The philosopher Bruno Latour has died. Best known for his work on the social construction of facts and contributions to Actor-Network Theory, Latour lived long enough to see some of his ideas go from fringe to mainstream. Here's a quote from a nice remembrance of his work:
"The pandemic, and its accompanying "infodemic," made it impossible for scientists to hide behind the classical image of their discipline as a disinterested, Olympian pursuit. Today, on the internet, the messy work of building a scientific consensus unfolds almost in real time: Mask or no mask? Lab leak or wet market? Respiratory infection or pulmonary disease (or both)? These debates have revealed the scientific process to be as Latour always described it: protean, combative, and political all the way down."
Latour's ideas about the social construction of nature are just as important as his ideas on the social construction of science. Here's a quote from an essay about them, titled "Love Your Monsters":
"To succeed, an ecological politics must manage to be at least as powerful as the modernizing story of emancipation without imagining that we are emancipating ourselves from Nature. What the emancipation narrative points to as proof of increasing human mastery over and freedom from Nature — agriculture, fossil energy, technology — can be redescribed as the increasing attachments between things and people at an ever-expanding scale. If the older narratives imagined humans either fell from Nature or freed themselves from it, the compositionist narrative describes our ever-increasing degree of intimacy with the new natures we are constantly creating."
There's something immensely compelling inside of reframing our relationship with the natural world this way. Compelling and refreshingly honest. Nature is not a thing that progress has freed us from. The natural world was never Hobbes' war of all against all. It's a part of us and we're a part of it. Societal progress hasn't disconnected us from the environment. It's deepened the intimacy of our relationship with the environment.
Whether we're aware of it or not, there's magic in this intimacy. Magic that our biology naturally makes accessible to anyone able to draw breath. Yet becoming aware of this magic isn't comfortable or popular. It puts you in contact with information that challenges assumptions and sometimes demands difficult action.
I'll always remember watching the forest I played in as a kid get paved over by a new Wal Mart. It's possible that no one but me felt connected to that forest, and no one but me mourned its loss. This was painful, but it ultimately inspired a powerful new understanding of ecology that continues to deepen even now.
When I first moved into my house, the back yard was a lifeless patch of gravel and trash. Over a period of years, I rebuilt the soil and established vibrant gardens. Then, several years ago, an uncle moved into my house and systematically destroyed the gardens with his personal construction projects, over my objections every step of the way. Seeing this place I'd tended so carefully ruined by the brash actions of yet another selfish Boomer, I came to a realization. I realized that the mainstream environmental movement had it all wrong.
Society is filled with people who can't even feel their own bodies. Like, they don't even know how to listen to their biology, the same biology that mediates their connection to the ecologies they inhabit. This absence of awareness is largely manufactured for political and economic reasons in my opinion. But its origin is less important than the question of what to do about it.
These days, I think that one of the best things people can do for the environment is to get fully into their bodies and listen to the messages that are waiting for them there. Oftentimes, what they'll find is information regarding the toxicity of things that they've been conditioned to consider normal. Common foods. Chemical perfumes. EM radiation hotspots. Modern construction materials that bleed formaldehyde and other poisons. This list could go on forever.
Once I got better at listening to the messages from my own body, not only did I become more aware of toxins in the physical environment, I started to notice the toxicity in some of my relationships. So I started doing my part to process and clear this, with varying degrees of success. Some of my friendships disappeared while others became significantly better.
Of course, feedback from the body isn't always negative. My experience has been that it usually ranges from ambiguous to positive. And in special circumstances, it can be overwhelmingly positive. I was recently reminded of this upon becoming acquainted with someone new. For whatever reason, the quality of this new person makes my whole being feel good. I now find myself grinning joyfully while walking down the sidewalk at the mere thought of them. That's a clear message from my body that something super important is going on. Something I feel called to honor, whatever that means.
Imagine a world where social and environmental issues were addressed as they came up, as a matter of routine, by people informed by the endless wisdom of their biology. By people who understood themselves to be a living language of nature itself. I don't think this is an impossible dream. I think it's achievable, and much more realistic than attempting to improve society without first reconnecting with the body's wisdom.
One thing that becomes immediately apparent when imagining such a world is the problem of trauma. We're all traumatized in some respect, and this can be a barrier to positive change in a variety of ways. It can be a barrier, but it can also be an invitation to show up more authentically with each other. My sense is that we're in a societal moment where just showing up authentically can make a huge difference.
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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