The Bad Beginning!

I started this blog back in the pandemic of 2020 and, like most people, have been through a lot since then. On revisiting it I decided to delete the meanderings and start again. For one reason it was not cohesive enough for my needs and the second it combined a number of additional elements I now find unnecessary.

So, as they say 'take two'.

The hosts of the podcast Everyday Animism introduced me to the concept of 'Agency'.

Basic Knowledge 101 describes agency as: In sociology and philosophy, agency is the capacity of an entity (a person or other entity, human or any living being in general, or soul-consciousness in religion) to act in any given environment.

So we can start here with the word 'entity', or a thing with distinct and independent existence (being), and I want to confess to hanging my hat on this word. This is because, for me, it encapsulates a something, but my something goes farther than a 'human or any living being in general, or soul-consciousness'. My something includes elements, rocks, plants, animals and entities from within our entire planetary sphere, all the way to the point where we think space begins* and beyond.

*Outer space does not begin at a definite altitude above the surface but the Kármán line, is conventionally used at an altitude of 100 km (62 mi) above sea level.

Paraphrasing Damon Smith at the  Woven Energy podcast episode 11:

Animism is absolutely not a belief system, it is only a belief system to those people who believe belief systems are important...it is not a bunch of primitive people sat around believing things... ...you need your animism, your amazing link into the natural world to keep you alive on that hunting activity... ...it is a reverence for nature and before it is a reverence for nature it is an adaptive hook into the environment, that is absolutely essential to survival...

So if animism is not a belief system, then where are we and how do we, if there is actually a need, categorize animism in the current world?

I have thought long and hard and it has caused much consternation. Maybe there is no need to categorize the concept of animism, perhaps it just is! The recurring thought is that it is the substrate from where belief systems emerged, the foundation or more importantly the soil from which belief systems grew. An instinct inherent in entities that helps them survive within their environment, as the kestrel hovering above the motorway is aware of predators, prey, the weather, vehicles and everything that will affect it in the moment, it is both attentive and attuned to that which is immediate.

So to survive we need to be animistic, but how in a world where we are wrapped in cotton wool, devoid of regular connection to nature, do we expose ourselves to feeling the need to survive?

I cannot turn on the radio or television, open social media or a newspaper or even enter into a conversation with others without feeling the need for a survival mechanism. The environment, politics, the emergence of populism, polarization and post truth all bring on the anxious state of doom and gloom. So to me we are, perhaps ignorantly, in desperate need of either a new paradigm or to return to this state of survival. Not from the tooth and claw our ancestors feared but from this pressurized canister we call life today.

It is also worthy of note to repeat the word 'nature' here as it is not only intrinsic to this conversation, it is also part of the answer we seek to 21st Century life problems.

So that is the revised first page and as Lemony Snicket wrote, the bad beginning!