Understandably in a troubled economy and a region beset by massive unemployment, people resist what appears to be in the common vernacular, a job-killer. Though proponents of the Great Main Woods National Park Initiative cite an increase in potential jobs related to tourism, opponents argue such a plan would derail efforts “to revitalize the region’s two paper mills, which if restarted could employ about 600 people at manufacturing wages, which are generally higher than tourism wages.”[2] The forest products industry—loggers, paper manufacturers, lumber companies—have a vested interest in protecting access to large tracts of land now privately owned. Not surprisingly, Maine ’s U.S. Forest product manufacturers contribute to political campaigns and send lobbyists to Congress and the statehouse.
I realized as I listened to a call-in public radio show about this initiative, bears can’t call in. Moose don’t vote. Owls don’t have checkbooks. The creatures: botanical, mammalian, insect, avian, aquatic don’t view their habitat as a commodity: a panoply of resources to be harvested, milled, sold. They don’t recognize borders: national, state, commercial, public or private; but I suspect they recognize at some level the intricate workings of the eco-system they sustain.
Here’s the rub. Of course jobs matter to the people who need them, and to the economy at large. And of course politicians are elected to represent their constituents— though the last couple of years many of us wonder whom our elected officials truly represent. The number one issue of the 2012 campaign according to every pundit out there: jobs. From a human point of view right here in the United States
The problem is we’ve limited the conversation to ourselves. If wildlife could vote in Congress what would they authorize? I bet the polar bears would vote down arctic drilling and vote in cap and trade. Probably a senior states-bear would filibuster for massive regulation of carbon emissions and the penguins would propose new taxes to pay for new technologies to harness the energy sources they rely on: solar and wind.
The wolves and coyotes would vote to end all the leases of public land to ranchers. The raccoons, opossums, foxes and porcupines would call a halt to highway construction and repair. The deer might submit bills to levy taxes on developers whose subdivisions and strip malls eat up more and more of their land. The migratory birds might vote to shutter airports or restrict flight to engine-less craft. The dolphins, in solidarity with their global brethren, would cease trade and diplomatic relations with Japan
It’s not that our fellow creatures lack a voice; it’s that we don’t listen.
Diana Reiss, professor of cognitive psychology at Hunter College
I was really interested in decoding dolphin communication so I was studying their own forms of communication… recording their own signals with underwater microphones called hydrophones and bringing them into computers and trying to figure out what they were doing. But then I thought, well here's another path to try. What if we give them control over a keyboard? It's about 3 by 3' or a little smaller than that. It has white visual symbols on it. And the dolphin can hit any of those symbols —they all look slightly different. And if it hits for example…a triangle it would hit a computer generated whistle that we created. So the dolphin hits a triangle and it would hear a sound and we would give it a ball. If it hit a different shaped symbol it would hear a different signal and we'd rub it. And in this way we were in the situation where we had to respond to what the dolphin wanted. We… turned the tables completely... I don't like to train dolphins. I like to give them ways of reflecting their intelligence.[4]
In the course I am teaching this term called “The Downside to Certainty,” we watch TED talks to expand our perspective. A recent one featured the Italian scientist, Stefano Mancuso who founded the field of plant neurobiology. “He and his team explore how plants communicate, or ‘signal’ with each other, using a complex internal analysis system to find nutrients, spread their species and even defend themselves against predators.”[5] He says of plants,
They are more sophisticated in sensing than animals. Every single root apex is able to detect and monitor concurrently and continuously at least fifteen different chemical and physical parameters. Plants are extraordinary communicators. They are able to distinguish kin and non-kin. They communicate with plants and other species and communicate with animals by producing chemical volatiles.[6]
As a student of mine so aptly asked, “What would it mean to see plants as purposeful?”
How would it change us and the world to listen to the whole conversation not just our own lines? How would the epic of creation unfold if we were to acknowledge there are no bit parts?
My students readily acknowledge, even without the videos of elephants grieving and bonobos driving golf carts and playing Pac-man, animals experience emotion and exhibit impressive intellect; but the students resign themselves to cordoning off that information. They accept ignoring it as the easiest way to resolve the cognitive dissonance of behaving as though non-human beings are less perceptive, and thus less worthy—without actually believing it.
It is not just plants and animals that communicate; the weather has certainly expressed itself this year with record-breaking heat, scorching wildfires, devastating droughts, torrential rains, record snowfalls, tornadoes and flooding, earthquakes, and a rapacious tsunami. The earth is not silent in its registration of our activity. The question is not whether we have the capacity to hear; the question is whether we have the willingness.
Humility is not simply a spiritual virtue. It is part of the apparatus necessary for long-term survival. As individuals we might achieve a lengthy lifespan; and as a species we’ve done pretty well. But for all the rhetoric about future generations, about grandchildren and great-grandchildren, we appear not to be listening for the long haul.
Most of the parents I know would sacrifice their lives for that of their children. Many parents sacrifice their time, their discretionary pleasure and income, even their personal pursuits so that their children will have better lives. Clearly we are capable of viewing, even subordinating our needs in relation to others; yet as humans in conversation with the forests and oceans, subterranean layers and atmosphere, plants and animals, we turn a deaf ear.
We do it because the conversation is uncomfortable. It threatens the quality of existence as we know it. It undermines the emotional bonds that give our lives meaning. In a human family, the urgency to provide food and shelter makes employment a necessity so the idea of a national park to preserve pristine wilderness instead of unfettered access for forest products and recreational industries sounds as offensive as a string of obscenities.
I remember my father, a big-hearted immigration attorney, asking, “What’s up with the environmentalists crabbing about fishing nets trawling in the Gulf, killing other species? These poor Vietnamese fishermen are just trying to make a living.”
But so are the fish. So are the turtles and the opossums trying to cross the road. The giant sequoias, larger than the blue whale and far older drop their seed cones with as fervent a desire to have their offspring thrive as we do.
With the division of the first cell eons ago, the intention to replicate emerged. Life forms of all sizes and shapes, longevities and persuasions seek to replicate or reinvent. To disentangle ourselves from the fabric of creation is not an option even if we pretend it is. So why pit ourselves against the neighboring thread?
All summer I watch the pumpkin vines in my garden. Tiny tendrils wrap themselves on the wire fence, securing a place for the pumpkins to grow. Green globules form, pear-shaped, suspended in air. The intentionality of that pumpkin plant to grow pumpkins is unmistakable. Great stalks spill onto my walkway and across the patio. Tempting as it is to view the encroaching greenery as an intruder into my space, I can’t help but cheer for a plant looking out for its young, seeking sunlight and adequate nutrition. What parent, what child, what human can’t identify with that?
Yet so quickly we don’t. We see other species as invaders or commodities, resources to manage, pests to control. I realize practicality dictates this. When the telephone repairman pointed out the enormous wasp nest on the electrical box, I let him spray it so that the meter reader would not risk getting stung. I ceded the right of wasps to nest to the possible safety of another human, but believe me I could hear and see the wasps complain. And I don’t blame them. I did not like what I did. As a student wisely observed last week, “The necessary act is not always the moral one.” Perhaps it is a matter of enlarging our understanding of morality to include species beyond our own.
We’ve all heard some variation of this:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.[7]
In genocides, the perpetrators cast their victims as somehow less than human: as cockroaches or rats. Do rats insult adversaries by insinuating they are human?
During slavery, one group treated another as chattel, a word possibly derived from medieval Latin and Old French terms for capital and cattle. What if we had no experience of capital, or property, of one being or area of land owned by another? How would that reshape history? Do trees and birds wonder at the strange geometry of parceling a forest or field?
if we reduce the epic of geology to strata we drill,
if we drown out the sound of life around us with our own noise,
who will listen to our last breath?
Amen.
How will the ocean sound in fifty years?
[1] http://bangordailynews.com/2011/08/03/news/penobscot/medway-panel-pushes-for-national-park-feasibility-study/
[2] ibid.
[3] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=whistles-with-dolphins
[4] http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-09-15/diana-reiss-dolphin-mirror/transcript
[5] http://www.ted.com/speakers/stefano_mancuso.html
[6] http://www.ted.com/talks/stefano_mancuso_the_roots_of_plant_intelligence.html
[7] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/ Martin_Niemöller
