Is Michael Pollan a closet animist?

[Lou Gold]

No slight intended toward Terry Tempest Williams who is one of my favorite authors but there's a fascinating conversation between Charlie Stang and Michael Pollan between the one hour two minute and one hour twenty five minute marks in this video. I hope you'll check it out.



Charles Stang is on the the Faculty of the Harvard Divinity School. In 2017, he became the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS. His research and teaching focus on the history of Christianity in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world, especially Eastern varieties of Christianity.

[Ben Iscatus]

Very interesting, Lou. As a gardener myself, it's not hard for me to think that plants have a kind of consciousness. I think they experience, else they wouldn't adapt their behaviour (flood themselves with bitter sap to deter insect infestation for instance) . Stones are more difficult. I can imagine that where a stone has been in contact with the experiences of animate beings, it might somehow retain memory (or its crystalline structure act as a locus of reviving a memory) of those experiences. How do you see it?

[Lou Gold]

Ben,

As I often remind folks, I'm not a philosopher, I just report my experiences. In my past I've participated in lots of Native American sweat lodge ceremonies praying as water is poured on sizzling red hot stone people. Nowadays, as an old guy sitting at the lovely Hawaiian seashore, I think of our active volcano and see these stone people as carrying the memory and reality of its presence ...

[Lou Gold]

There is an emerging legal trend toward granting nature or ecosystems the rights generally accorded to persons.

The “Rights of Nature” movement is fundamentally rethinking humanity’s relationship with nature, and it is gaining momentum. It is led by activists advocating for ecosystems such as rivers, lakes, and mountains to bear legal rights in the same, or at least a similar, manner as human beings. This movement is striving for a paradigm shift in which nature is placed at the center and humans are connected to it in an interdependent way, rather than a dominant one. How would such a legal system work, and could giving rights to nature help in the legal battle against climate change? A few case studies offer some insight. The Rights of Nature — Can an Ecosystem Bear Legal Rights?

Philosophy and legalisms aside, clearly no culture considering mountains as persons would ever practice mountaintop removal coal mining. This is where the rubber meets the road for me.

[Lou Gold]

Looked at from an artistic point-of-view Henry Moore -- arguably the greatest sculptor of the 20th Century -- wanted his pieces displayed outdoors where it could be seen how they sculpted the space around them. Looking at them offers an interesting perspective on "Form is emptiness and emptiness is not other than form."



My Lakota friends say Mitakuye Oyasin (All my Relatives) meaning that both people and things are subjects interacting with each other. A Buddhist would say that the world we see is a interdependent co-arising.

[Lou Gold]

Looked at from an artistic point-of-view Henry Moore -- arguably the greatest sculptor of the 20th Century -- wanted his pieces displayed outdoors where it could be seen how they sculpted the space around them. Looking at them offers an interesting perspective on "Form is emptiness and emptiness is not other than form."

My Lakota friends say Mitakuye Oyasin (All my Relatives) meaning that both people and things are subjects interacting with each other. A Buddhist would say that the world we see is a interdependent co-arising.

Ben (and anyone else who might be interested),

Refocusing on the question of consciousness held by the "non-metabolic", I would argue that Moore's bronze sculpture holds an intention and thus becomes an active agent participating in the environment into which it is placed thus making it a 'subject' rather than a mere 'object', which I understand is more aligned with the modern meaning of 'animism' as compared with the older pejorative labelling given to it by European philosophers and anthropologists. I do not know how to fit this into modern notions of logic and philosophy but I surely think it's worth contemplating.