A Language Older Than Words (4 page)

We live our lives, grateful that things aren't worse than
they
are. But there has to be a threshold beyond
which we can no
longer ignore the destructiveness of our way
of living. What is
that threshold? One in two women raped? Every woman raped?
500 million children enslaved? 750 million? A billion? All of
them? The disappearance of flocks of passenger pigeons so large
they darkened the sky for days at a time? The death of salmon
runs so thick that it was impossible to dip an oar without "striking a silvery back"? The collapse of earthworm populations?

This deal by which we adapt ourselves to the receiving, wit
nessing, and committing of violence by refusing to perceive its effects on ourselves and on others is ubiquitous. And it is a bad
deal. As R.D. Laing has written about our culture, "The condi
tion of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of be
ing out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society
highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose them
selves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal
men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men
in the last fifty years."

The question still hangs heavy in the air: If our behavior is
not making us happy, why do we act this way?

The zoologist and philosopher Neil Evernden tells the familiar
story of how we silence the world. During the nineteenth cen
tury, many vivisectionists routinely severed the vocal cords be
fore operating on an animal. This meant that during the
experiment the animals could not scream (referred to in the lit
erature as emitting "high-pitched vocalization"). By cutting the
vocal cords experimenters simultaneously denied reality—by pre
tending a silent animal feels no pain—and they affirmed it by
implicitly acknowledging that the animal's cries would have told
them what they already knew, that the creature was a sentient,
feeling (and, during the vivisection, tortured) being.

As Evernden comments, "The rite of passage into the scien
tific," or, I would add, modern, "way of being centres on the
ability to apply the knife to the vocal cords, not just of the dog on the table, but of life itself. Inwardly, he [the modern human
being] must be able to sever the cords of his own consciousness.
Outwardly, the effect must be the destruction of the larynx of the biosphere, an action essential to the transformation of the world into a material object." This is no less true for our relations with fellow humans.

If we are to survive, we must learn a new way to live, or re-
learn an old way. There have existed, and for the time being still
exist, many cultures whose members refuse to cut the vocal cords
of the planet, and refuse to enter into the deadening deal which
we daily accept as part of living. It is perhaps significant that prior to contact with Western Civilization many of these cultures did not have rape, nor did they have child abuse (the
Okanagans of what is now British Columbia, to provide just one
example, had neither word nor concept in their language corre
sponding to the abuse of a child. They did have a word corre
sponding to the violation of a woman: literally translated it means
"someone looked at me in a way I don't like"). It is perhaps sig
nificant as well that these cultures did not drive the passenger
pigeon to extinction, nor the salmon, the wood bison, the sea
mink, the Labrador heath hen, the Eskimo curlew, the Taipei
tree frog. Would that we could say the same. It is perhaps signifi
cant that members of these cultures listen attentively (as though
their lives depend on it, which of course they do) to what plants,
animals, rocks, rivers, and stars have to say, and that these cul
tures have been able to do what we can only dream of, which is
to live in dynamic equilibrium with the rest of the world.

The task ahead of us is awesome, to meet human needs without imperiling life on the planet.

Coyotes, Kittens,
and Conversations

"We are the land.......
That is the
fundamental idea of Native
American life: the land and the
people are the same." Paula Gunn Allen

Since nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, it is undeniably true that she has made all animals for the sake of man.” Aristotle

MY CONVERSATION WITH COYOTES began, so far as I could tell, on
a cold day in 1994. Several times over the previous months, coyotes had come out of the small patch of rocky forest to the east of
my home and caught chickens, then taken them away to eat.
Once in a while I saw a coyote dash out, or heard a squawk, then
turned to see a quick glimpse of gray that simply disappeared
when my two dogs tried to run it down. A few times the dogs did catch up to the coyote, and I saw a flurry of fur and dust,
followed by the dogs running home to sit quietly, chastened, for a day or two in the barn. Twice I saw one coyote make an abor
tive rush at the chickens, and when the dogs gave chase, another
coyote trotted from the other direction to pick up a bird before
I, the dogs, or the poultry—all distracted—could react. But most
often I merely saw one less duck or chicken or goose return to
the coop from a day spent foraging in the tall grass or among the maze of trails beneath the thicket of wild roses to the west of my
house. Then I would walk in the forest to the east and discover—
somewhere—a roundish scatter of feathers—white, black, or barred, sometimes red or even iridescent green—where the coyote had stopped to eat the bird.

The day the conversation began I was kneeling in front of the
wood stove, trying to start a fire, when suddenly I felt if I looked
outside I would see a coyote. Perhaps the feeling came simply because on each of the previous four days a chicken had disap
peared—never before had the coyotes been so present. I went to
the window and looked out; a coyote was stalking a bird. By the time I made it to the front door it had disappeared.

The next two days I happened to be outside when one or another coyote came by. No intuitions these times; just luck.
The coyotes had come now for seven straight days. On the eighth
day I happened to be on the couch looking out the window—
lucky again—when I saw a coyote approach. Frustrated, know
ing I couldn't be there each day to protect the birds, and unsure
what else to do, I opened the window and called out, "Please
don't eat the chickens. If you don't, I will give you the head, feet,
and guts whenever I kill one. And
please,
don't forget my work in
defense of the wild." The coyote turned and trotted away, now and again slowing to look back over its slender shoulder.

Except at night, to sing, the coyotes didn't come back for
many months, and when at last they did, it was, it seemed, only
to remind me to keep my end of the bargain. I hadn't
yet
killed any birds, and I looked out one day to see a coyote sitting on a
knoll about a hundred yards to the north. He sat and stared in
my direction, not moving when I opened the window and leaned
out. Finally I said—fairly softly, actually—"Okay, I'll bring you some food." As soon as I said this the
coyote stood and began to
pad away. Another coyote appeared, and they touched noses.
The first one continued, and the second now sat and stared. I repeated my promise, and this coyote, too, went off in the direction of the other.

It is not too much to say that a primary purpose of Descartes' philosophy, and indeed much of modern science, is to provide a rational framework on which to base a system of exploita
tion. Descartes himself stated this plainly, as when he observed, "I perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly use
ful in life ... and thus render ourselves the lords and possessors
of nature."

Had Descartes been a lone lunatic wishing to become a "lord
and possessor of nature," none of us would ever have heard of him. But he had an entire culture for company. His fame and influence make plain that he articulated what continues to be a powerful cultural desire.

Another of the progenitors of the scientific method was Francis
Bacon, who formalized the process of inquiry by which a scien
tist develops a hypothesis, then gathers data in order to support or invalidate it. Bacons intent was clear: "My only earthly wish
is ... to stretch the deplorably narrow limits of man's dominion
over the universe to their promised bounds." The language of dominance saturates his writing. He talks of "putting [nature] on the rack and extracting her secrets," and of "storming her strongholds and castles.” At no time did Bacon hide his agenda: "I am come in very truth leading you to Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave . . . the mechanical inventions of recent years do not merely exert a gentle guidance over Nature's courses, they have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations."

It would be as pointless as it would be easy to blame Descartes, Bacon, and other early scientists and philosophers for the sorry tradition of exploitation that has been handed down to us by our elders. These people merely articulated, brilliantly, urges that are woven together throughout our culture like rivulets in sand. These are the urge to deny the body and the urge to dominate the bodies of others, the urge to silence one's self and the urge to silence others. The urge to exploit. The urge to deny death and the urge to cause the deaths of others—or more accurately, as we shall see, to cause their annihilation. These urges are clear in the philosophy of Aristotle, and they are vivid—blood-red—in the Bible. They go as far back as Gilgamesh and the other formative myths of our culture, and they are as close as today's newspaper, where new mythmakers continue in the path of Descartes and Bacon, attempting to provide rational justification for that which cannot be justified.

The examples are everywhere. Yesterday, I saw a modern echo of Descartes' megalomania as rendered by the prominent theoretical physicist Gerard J. Milburn: "The aim of modern science is to reach an understanding of the world, not merely for purely aesthetic reasons, but that it may be ordered to our purpose."

The day before, I had seen an account of scientists at Tokyo University, who have created what they call Robo-roach, an insect which (or who) has "been surgically implanted with a microrobotic backpack that allows researchers to control its [or rather his or her] movements." The scientists remove the roaches' wings and antennae and place electrodes in the wounds. As if they were playing a video game, the scientists are then able to push one button on a remote control to force the roach to move left. Another button causes it to move right. There are buttons for forward and backward as well. Once the "bugs" are worked out, these half-creature/half robots will be fitted with television
cameras
and
used as
miniature spies. Not
surprisingly, the scientists like thier artificial roaches better than the real
thing: “They
are not very nice insects. They are a little smelly, and there’s something about the way they move their antennae. But they look nicer when you put a little circuit on their backs and remove their wings.”

I wasn't convinced 1 was crazy when the coyotes failed to show up the day after I asked them not to. At first I didn't even notice; it had been the coyotes' pattern to show up only occasionally. When a week passed, and then two, I began to wonder at the coincidence, and after a month I began to consider that their absence might not be coincidental after all.

About the same time, my dogs commenced eating eggs. Since I don't pen the chickens, the hens lay wherever they want, which means I've often found eggs in an old barrel, atop stored stacks of bee boxes, on a folded tarp nestled on a shelf between cloth softball bases and an icebox, and especially in a corner outside the barn beneath and behind thick pfitzers. Only occasionally— and even then I think by accident—does a hen lay in one of the nesting boxes I've set up for them.

Sometimes the dogs found eggs before I did, and I'd see only an empty spot where I'd expected an egg, or rarely, if it had been raining or snowing, I would see large paw prints heading into the thick bushes. I suspected that the larger of the dogs was also taking eggs off the waist-high shelf—books or beekeeping equipment I'd placed in front of the tarp would be strangely disarranged—but I could never pin anything on him.

Still, I had the paw prints, which seemed enough to convict him, or at least convince me that he was doing it. At first I tried being authoritarian: whenever I picked up an egg and the dogs happened to be around, I'd hold it at arm's length, between thumb and forefinger, and say in a deep, stentorian voice, "No eggs! No!" This quickly taught the dogs to roll on their backs and wag their tales whenever I picked up an egg. As soon as I went inside they continued to do as they pleased.