex, this is no banner of ownership, nor stewardship, over other beings, who operate in differing domains from ours, alongside us, supporting our species with their lifeblood. Where did this idea come from? Why are we still living and teaching and believing this?
Our species of animals is semantically and conceptually deluded about our relationship with the other beings here, and our actions reflect this fact, badly - and possibly with deadly consequence. Not for life on Earth - for Humans.
"We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is greatly increased. Each living being must be looked at as a microcosm - a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute, and as numerous as the stars in heaven. - Charles Darwin, 1868
Let us for a moment, attempt to, in so much as we are able, drop all dogma and look, with the miracle of living eyes that serve a complex cognitive being, at what we see around us.
Cells, and colonies of cells engaged in a chemical and energetic dance. They support each other through exchange of chemistry, energy, and genetic material. Your organs are such colonies, existing in the supercolony of 'you'.
Animals, the 'boundaried vehicles of cellular symbiosis' are complex mobile ecosystems, comprised of countless interactive and interacting colonies of beings. All animals are thus. They are ecosystems within ecosystems. Holarchically intertwined, since they all affect each other and any given 'whole' that one cares to draw the line at...
'Eating' creates the possibility of recycling and / or transforming - modulating - complex energetic chemistries, thus life uses death to preserve in part what has been won from the environment - to preserve the 'work' of a living organism and transmit 'part' of that work to another - through 'eating'.
And then we have the Earth, like a single cell. Like a single animal. A jewel in the vast void-like expanse of space - our little bubble. With that absolutely amazing quality called 'the ability to generate and retain a livable atmosphere'.
Perhaps the first cells here were seeded. From incoming space debris, or purposefully. Perhaps, they arose from chemical and energetic processes we have not yet uncovered. Perhaps both, perhaps there were multiple seedings, perhaps such seedings still occur...
Regardless, we can look back along the threads of time and see cells, co-operating to evolve into 'unified communities' within membranes, - in short, animals. Animals with an amazing variety of cognitive and active skills. Animals that probably know themselves, in ways we are not aware of, or cannot yet perceive - or so we are told. In the eyes of the animals is the story of their - and our - history, and our future, as well - for our destinies have always been intimately interlinked.
We co-exist - this is more than mere interdependence.
It would seem, from one perspective, that we and other living things exist in part to preserve and enhance the complexity, behavioral, structural, and chemical - perhaps even cognitive, that was so hard won by the previous generations. That variety is valued in any eco-system (including our own bodies).
I would also mention at this point that I believe our species, at least in the west has completely forgotten some really important things about 'food' and 'eating'.
There is a sacred living quality to taking food, it is, in a very real sense, to receive the sacrifice of another being's life, and complexity, in a nourishing way. This being was alive, had relations in the world - and was potentially self-aware. There should be some space in our experience for the raw profundity of the blessings of food and eating. Instead - again, it's primarily reduced to a consumption event. Void of understanding of sources, and interconnections, and perhaps sacredness.
The fact that we desire and need food, and that we'd like everyone to be fed (in theory) does not give any corporation the right to change the biosphere's gene-map, any more that it gives them the right to drench acreage in eco-toxins that kill off whole lineages of 'collateral' beings.
Especially not for profit! There is a significant conflict of interest here - and it involves all the living beings on earth, not merely the humans.
The idea that some lab-rats who work for Monsanto or Dow, or some even more nefarious and poorer company - are at basic liberty to seed genetically modified organisms into the environment, accidentally or intentionally, is a spectre at least as terrifying as nuclear weapons, perhaps more so.
I'll completely leave aside the catastrophic implications of military uses of such technologies, and pray we are not yet living in the collapse that will arise if this power is overtly misused...and yet, such things are more than likely - they are probable fact.
There is no extant culture, academic or scientific or otherwise, with sufficient understanding of the holistic interactions of organisms in real environments to enable any possible safe use of these technologies in a living biosphere.
The fact that 'someone's going to do it anyway' is no argument. Our species is not ready for this capability, we cannot even manage to deal reasonably with our environment as regards 'basic transportation' - how can we expect to manage whole systems of linked eco-systemic genomics and interactions whose scope is potentially beyond mortal science to encompass or perceive?
I long for the lost flavor of a Tomato - the things at the supermarket, at least around here - are no longer what I would identify as tomatoes. The appearance is similar, and it pretty much ends there. This is sad to me personally, but it's survivable. There are aspects of the problem with a far larger shadow, however.
One cannot can't control the spread of pollens - or any of the myriad venues of transport of genetic material outside the laboratory. Again, what are we doing here? Why are we as a people allowing this? Did you vote to allow corporations the rights to 'purchase' genomes?
How can a corporation 'own' a genome? Are we as a living species willing to allow this sort of terrorist commerce? Were we asked? Did we agree that the genomes in the biosphere we were born within are 'for sale'?
I do not believe we did. This is theft, theft of our future, of the biosphere's future. Again, in the name of 'commerce', 'agriculture', or 'scientific progress'.
Our society, and the industrial societies we emulate and are emulated by, are rapidly raping the earth of the products of billions of years of co-evolution. And with it, their lineages, stories, hopes - and more importantly, the vast and complex being which is our planet - loses the -diversity- and the -complexity- it once enjoyed amongst the higher animal kingdoms.
These are not 'sentimental' losses. They are the real and permanent annihilation of billions of collective years of biological effort toward 'more complex systems' and 'systems of greater active and cognitive flexibility'. They are the losses of that engineering, of those stories, and of the complexity and diversity they added to the living world while still alive.
On one level, if you kill a single cougar, you change the entire world, for the whole is now different, dramatically, and the differences resulting from that change tend to expand, over time.
The problem is not merely for the 'other animals', but for us - for it is -we- who suffer when the atmosphere, biodiversity, and climate shift dramatically. It is we who suffer in a world where the basic and fundamental relationships between living beings are defied, denied, obscured, stolen - and sold back to us by 'science', 'education', and 'media' for the primary purposes of isolating us from our birthrights as living beings - and subjecting us to a world where we are functionally alone and must serve these 'established cultural structures' in ways that defy and defile our basic nature as living beings.
What were once called 'larger land animals' have been close to annihilated. The few that remain wild tend to be isolated, extremely small populations, with ever increasing pressures. Countless thousands of forms are extinct. And with them goes the complexity so hard won through thousands or millions of generations of evolution and struggle to maintain their line. Amphibians, and other specific niches of smaller land animals are equally threatened and pressured - or else dramatically over breeding due to local systemic imbalances created by lost members of the local systems they comprise.
Now, it's true that lines and species die out - we are proof of that. But there is a story about the some of the first living beings on earth, bacteria - that died in their own waste - which was oxygen. In one sense, their passage made way for us...to them, we are poison-breathers. Perhaps we should take a point from this history, lest we drown in our own waste. Additionally, we will suffer as the global biodiversity shrinks under the enormous pressure of our 'commerce'.
Most people are not really aware of the incredible unlikeliest of a livable atmosphere here, for -us-. The atmosphere on Earth is like a single song - woven together and maintained by all of the living beings and their interactions with local chemistry and energy sources.
That our atmosphere and climate remains somewhat stable is largely the result of the 'coalescent intelligence' and 'self-modulation' of all of the beings that live here.
While it -might- be true that we could annihilate most of the tree-growth on the surface-land, and still have enough basic oxygen - do we -really- want to find out? Is that what we are interested in leaving our children? A polluted, treeless, concrete wasteland? Where 'commerce' is the key to all rights, resources, and human privilege? Where they serve the machine, are numbered and watched, and 'told' what it means to be human and alive?
We're not far from that anymore. This isn't science-fiction anymore.
Industry and poverty, combined with an absolutely rapacious attitude toward sustainable use of resources - has created a crisis. It isn't in the future. The crisis is now. What's left of the biosphere's animal diversity is in grave peril, and we are part of what's left.
Life on Earth isn't threatened. More than likely, it will continue, and generate new hopefuls for our position here. Even if we annihilated all the land and sea animals, new forms would arise. The ones who are losing in this game are us, and our children, and the beings we are destroying. We are burning the books at the living library, shouting like angry monkeys some illusory reason for our entitlement. Well, unfortunately, we are the books, and they a part of us. The only thing we're burning is our human and living dignity. Our compassion. Our wisdom. Our hope. We are burning our people's future. For Colored boxes. For Automobiles - we annihilate universes of ancient communities of beings - and whole species of beings associated with them.
It is not as though we even bother to efficiently use what we wastefully wrench from the living earth - we waste even that. We employ archaic technologies, dressed up as 'modern' in the name of economics - and live now amongst the constant roar of engines - ceaseless, and nearly impossible to escape. Breathing clouds of diesel and automobile exhaust. Teaching our children that unbridled consumption, without conscience or care for consequence, is the law of the land, and a law they will serve, body mind and soul until they pass from the earth.
The arguments we hear from our leaders boil down to this:
Our economies require the rapacious and sustained annihilation of resources and eco-systems, and possibly cultural systems amongst other humans, as well. The environment is not threatened enough, yet. Cars are a Good thing. Combustion engines and nuclear power plants and oil are Good for the economy, thus they are Good enough for us. We'll deal with Global Warming, Ozone depletion, Pollution, Cyclic Extinction, Genetic Manipulation, Corporate Ectoxicity and Deforestation in the by and by...after all, they're all essentially 'part of the price of doing business'.
If that's true, I'd say it's time to stop doing that sort of business altogether.
This is a lie so bold that it's a bit shocking -anyone- would agree. It is the pirates burning the ship, and telling the passengers that the flames are bright jewels, meant for them, and laughing all the way to the bank.
I do not wish for my children, or yours, to grow up in a world that is led, conceptually, militarily, philosophically or in any way by people who would perpetrate so bold an obfuscation. They are, in a very real sense - the enemies of every living being, in so much as they ignore and rapaciously destroy or poison resources which are, by their nature - beyond ownership. They belong to the planet, to all the beings upon it. By virtue of their birth here. They are a living inheritance of complexity, history, beauty.
The oceans, and the living forms in them - microbial and animalian - are critical to the ongoing auto-poetic maintenance of the atmosphere we breathe. There is significant evidence pointing to the fact that the microbial life in the oceans is fundamentally responsible for maintaining livable atmospheric conditions for the majority of land-living life forms...and that the life in the oceans, as a whole, is critical to regulating the atmosphere, as well as responding to sudden climactic shifts in ways that help to ease their impact on weather and climate...
Now that we've 'pretty much had our way' with the larger land animals, we are turning our 'attentions' more and more to the oceans. Whereas, as a species, we once had 'reasonable access' to about 35 to 30% of the 'fishable oceans' - we now enjoy something like 80 to 90% access. The rapid annihilation of entire genomes of fish is not only possible, but happening. The 'collateral damage' caused by modern fishing techniques, (not to mention military testing and bio-toxic dumping) is unbridled in its ability to ravage vast ecosystems to gain some momentary prize which can be turned into 'profit'.
But from whence does this 'profit' arise, exactly? What, for example, is the eco-price of a tin of halibut? A salmon? A tuna? What is the 'total' price? The price beyond dollars - in other words, how many beings were sacrificed in the obtaining, processing, packaging, marketing, distribution, consumption, and discarding of say - one can of tuna?
Could it be that can of tuna cost three dolphins? Or, when all is said and done, could it have cost something like this...
2 dolphins, 8 Birds of various species, 4 random mammals, 8 random amphibians.
If it did cost this, how would we know? Perhaps the cost is greater.
Now, to me personally, if someone came to me and said, lay a value on this here dolphin, I'd put it somewhere around 8.7 billion US dollars.
Because, you can't 'create' a dolphin. It's pretty much priceless. More than that, it is a living instance in a long lineage of beings, who are related by birth and also genetic lines. It is a living moment in a wave of history - entirely unique in the universe, while it is alive. It's certainly a bunch more elaborate than our best jet-fighter. And it sings, too, which makes it preferable to jet fighters.
Even if the can of tuna only 'cost' a single bird, it's too expensive. There was a time, perhaps, when it wasn't. But it is now, and that's a certainty. I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't eat tuna. I'm saying there's something seriously wrong with the way we are going about it. And it's going to sting us all, and probably fast.
It is tragic when a species is annihilated, more so when whole ecosystems are wantonly destroyed for 'profit'.
A more intelligent society would force all industry to be responsible for its output - if we realized, for example, the real and affective ecological price of our 'way of life' here. This 'way of life' needs to modulate, and fast - for all of our sakes. It needs to and must fundamentally value the resources of the biosphere, and living systems in -much- deeper ways. And it must do this quickly. Not only for the sake of 'the animals' - but primarily, and actively for -our- sakes, and those of our children.
Any corporation should have to account for it's impact, positively or negatively on the environment, perhaps even the psychological environment. Advertising is certainly as toxic emotionally as automobile exhaust. We cannot allow the rapacious and wholesale destruction of the environment and its animal constituents to be equated with 'profit'.
We must together rise to the challenge of exploring the cracks in the stories we've been told about what it means to be a living being amongst other living beings in systematic relation.
We must together find a way to stop the wholesale destruction of ecosystems and their constituents - who cannot be 'priced' out of existence by modern economies.
The animals cannot speak for themselves. They depend upon us to be their representative. They speak in our hearts, however. But beyond that, we -require- the complexity and diversity they provide. We require it in our -lives- as -lived experience amongst other living beings.
So I call out to you who can hear. Listen to the animals, while they are still amongst us. If a silence must come, let it be a silence to the engines of catastrophic misuse of our world, by an over-proud child-species. One soon to be displaced by its own pride and debauch, if we can't shift the direction of our movement.
There are parts of this 'Strange Inheritance' - the inheritance of a kind of active supremacy amongst large animals - that can benefit us and the ecosystem greatly. But we must radically re-vision the relationships we perceive and act upon, and the 'value' of living things around us, both cognitively and actively.
Some Afterthoughts...
Anyone who is willing to explore the beings around them deeply, and the systems they inhabit and comprise, will quickly learn some variant of these things:
Balanced, progressing ecosystems tend to support species longevity.
Rapid declines in diversity tend to shatter balance, sometimes permanently.
Balance in an ecosystem and flexibility, are related to the diversity, and health of diversity in most systems. This tends to mean healthier constituents, since variety of resources and vectors of resource movement, acquisition and transfer are increased.
Balanced systems are better able to respond to climactic fluctuations, and other threats.
Balanced systems tend to support forward evolutionary progress for members, providing less stress, and allowing members to concentrate on tasks beyond momentary survival.
Each member of any ecosystem is important - highly complex members -seem- to have more value or effect, but without 'invisible' members, they perish - all are intimately connected. All intimately valuable.
More complex members require more complex systems to support them effectively. This means variety, diversity, and access for complex members in resources and output. Animals, being highly complex, require more complex ecosystems to thrive. Such systems are more easily disrupted by sudden 'harvesting'. If they are disrupted in ways they cannot easily recover from, they lose balance permanently, and may even become desolate...
##
We must be willing to step far beyond our extant perceptions of the living beings around us. The conceptual cages our societies have built and maintained, the 'labels' we use for these beings - are illusory and unreal. They enslave us in the same way they reduce 'animals' to mere 'objects' - to be manipulated, or destroyed at will, and perhaps en-masse. But more tragically, they deny us as human persons, the myriad levels of interaction, learning, and teaching...the miracles that arise from inter-species communication.
Inter-species communication is no myth, it is constantly occurring even in the environment you live in. More than that, there is clear co-operation amongst species, even those that in some domains compete. The truth is that, beyond any language's ability to circumscribe - you - a living being - exist with powers of perception, connection, and exchange in amongst a symphony of similar beings. The truth is that you were born empowered to explore these realms, to share in the great mystery of life and death with -all- of the beings around you.
And perhaps, to defend it.
Why do we believe that to look into the eye of an insect is less or different than the glories we see in the eyes of other humans? Who taught us that there is something missing from all other life, that we, somehow, alone on the planet, embody? Can we as rational beings continue to believe this?
Why do we believe this? I challenge this idea, completely, and I challenge each of you, as talented, educated people to raise this question to its highest pitch, so that we can together, truly explore and share in the incredible mystery and blessing which is our moment-to-moment experience of being alive.
Turning the surface of the earth, the atmosphere, and the oceans into dead or dying desolations through industry is not 'profitable' - in any morally comprehensible sense.
No hero is going to arise amongst us to save us from these things; it's up to us to dedicate ourselves completely to the exploration and preservation of the systems and beings that, by their existence make our life possible, and grant us the hope of a life that is more than possible, but perhaps even enjoyable.
It's up to us. Maybe we could even start by insuring every person's vote counts and is counted in our next election. Maybe we can start in the unique way each of us is capable of.
But some things there is no time to play with. These threats have to be dealt with immediately, and without hesitation by a people united in a desire for a livable future, amongst other beings besides mechanical ones.
For these things, we need heroes. And heroic action.
##
A modest thought experiment involving 'god':
While it would be perhaps considered a 'spiritual' argument, I'd like to offer a thought experiment for those amongst you who consider such things as relevant.
Presume there is a universal intelligence or 'god'. And presume again that this being is, somehow, in fact, 'in everything'.
Lets look inward a bit, first. You, a cognitive being, are the result of the combined activity of thousands of billions of beings. Your cells. But not just your cells, all of the life you have encountered, eaten, loved, chased - etc. You are a true child of a universe of beings, comprised of a universe of beings, and each one has a history that is so vast and long that no human epic could compare. You are a time-ship, carrying forward intricate cellular and genetic complexities beyond number. In fact, more than that, you are a 'community' of communities of such beings. All animals are thus. What if the earth is thus?
What if, like you, the planet itself is, in fact, an 'animal'? And the next leap is this: That 'god' is thus, as well. A coalescent being. A being comprised of all of it's constituents. Holarchic.
Now, since we're just doing a thought-experiment here, let's take it a step further. The nature of god, could be to be, as an example, fully present and complete in each living being.
Meaning, that each living being is a complete (yet totally unique) -instance- of god. Not merely connected, not merely dwelt within, but wholly god, and wholly unique in its given manifestation.
Thus 'God' is a coalescent being, comprised of countless unique instances of itself, instances such as you and me, butterflies, birds - yes, bacteria and microbes too.
Thus -all beings- are 'sacred' and 'holy' by their very nature.
Some modern systems of spiritual philosophy consider this experiment reasonable. But the idea is this: Look around you and -find out- for yourself what is going on with the living beings here. Whatever it -might be- it is almost -certainly not- what we've been taught as individuals and societies.
No dogma will suffice to describe or capture the incredible dance of life that we live amongst. You, as a living part of that dance, have incredible capabilities of perception and interaction that you've likely never even been exposed to, except perhaps in dreams.
The living world cries out to us: awaken your people. Re-join the living kingdom, within and without...support and defend it, as it does us.
Reproduced From A List-Mailing from Planttrees@aol.com for which we are extremely grateful. Unfortunately, we do not know the author's name or identity, but hope to be able to add it to this superb article soon....Thank you, whoever you are!
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Gnosis And Animals - Our Strange Inheritance
Rainbow
Bridge
Just this
side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.
When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet
goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and
play together.
There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and
comfortable.
All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those
who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember
them in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss
someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.
They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and
looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers.
Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs
carrying him faster and faster.
You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you
cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses
rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once
more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never
absent from your heart.
Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....
Author unknown...
Reproduced gratefully from: http://www.petloss.com/poems/maingrp/rainbowb.htm
-
o. 11/5/01
R