DeepSummary
The episode discusses the concept of animism, which is the belief that all things - plants, objects, and natural phenomena - have a soul or are imbued with life force. The speaker argues that for 99.9% of human history spanning over 300,000 years, animism was the normative way of perceiving the world and our place in it. It was not an abstract belief or theory but a direct, felt experience of the world as alive and inhabited by various beings and forces.
The speaker highlights that the loss of this animate vision is a relatively recent phenomenon, occurring primarily in the West over the last 500 years, coinciding with the rise of industrialization, materialism, and abstract thought. This loss is seen as a cognitive and perceptual shift, a "slaying of the angel," where we have lost the ability to experience the world as a seamless continuum of living, vibrant beings.
The episode advocates for reclaiming this animate vision not as a belief system but by reshaping our lives and communities to prioritize presence, relationality, ritual, and reconnection with the natural world. This is presented as a necessary step to truly understand and appreciate the world around us, and potentially save it from the consequences of our detached, materialistic worldview.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Animism, the belief that all things are imbued with life force, was the normative way humans perceived the world for 99.9% of our history.
- This animate vision arose from a direct felt experience of existing in relationship with a living, vibrant world, rather than an abstract belief system.
- The loss of this animate worldview in the West over the last 500 years coincided with industrialization, materialism and abstract thinking.
- Reclaiming an animate perspective is vital to inspire efforts to understand, appreciate and protect the natural world.
- Reshaping communities to prioritize presence, ritual and reconnection with nature can help regain this 'normative consciousness'.
- Animism extends 'personhood' to the entire natural world, seeing agency and beings in land, sky, stones and plants.
- Our modern materialistic way of seeing the world is an anomaly compared to how humans perceived reality for most of our existence.
- An animate worldview arises from an embodied, sensory experience of nature rather than intellectualization.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “If the world is already seen to be dead, then how can we possibly save it? Why would we save it? If the world is dead, then we're dead too.“ by Josh
- “Why would we not see this world as persons with whom we are in relation? The world is full of person, say the Ojibwe, only some of which are human. Because personhood is a wider category than rock.“ by Josh
- “Modern thought is different from, even alien to, all previous thought, and there is nothing normative or even normal about it or us.“ by Fe Krantz
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Episode Information
The Emerald
Joshua Schrei
5/9/23
For 98% of human history — over 10,000 generations — our ancestors lived, breathed, and interacted with a world that they saw and felt to be animate — imbued with life force, inhabited by and permeated with beings with which we exist in ongoing relation. This animate vision was the water in which we swam, it was consciousness in its natural dwelling place, the normative way of seeing the world and our place in it. It wasn’t a theory, a philosophy, or an idea. It wasn’t, actually, an "-ism." It was direct, felt experience. It was, simply, how things were. Which is why it has been commonly understood across the entire world for all of time. In this musically reimagined reissue of a classic episode of The Emerald, we explore how foundational the animate worldview is to the human experience and to human consciousness, and what we lose when it starts to fade. Listen on a good sound system when you have time to devote your full attention.