Ethics Is Primarily a Dance Of Intimate Relationship
“To speak of wilderness is to speak of wholeness. Human beings came out of that wholeness.”
In our upcoming course, Embodied Ethics, we explore ethics as a dance of intimate relationship. We in Industrial society have been taught that ‘relationship’ is reserved for that thing you do with the person you’re dating and then eventually marry (according to societal expectations). Yet for far (far) longer than this regrettable truncation has been part of our human narrative, humans have known and practiced an abiding and primary intimate relationship with all beings.
Your ancestors and mine have all practiced their own unique forms of animism––for them, the entire world was alive and ensouled. To be alive and ensouled means that each individual (whether that individual is Rock, Stream, Aspen Tree or Madagascan Pochard) has a soul of its own, including a unique destiny and intrinsic part to play in the unfolding of Life.
Within this cosmological compass our ancestors, all, had oral traditions telling stories of our celestial and chthonic parentage. Our ancestors came from the Earth and Stars, and were of the Earth and Stars. They answered to this eminence and were held in their accountability by this eminence. Your ancestors and mine oriented to a way of being that acknowledged this fact.
When I say ‘they oriented to a way of being’ I mean they acknowledged the paradoxical dance between individual will, desire and sovereignty and the fact that our every action impacts not only the other human individuals in our midst but everyone within the Web of Life: human and other-than-human. This Web of Life included the dead and the not yet born. There are many societies on Earth today that still practice this way of living.
In the last 200 years so much has happened to our human consciousness as a result of the developments within the fields of science and metaphysics alike. We now have the data to understand, with grave clarity, just how much of an impact we have on––and therefore a responsibility to––all Life on the planet. We now know, illustrated by crushing charts and diagrams of the climate and cultural collapses happening all around us, just how much we must learn to live with a daily, hourly, awareness of and orientation to our power, our impact, and our responsibility.
What I am speaking of is a thing we refer to as ecologically embedded ethics. And it’s complex. Unlike the ethics most of us were taught (about codes and rules and the threat of punishment should we stray outside the lines), ecologically embodied ethics depicts a world where the animism of our ancestors is woven with the twenty-first century awareness we all have access to, of the precarious and brilliant system upon which we rely for our survival and thriving, and just how much of an impact we can have on it, in all directions.
When we conduct ourselves with ignorance and selfishness, we impact the Web of Life by diminishing and extinguishing other beings’ capacity to thrive. When we conduct ourselves with dignity and responsibility as beings in a position of power within the Web of Life, we have the potential to weave our particular brilliance with all that is unfolding in this erotically intelligent dance of possibility.
Ecologically embedded ethics asks us to remember that to speak of wilderness is to speak of wholeness and that we, humas, came out of that wholeness.
For everyone who is honored to be in a position of power, this invitation is for YOU. This course is designed to push all our buttons and rattle our certainties. We don’t claim to have any answers. But in our world of ethics, the answers are not nearly as important as the questions.