What might it mean to live as a Relational Being?
Human Beings are comprised of myriad living organisms. We're an interwoven portion of the greater living organism that is this living planet. How might we better embrace this?
This is a writing that has been drafted over the past few solar cycles, it is being updated and revised here today, on this new Moon as an exploration towards trying to comprehend such terms as an Ecological Self or Relational Being. Then considering how accessible these theories and practices are, and what its relevance and importance might be outside the walls of academia and philosophical circles in a time of rapid ecological, political, and social breakdown
Arne Naess and Freya Mathews, environmental philosophers, or “ecophilosophers” of Western Civilization from the late 20th and early 21st century (of the Gregorian calendar system we find ourselves in here) have argued that in order to change our current anthropocentric - human centered - trajectory, and these dominant narratives and paradigms, we need to resist the individualism and atomization of modernity and instead embrace an ‘ecological’ or ‘relational’ self.
This provocation is complex, especially considering we of modernity hardly recognize the agency and personhood of the rest of this living world beyond humanity, often even lacking the language to describe reality in a more relational way.
There in lies the challenge and opportunity.
But how relevant, important, and accessible is it for those outside of academia or philosophy, and niche communities where holistic living and learning happen, to explore these relationships and theories? Especially and particularly in regards to those struggling to put food on the table or have a roof over their head? Or for the millions of humans who are also suffering from systems of oppression such as racism, sexism, or xenophobia. Living and dying amidst unjust and entirely horrific conditions through these wars and attempts by some humans to annihilate other humans with differing cultural/religious backgrounds. Where might considering what it means to be a relational being come in to these peoples life-ways and realities?
This is a conundrum and here through these words we’ll primarily leave that question floating in the wind while we wander and wonder about what relational being even means and why it might (or might not?) be of value to anyone.
Maybe there are ways to make being a relational being ‘cool’ and fun, engaging, and entertaining. This is in part what the greater exploration of the newly emerging Institute of Relational Being is beginning to explore. A processes of instituting the premise that we are already rooted in relational being, and from there using our collective ecological imaginations to explore practices and processes to help us integrate (and remember) this way of living and being that is your birth right. And as more and more join in this pursuit the goal is to be courageous, foolish, and sometimes ridiculous and silly (while always maintaining some level of seriousness) as we find accessible ways for everyday folk to get hip to living in more relational ways.
What might this mean for the greater collective popular cultural consciousness if we all regularly participated with the present as relational beings? To be a relational being is to live in a constant state of mutual, relational becoming, right along with the plants, trees, insects, fungi, the wind and rain, and all the parts of nature we are living with as part of a shared ecology. We can do so with reverence while also finding a healthy mix of the sacred and the profane.
We are humans, too after all.
If it became a common practice to work towards becoming a relational being throughout our modern civilizations do you think capitalism, settler colonialism, and our global economic systems could rationalize functioning the way they have and do?
And for all those humans forced into migration due to drought, flooding, war, and countless environmental and climate issues, what place do you think this exploration has in these troubling times, and how best might it be accessed if so?
These are some of the wicked problems of this particular journey and exploratory process. Not all will remotely be even close to answered, but they will reside in the current of this multi-species co-created flow. For this is being written and informed as much by the land and waters as it is by the human helping these words find their way into what you are reading.
It’s amazing (tragic really) that a very small population of humans with their positions of power and privilege (and the corporations who have been granted personhood) are the ones most responsible for how our modern mythologies are playing out. And yet, most of us are still complicit on some levels. But this responsibility and complicity is by no means equally spread out across this living globe. Nevertheless, the increase in massive hurricanes, urban flooding, wildfires, sea acidification, droughts, and more have been conclusively connected to human actions.
The anthropocene is a term that has been used to describe this human caused environmental/ecological/geological epoch and shift the world is experiencing though many declare it is unfair or incorrect to use that as a blanket term for why we find ourselves collectively facing these often very troubling transitions in and on our shared world. Especially when it comes to rapid species/biodiversity losses and the portion of humanity most responsible for what is now more commonly recognized as the sixth mass extinction (Ceballos and Ehrlich, 2018, and Mitchell, 2018).
The global north and what is referred to as Western Civilization contains many of the key human players and cultural practices and systems that are directly contributing to the chaos that is unraveling. Capitalism, settler-colonialism, patriarchal societies, slavery, plantation culture, poverty and homelessness connected to inequality and various systems of oppression, persist. All of which are primarily due to these narratives, worldviews, and beliefs that perpetual growth and endless extraction can continue indefinitely on a finite planet.
A planet that is undeniably alive, and brimming with agency filled beings who are all participating in this cosmic dance of relationships together, with us humans, whether we acknowledge it or not. None of us should be identified as merely resources or under such gross blanket terms as consumers. Yuck.
These issues are instrumental to bring into the picture when looking at how we find ourselves here. In order to have a proper context when examining such theories or the way we utilize language, it feels important to continually illuminate a relational framework and lens with which to explore this all through. Ideally, by doing so we may continue to collaboratively participate in this exploration around ecological personhood for all living beings. Then as relational beings we might start collectively treating the rest of the living world with more respect and reverence along the way.
Let us bring terms besides the anthropocene into this framework and narrative as well. Terms such as Capitalocene, Plantationocene, and Chthulucene (Haraway, 2015) are but a few worth getting to know. The anthropocene is a problematic and unfairly simplified blanket term for how we have arrived at this place in space, and it is rooted in the dominant Western thought/ideology, circumventing the colonialism that is underneath so much of it (Mitman, 2019). This writing isn’t specifically meant to delve deeper into these terms but they are shred here for you to explore in more depth to expand your possibilities of perception and consider moving on beyond the anthropocene.
For those interested in deeper dives into denser academic/philosophical wanderings around the Ecological Self, or such concepts as Ontopoetics (which is fascinating) Freya Mathews has written a wealth of information and exploration into these topics. She’s provided a mapping of what she referred to as the atomistic self which was created through the separation of self/spirit, mind/matter (or world/matter), and nature/culture, causing much of the disconnection, dualism, and materialist, reductionist ways of living that have nearly consumed our consciousness since at least the time of Plato on up to and through the age of the enlightenment. She then goes on to show how the cartesian/hobbesian worldview became the dominant cosmology in Western Civilization (Mathews, 1991 p.3-ff). This is where it seems we of the global north and in Western Civilization really took a significant almost amnesia like turn, essentially forgetting our intrinsic connection to the natural world we are a part of.
Relational Being is being embraced here as it has multiple meanings and can be used as an action oriented term. Relational Being also speaks to the greater connectivity and porosity that us as human beings are comprised of. We are a cornucopia of relations.
Humans of modernity typically view ourselves as separate, superior, and above all other plants and animals. Seeing ourselves as separate from the relational realm. To be a relational being is to re-integrate ourselves with the rest of nature, with humility, vulnerbility, reverence, and care. Relational Being has multiple meanings and can be a noun while also being a verb, where our life-way and world/cosmic view shifts towards relational be-ing, where we are, as previously noted, living in a constant state of becoming, with the rest of our shared reality.
Relational Being is an ongoing participatory practice, an invitation that provides you with pathways and processes that lead us towards remembrance. Remembering that you are nature, too. Always and in all ways navigating life in relationship with the rest of this world, the cosmos, and beyond. Relational Being is a way for those of us who need it to give back to ourselves the ability to see, feel, and live in the flow of relationality.
So, as we continue from this open place of wonder and surrender, let us consider how this way of being could be accessible in a world in deep transition? The challenges of accessing this lens, this behavioral way of being are immense. Seeing how so many of us have been steadily disconnected from our relationships with the rest of nature. Being generations removed from a way of life that is intrinsically and intimately connected with all the more-than-human beings of this incredible world can often be a difficult realization to reckon with. To practice and embodied this perspective is perhaps a tall order.
So may we practice it one breath at a time.
We shall have to continually confront these challenges and opportunities, from whatever position, circumstances, and context our relational being might be in. May we regularly recognize and remember that this is an ongoing process of humbling down and being open to these ever-present relationships we share in with the rest of this vitally alive and wondrous world we are a part of.
Quite often, we humans of modernity are yearning for a sense of belonging. Feeling isolated and detached from community. The invitation here is for you to try on this garment of becoming a relational being and see how it fits and feels. For then you may be better able to see that you are never alone! One way to do this is to simply make a bit of space for getting out of an enclosed building, breathing deeply, and allowing your eyes, ears, heart, mind, and body to feel into your experience. If you do this for even just a little while, without any expectations, you will likely come to sense that the trees and breeze, the buzz of the Bees, the birds and various beings are all actively creating reality with you. Together, you are the ecology of a place, engaged in dynamic relationships and a rich and diverse community, even if some of the members are almost imperceptible or invisible to you. The good news is that as you embrace your relational being more and more, the layers and levels of these relationships are further revealed to you.
It’s been mentioned a handful of times already, but these words are being addressed and directed primarily towards humans of modernity, and those who were fully born into, subscribe to, or adopted the dominant worldviews and life ways of Western Civilization as we’ve come to call it.
So is increasingly important to acknowledge as humans of modernity where we are, and have been complicit in the perpetuation of systems of marginalization and oppression, and at times appropriation as well. It is our responsibility at the very least to illuminate and acknowledge the myriad injustices of our world, both human and more-than-human, and frame these explorations from a position within the myriad crises, taking ownership, as best as we can for our part in perpetuating these practices and behaviors that are long overdue for the compost heap. Especially when it comes to white supremacy/superiority, human supremacy, and the whole neoliberal agenda that dominates the Western Hemisphere and global north’s world view. This shit has got to change.
And to embrace, celebrate, illuminate and honor indigenous worldviews and life-ways, the vast wealth of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) that lives largely in story and spoken words. And for us of modernity to find ways to ideally gracefully weave together, in tandem with these traditions, rituals, and ceremonies, new and old stories, practices, and culturally caring ways for all of us to participate in this more holistic way of living and being together.
It is baffling to consider how this Westernized perspective, modernity, the age of enlightenment, this atomistic self, and the patriarchal, settler colonial, neo-liberal, perpetual growth and extractivist way of living has maintained its hold on our imaginations for so long. The mind/body and culture/nature separation station on the linear train of humanity’s storyline needs to be closed down and left to compost as well. I am grateful for the actions so many are taking on to make this so.
Likewise, it is worth noting that it is difficult beyond measure to separate academics/philosphy and politics, or spirituality and politics and of course, this goes for religion and politics, too. Everything in this manner is political and when we are avoiding or neglecting this it feels as though it is only through a willingness, consciously or not, to accept the status quo and be complicit in denying the storyline (story-curve? story-swirl? story-circle?) we are in which maintains strict dualism, and ongoing justifications for marginalization, and oppression on so many levels.
May we collectively, globally, as human beings, and relational beings, with the rest of our multi-species communities and shared ecologies, welcome a significant transformation based in an ethic and ethos of care.
And as the rights of nature and the pursuit of acknowledging the personhood and legal agency of non-human beings gains more traction, may we individually and collectively find ways daily, or as often as we can possibly muster, to participate in behaviors that reflect the agency and aliveness of our multi-species communities. For we are in no position to ‘give’ them this agency and aliveness, they already have it, they always have. It is our role and responsibility now to give ourselves back the ability to remember this always so that we may respond and a navigate with those roots sinking deep into our collective soil.
The first nations and indigenous people who have experienced the atrocities of colonization through human and cultural genocide have suffered the loss, or dwindling embers of their belief systems and worldviews for too long. Immense gratitude for their resilience, resistance, and perseverance as they continue to embody and practice their ways of living that are most certainly relational ways of being.
There does not seem to be simple or easy path ahead for us collectively, so here’s to humbly surrendering to the truth that we are always and forever in relationship with the world around us, and to see this as an ever present gift.
This is what relational being is all about, and it will continue to be confronted here and beyond in as simple terms as possible. This is an ongoing collaborative journey of living and breathing into the present, paying attention and moving through pathways of remembrance. Thank you for your participation in this as well. It can be a mighty messy, awkward, challenging journey we’re in the midst of!
And I know we will mess up plenty along the way and continue to fail spectacularly as well in the process. Surely this writing can be picked apart and lambasted for some of what might be considered audacious, foolish, or out right nonsensical perspectives.
Alas, these words are being shared with the trust that each act and effort towards confronting, acknowledging, grieving, and healing from this collective amnesia that we of Western Civilization and modernity have experienced is needed at this time and place in space. And that the overarching goal is to help us to transform the detrimental parts of our dominant collective stories and further amplify the narrative, mythology, and reality which embraces a relational way of living and being.
One that so many among us yearn for.
References:
Ceballos, G. and Ehrlich, P.R. (2018). The misunderstood sixth mass extinction. Science, 360(6393), pp.1080.2-1081.
Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities, 6(1), pp.159–165.
Mathews, F. (1991) Ecological Self. S.L.:Routledge
Mitchell, A. (2018). Revitalizing laws, (re)-making treaties, dismantling violence: Indigenous resurgence against “the sixth mass extinction.” Social & Cultural Geography, pp.1–16.
Mitman, G. (2019). Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing Reflect on the Plantationocene. [online] Edge Effects. Available at: https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/Naess, A. (1987). ‘Self-realization: an ecological approach to being in the world.’ The Trumpeter 4(3): pp.35-42.