This Tuesday I read a post from Charles Eisenstein’s substack called “What is the next story?” I scrolled through it on the loo in the darkness, then by the grey swollen Granta I squatted in a place where a fox had pissed and tried halfheartedly to yoke my mind to the stream. I seemed to have little hope of tying it down. At lunchtime I joined a talk over Zoom from Dougald Hine about his forthcoming book and my mind had worn me down so much that I joined it from bed. Maybe that’s what I get for talking about ideas. It was like Christmas never happened.
In another way, though, Eisenstein’s post was like Christmas come again: a gift all ready for me to tear into, not to cherish. I’d committed, earlier in the week, to taking aim at a certain narrative about the future and the relationship between humans and nature and Eisenstein’s post seemed like a great example of it. Lots of people have taken aim at ‘the dominant narrative’ of - well - dominance. Eisenstein’s post does and so, in a different way, does the Dark Mountain manifesto by Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth. I want to express doubts about something that thinks of itself as an alternative to that, perhaps as the alternative. It’s something I’ve found myself close to, but uncomfortable with, since about 2005 and which seemed to pop up everywhere. To be more commonly told, in fact, than the dominant story it set itself in opposition to. However, I hadn’t collected anything to cite, precisely because I thought I could pick up a specimen any time. Eisenstein’s “new story of interbeing1” seemed to prove me right about that. The thing just blundered into my net.
Eisenstein claims that the old story is “I exist independently” while the new story is “I exist relationally.” This matches well to the views of some of the anthropologists whose work I’ve been reading recently who celebrate a ‘relational’ approach as a model for a better future. These people would also point out that this ‘new story’ is in fact an old one2 so, rather than a new story being assembled, we can imagine an endangered story sweeping back out of its refuges across the lands where it once roamed free. It’s a thrilling vision, a rewilding of story; the spreading of uncounted wings and the enrichment with beauty and terror as just two notes of the polyphonic grandeur reasserting itself across our the world. However, before there was rewilding, there was reintroduction biology and the most important lesson of that humbler discipline was to always ask one question before starting work. The first question is always “has the threat in the world gone away?” Otherwise you’re just sending them out to their deaths. The assumption about changing the narrative seems to be that narratives come first; that they don’t have an ecology but instead produce the world. Maybe that’s true. Maybe stories are not beasts but suns: abundant, inviolate and untouchable. I’m doubtful, though.
Eisenstein’s story is a bit too detailed and idiosyncratic, though, to be my perfect straw man. It has 29 propositions and some require adherence to the cosmology of Rupert Sheldrake which is a whole other can of worms for me. But then on Thursday I saw an article in the Guardian by Rebecca Solnit about why we need new stories about the climate. Contrary to Eisenstein’s, Solnit’s idea of what the new stories should be is a little too vague for straw man purposes. However she is saying something definite which she illustrates by talking about Terminator 2. She applauds the film for showing that actions in the present shape the future through tremendous battles but, on the other hand, is tired of the kind of story which suggests that these battles are won by loner heroes. Instead, she says, they are fought by collectives; with individual humans being heroes only by inspiring such collectives. Solnit says that the new stories we need are stories of popular power. Is that really a new story though? Or is that exactly the story that’s now run its course?3 To me, the most obvious point about Terminator 2 is that the great battling powers aren’t human at all.
I think the ‘alternative story’ can be told in just three propositions, though I also add one sub-clause relating specifically to wildlife conservation. Today I want to talk about proposition one which I rendered like this:
“At its base, the problem of our relationship with the not-just-human world4 is one of perception. Changing our perceptions can be the first step to saving the world.”
That’s what I don’t believe. I’m not saying that it’s wrong, just that there are reasons its hard to believe it. Or rather, for this particular proposition, I think there’s something missing from it. Maybe - as I’ve said - that shows that I am stuck in a trap. I am now, or so I tell myself, illustrating the trap. Maybe changing our perceptions can indeed be the first step. I’m not certain. I do feel fairly certain, though, that some particular ways of changing our perceptions aren’t going to help that much.
In one of my posts, I spoke about a the range of intellectually subtle positions in between believing and not believing in fairies. That was a response to having encountered some anthropological ideas that suggested it was best to think of people from other cultures as literally living in different worlds (this post has more on that). Perhaps these different ideas form a spectrum or ladder or perhaps they’re more of a cloud. It’s fascinating to try and climb, descend, collapse, condense or simply orientate yourself among them and I’ve spent quite some time doing just that.
I want to leave that aside, though, and think about the views of both myself and the man who told me that the Revolution had driven the spirits back to the stream sources. For him, at that time and as far as we could tell, the spirits absolutely and straightforwardly existed. For me, at that time as far as anyone else could tell, they absolutely and straightforwardly did not. I invite you to simply maintain your own agnosticism at its current level, whatever that is, and consider that the ‘traditional’ Katu modes of farming and hunting just don’t make sense without the spirits. Because the spirits, not the Katu people, were the custodians of the land and punished transgressors.
Now in my ‘world’ and this Katu man’s ‘world’, the thing he called “the Revolution” was winning. I might call it ‘modernity’ perhaps, because it looks to me like “the Revolution” is just the local franchise. It seemed to me then, and seems still, like the same thing had already been winning for a long time in my own country by the time Karl Marx showed up. To me, then, it was winning because it was the truth. It was, metaphorically, God. To him, it was winning because it was a god, and possibly not metaphorically. In Katu, the name for tiger is ‘abhuy abhuop’ literally “grandfather spirit” or “old man demon”. This seems weird to us because we want to classify spirits as spirits on the basis of their ‘nature’, their ‘essence’. The idea of ‘spirit’ is ultimately an idea about essence; and it aims, I think, to be the most fundamental separation of all. According to Nikolas’ ethnography, the Katu understanding of an abhuy is more ecological than taxonomic: spirits can eat people; it might not actually matter if it’s a metaphor. Katu people were very well aware that the beast they had allied themselves with could eat them. Actually everyone was, in Vietnam.
And in Vietnam, working improbably on the conservation of the saola, I was constantly being presented with the vastness of the power of nation states and, dimly, the greater monster/s those might just be organs of. Pointing out such power gets you accused of celebrating it which I think illustrates exactly the problem I’m talking about.
Now maybe there was a sense in which Katu people respected the spirits’ wishes because the spirits were people and deserving of respect by virtue of their peopliness Maybe there was something of the ‘all my relations’ sensibility that I hear from those inspired by American indigenous approaches. Not very obviously, though. Certainly, the goddess Komorbarr came across as someone that the men of a Katu village might actually get on with, despite the terrifying family she had married into. There was, perhaps, an undisclosed measure of flirtation inherent in dealings with her, despite the fact that she had a husband who bore the wild beasts like lice in his hair (!)5. However, this is one aspect of a relationship with one particular spirit who, importantly perhaps, was once human herself. Mostly, the spirits inspired fear. To those who visit (or work in) zoos, it may be important to wonder if the tiger in the enclosure is being treated as a person or an object, but it is the high fence that manifests such questions. Were we on the other side of that fence, other questions would become important. Briefly.
Being on one or other side of that fence changes things but, if I take seriously what this one Katu man told me, then climbing up and down the ladder between imaginary fairies and real fairies doesn’t change very much. Wandering through the cloud of engaging alternative worldviews (or worlds) doesn’t seem to change very much. That’s my proposition. Whatever your ontological stance, however you do or don’t believe in fairies, that Beast is still winning in all the worlds at once. Name one where he isn’t and tell me if any astronomer can find where that is6.
So, the problem of our relationship with nature is one of power, not perception. Perception changes nothing. In fact, maybe saying ‘the spirits don’t exist’ is just one kind of power move: there’s co-optation, domination, objectification, elimination and there’s also negation. The ultimate power move, maybe. Orwellian… and maybe they really don’t exist and that’s our starting point. Or it’s the starting point for those of us who are born in that reality. Whatever! You are welcome to attempt to switch between realities. Switch between battles you are losing.
Now at this point, a reminder. I spoke about the story I was telling as a trap. What I have written above is not intended as a truth I am preaching but as a trap to find the way out of and this kind of thinking is what that trap is made of. I haven’t figured out a way out already. This isn’t a sales pitch. It might very well be a perfectly functional trap. Please stop or continue reading on that basis. Don’t stop or continue because you disagree with me. Because this isn’t me, it’s my trap. Do have a go at breaking it, though.
The ‘alternative narrative’ looks to me like a signposted way out of the trap that actually doesn’t work. Always available is the explanation that it hasn’t worked precisely because I doubted it. My doubt might, in fact, be artificial; it might be an excuse not to change because I am comfortable in my trap. All that’s possible and it’s because of worrying about this sort of thing that I don’t write very much in this vein.
That said, I should back up again and say again what I’ve said. Here goes:
I think there’s an over-arching narrative or ‘myth’ (in the less cool sense of that word) which sets itself out as an alternative to a dominant narrative of human progress. One strand of this meta-narrative suggests that the first step to changing the world is changing our perceptions. That’s a bit too general, though; there is a particular way or set of ways that our perceptions are supposed to change. I’ve mentioned four different ideas about this: two at the beginning of this post which I found in popular articles (Eisenstein’s and Solnit’s) and two in one of my Nam Đông posts, which I found in anthropology papers.
One of the anthropological ones goes, more or less: “we should adopt a view where non-humans are not seen as objects that we can manipulate but as something more like persons that we can relate to.” The other goes: “we may not be able to do that ourselves but we must understand that indigenous people can and so we should let them get on with it, and try to stop powerful materialist interests from destroying their old relationships with the land.” The two viewpoints from popular articles that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece are also talking about the power of a ‘relational’ perspective. Eisenstein, like these anthropologists, talks about relationships which extend beyond the human. Solnit doesn’t; when she talks about “crises we can respond to if we choose to,” I’m pretty sure the “we” means “humans”. But it’s still a story about establishing and maintaining old relationships (between humans) against powerful interests. To be honest I do not see how this is in any way a new story. Still, the shift in perception she’s recommending is away from something destructive that might look like the figure and towards something older that looks like the ground. And it is relationships between those in the ‘ground’ that we have to focus on, not the big powers.
All of this is challenged for me by what I heard and saw in Nam Đông.
I suppose the best way of putting it is that, exactly by stating that we can choose the story, we reveal how things have actually changed. There are entities in this world that I can choose to relate to as something more like people or as something more like objects. For others, my family for example, I don’t really have that choice. I don’t want to treat them like objects because I love them; that’s true. It’s also true, though, that if I start treating that way, they are going to let me know. You can think of it in also in terms of attentiveness rather than in terms of definitions. I think Thich Nhat Hanh and Tim Ingold would both encourage such thinking. If I am attentive to an ‘object’ then I may notice if it7 presents itself to me as a person. Still, there's the question whether I can choose to be attentive without any material consequences8.
I speak about ‘objects’ or ‘people’. I could put in another level also: powers. Same logic applies, I think. Powers might perhaps be those entities that can choose to view me as an object. But who/what you are able to regard as object/person/power is something that can change. Who/what is able to view you as object/person/power can also change. There might be a world where that doesn’t change, but it’s not this one.
In an influential 2010 paper, Marisol de la Cadena talks about the mountain Ausangate, a powerful earth-being according to many who lived in its shadow; including her late friend Nazario, a Quechua ritual specialist whom she met at a demonstration against a mine. de la Cadena was at the demonstration because she was siding with the people whose lands would be lost. Nazario was there for this same reason but also because he feared the murderous retribution of the mountain itself. At the end of her paper de la Cadena can talk of the mountain as an entity that is engaged itself in the political struggle against the mine. However she also says that this is a struggle the mountain is capable of losing, that even indigenous people may side against it, denying its personhood and power. Finally she states that she herself still cannot “know with [Nazario] that Ausangate’s ire is dangerous,” but is siding with him for the same reasons that originally brought her to the struggle: because she wants to defend the place where he lives. So care binds her whereas both care and fear bound him. If he had decided to support the mine over the mountain, the mountain could plausibly bring a landslide down on him. If she had decided to make the same decision, she could just have gone home, staying where the mountain couldn’t get her. The bosses of the mining company have the ability to treat a mountain, a powerful earth being, as a mere object. Saying that they shouldn’t and we won’t doesn’t change the fact that they (and we) can.9
To turn it around, if someone told you that they had made the life choice to see you as a person, not an object you might feel very different depending who they were. If they were a friend, a dog, your house or your mother, a god or a mountain, a virus, a fairy, an elephant, a president, a stone or your phone or a child.
Borrowing Thich Nhat Hanh’s term and contrasting it with an ‘old story of separation’.
I don’t know that much about Eisenstein’s work in general and have no reason to think he’d disagree with that. I would probably expect him to agree.
I don’t have a copy to hand but I think Yuval Noah Harari asks this in Homo Deus. I guess I’m one of those who thinks Harari gets a lot of unjustified flak.
OK, apparently I am going to do that thing I just said I wasn’t going to do.
Note that Katu stories about Komorbarr come to me through Nikolas Arhem’s work. Either through reading his PhD thesis and associated publications, or through sitting in interviews with him in Nam Dong in 2008.
"Astronomer” is a metaphor. I’m not looking for scientific credentials necessarily but I’m looking for something other than wishful thinking.
"it”
Attention always has some consequences, just not always material ones.
After an email from a friend, I feel I need to clarify that this is what I mean when I talk about the power we (apparently) have to “choose the story.” I’m not just talking about the ‘spiritual supermarket.’ I’m saying that it looks as if we can choose the story without consequences. Or without direct material consequences anyway; stories always do something. If we try to see a mountain as a person, it is because we like the idea or think it is morally right or maybe even factually true. It isn’t because if we treat a great power like a mere thing that power will get offended and murder our families.
Losing in every world at once.
Hi Nicholas! I actually read this after forwarding you Koch's piece building on the Eisenstein one that you start with. I feel like, in this current series, you are putting down on paper (metaphorically speaking, although maybe you write longhand first?) some things you've been carrying. Maybe the result of that will be that you'll be able to step back from them and look from various angles, or just go for a walk and leave them there. I don't know, but that's one of the things writing sometimes does for me, to take a set of thoughts out of my head and place them somewhere else and see what happens (or doesn't happen) as a consequence.
My other thought is that I'm struck by the resonance between your thinking about traps and two other Substack pieces that landed in recent days. First, Paul K's latest essay:
https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-savage-reservation
I thought of it when you wrote that "pointing out such power gets you accused of celebrating it". What marks Paul's writing out from Eisenstein or Solnit is that he does point out the power of the Machine and has little truck with cheering noises about "the new narrative", let alone "saving the world". I sometimes get a little grumpy reading the passages in which he emphasises the overwhelming power of what he is opposing and how hardly anyone really wants to reject it. I guess I'm drawn to an in-between position, from which it can look as though Paul is taking the power claimed by the Machine at face value, more than it deserves to be taken. Yet, in the end, the differences between the two of us are more differences of style and temperament than any great distance in where we land. And in this latest piece, he lands on the idea that what we're looking for is not a victory but an "escape hatch".
Then yesterday, Jay Rollins had a post at The Wonderland Rules called The Return of Houdini, which was all about his "weird little field of interest":
"I learned how esoterica like rapid-induction hypnosis and subliminal influence techniques worked competently enough to use them on strangers in the subway when I felt like it over a period of three decades spent on various brain-melting drugs, more or less as a hobby. It feels roughly equivalent to having learned how to reliably solve all of those bar puzzles made of horseshoes and steel rings connected with short lengths of chain with my eyes closed, while being shelled by an artillery battalion for thirty years. Now that I’m off the drugs myself, I unpack and reorder people’s brains more or less instinctively.
"I want to be crystal clear about the results of getting into that weird little field of interest: I live a state of perpetual moral dilemma every time I go out in public (one that people like Halpern seem to have no awareness even exists) because I find it something of a challenge not to do magic tricks with people’s brains when I’m bored in line at the DMV. What brings me down to earth is letters like the one Phetasy published. The methods I use to bring myself up short when I find myself considering a career as a supervillain all involve the recognition that most people do not know how to do this stuff themselves and the awareness that running a professional-grade game on an unsuspecting person will put a look on their face like they’ve been shot in the solar plexus with a beanbag gun. Like the bottom dropped out of their world.
"I’ve seen that look before. I don't want to see it again.
"I'd like to be clarify something else, too: I know it’s not that everyone else is stupid and I’m smart1. It’s that normal people take at most a couple of survey courses in psychology while in college, whereas I did a long, deep dive into the weaponizable aspects of the field, in part because I thought it was cool and in part because both drug dependency and drug withdrawal lead to periods of unemployment. There are days where it's all you can do to read a few chapters of your favorite book about famous con men and practice card tricks in the mirror."
So here are three interesting, rather different characters who I cross paths with on Substack, all thinking in terms of traps and the possibility of escape. I had a chat with Jay in the comments on his post about the relevance of what he is writing about to Paul's piece, and we found ourselves in agreement. Now it strikes me that it might be fun to bring you and Jay together to talk traps and escape sometime, maybe when you've got to the end of laying this particular series of traps?