Ecological Intelligence (20 page)

To put one’s self in the skin of the other is at the core of poetry. It is a prerequisite for a sense of coherence and meaning. One thing is certain—the human animal cannot avoid it, for, as Lyall Watson writes in his book
Dark Nature
, we are born animists “happy to believe that everything we encounter is alive, just as we are, and that all objects are equally able to encounter us.” Sometimes, the feeling that is born out of these encounters is deeply religious, connecting, and sacred. And it begins to slip away as soon as we think we know it, as soon as it becomes familiar, as soon as we begin to take it for granted. It is as if, as soon as the poetry is lost, the connection vanishes.

T
he call of the wild, of kinship and companionship is in our blood. The very act of asking the questions about what that animal, that stranger or that object would do if I were it, or what I would do if it were me, enhances not only a sense of a shared identity, but also our capacities for empathy and compassion. Without these capacities, both of which imply a sense of shared coexistence and suffering, there would be no science and there would be no society.

Modern science, then, need not be cold and impersonal. Instead, there’s good reason for it not to be. Einstein put it this way: “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically [i.e., objectively], but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” I believe that as we review the animal-human interface, the gap will begin to be bridged when we acknowledge, in the words of wildlife biol-ogist and writer Douglas Chadwick, that “when scientists warn about the dangers of anthropomorphism, what they are really concerned about are the dangers of breaking through into new and uncertain ground…that it amounts to the same old fear of upsetting established ways of looking at the world that has always stymied the practitioners of science.” Yes, we will make mistakes when, based on our own feelings, we make claims about the feelings of animals. But let’s not make the mistake of denying that their feelings could be remarkably similar to ours, or worse, that they don’t have feelings at all. Anyone who owns a dog, who has spent time with elephants, chimpanzees, baboons, dolphins, or killer whales knows that these creatures express what we sometimes call the sophisticated emotions of delight, joy, disappointment, even embarrassment, and that they grieve. And when it comes to our relationship with wild animals, we quickly discover that there is a difference between habituation and trust. Why not say so? Whose permission are we waiting for to enter that uncertain ground where the voice of our wild relatives will be heard? How long is it going to take to acknowledge that there is indeed a menagerie within each of us…a wolf, a hyena, a lion…a wild man and a wild woman?

POETRY

I
t is likely that the next blind spot to what is being proposed will come from those who feel that poetry has nothing to do with them. Poetry, they will tell you, is for the poets and the physicists. “We have more pressing issues to deal with…we are not interested in poetry and besides, we don’t like poetry,” they will say. Agree with them and then tell them, in these selected lines, what the poet Marianne Moore says about that…

That, surely, is the whole point: we need guidance. Tell them that poetry redresses the balance of things. Quick to add weight to the lighter scale, it is the poet in us who knows when things are unbalanced. Tell them that poets are the best watchdogs of the wild.

Poetry is a mirror—it asks us to look at ourselves. Where are you in this powerful poem, “The Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks,” by Pablo Neruda?

I wonder if there is anyone who has not at some stage in their lives identified with that mermaid and perhaps, at another stage, with the drunks? The poem is a clear reminder that unfamiliar ideas are bound to be rejected, sometimes brutally. It is also a reminder that you have to learn how to “dress,” to learn the language of the corporate body, of conservation and management boardrooms, if you are to make the notion of an ecological intelligence understandable and workable. At the same time, it is crucial that you do not disparage those who hold a different view of Nature. Do not underestimate the intelligence of the other.

If you are interested in what is raw and genuine, then you are interested in poetry, says Marianne Moore. I agree with her but right now, wherever you are, I am interested in
your
poetry. I am interested in those first wild and awkward words that find their way through your pen or pencil onto that first page of your notebook. I want to know whether you can see the moon not only as a satellite of the Earth, but as a daughter in a tidal dance around her mother, or perhaps a migrant with a scarred belly, and whether or not animals can find their way into your skin? Just write it down…

I want to know what it is that dies in you and what it is that resurrects when an animal or a forest dies or vanishes, forever. Could you put this down on paper, please?

Poetry is about learning to look and to write with both eyes—the one that measures and the one that refuses to be measured. If you are doing formal research writing, make space in your reports to describe the feeling that might come over you when you enter a forest or when you engage with an animal. Yours might not be the first technical report that describes a loss of a sense of proportion when surrounded by a herd of elephants or a flock of carmine bee-eaters. You will not be the first to include poetry or to describe the sense of the sacred in a dissertation, but you will be the first to do it in your own unforgettable way. Better that you let the poetry write you. Let it take you to that edge, to where there are no subjects and objects, and let it bring you back again. Look carefully at what you have written and afterwards, if you hear yourself saying, “Where the hell did that come from?” then it is likely that what you have written is poetry.

Poetry is disarming. It challenges the limits of objective reality. It goes straight for the heart. It speaks to a forgotten side of ourselves. It rages. It protects. It is noble. “It is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without,” says poet Wallace Stevens. It heals. “It speaks like the rain,” said Karen Blixen. It is a “requiem for a broken world”—the title of this poem by Barbara Fairhead:

There is a wound in me that shall not heal, says Fairhead. For her, it is not a wound that cannot heal. Instead, it is deliberately left open and raw in order that it may be felt and mourned for first. Even the finest of poets knows that there are places into which words cannot reach, says Stephen Watson. And so to mourn, he says, is one of the most exacting forms of inner work that a human being can undertake, and to grieve is the prerequisite of all healing. It is what this book is ultimately about.

Poetry is a language of hope. It inspires. It heals. It belongs. It is a wild gift. It goes for the jugular, like this poem by Mary Oliver, who pointedly tells us what we need to do if we are to rediscover ourselves in Nature:

RELIGION

F
or some, because of the usual religious connotations of words like
spirit
and
soul
, the notion of ecological intelligence is bound to be off-putting. My response to this blind spot would be to offer a line from poet John Keats: “Call the world, if you please, the ‘vale of soul making,’ then you will find out the use of the world.”

Taken literally, the word
religion
comes from the Latin root derivative
ligare
, which means “to bind” or “to connect.” If an ecological intelligence promotes a sense of connection or relatedness to the other, or if it sees the world as a vale of soul making, then the answer has to be yes—it is religious. I think we are all in some way “religious,” for it would appear that we cannot survive without a sense of connection, be it to one single living thing, to something wild, to a landscape, a domestic animal, an invisible deity, or to the memory of someone we once loved. What is more, that ancient sense of relatedness to the other has been with us for a long, long time, for as E. O. Wilson writes:

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will refuse to yield to the despair of animal mortality. They will find a way to keep the ancestral spirits alive. If the sacred narrative cannot be in the form of a religious cosmology, it will be taken from the material history of the universe and from the human species. That trend is in no way debasing. The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic.

To me there is something both soulful and sacred in the knowledge that there is a wolf in me…and a fox…and a fish.

I
f a sense of the sacred is included in the definition of religion, then the answer again is yes—ecological intelligence is religious, for it looks for the sacred in things. A sense of the sacred is not some kind of sentimental whim and neither should it be seen as “a frivolous side issue next to the ‘real’ concerns of hard science and economics,” says Herbert Schroeder.

It is deeply historical, deeply psychological, and deeply human.

It must be remembered that there are many people who do not associate themselves with any officially recognized religion but who never-theless have a deep and genuine sense of the sacred in certain forests, in wilderness areas, and in the powerful notion that some things are simply not for sale. It is therefore crucial that we understand that the threat to the existence of wild nature is also a threat to the central spiritual value of many people’s lives and that it will be met with fear, then anger, and then defiance. We must be careful, says Yeats, in these poignant lines:

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

O
n the other hand, ecological intelligence is not a religion. It is without dogma or prescription. It is a personal discovery that you and I are deeply rooted in the history of our planet and that we have a debt to repay for what we have done to it. It is to discover that we exist in a vast web of life and that every creature, in its own way, is a soul maker. And it is not about being lovable. It is about being elemental, as D. H. Lawrence might have put it, true to one’s own variations as water is. It is an attitude reflecting a commitment to a sense of authenticity, of learning to speak for one’s self, of remembering your ancient name. In these lines from Stephen Watson’s interpretation of the bushman poem “What Is Your Name,” how would you answer the homesick Kalahari hunter?