Test it out in your community. Try to identify 10 company logos. Easy, probably. And 20? No problem either. Now, identify the same number of trees or plants near your home.
If you fail, don’t feel alone. This lack of understanding of nature is widespread, and it starts early.
In the United States, the experiment was conducted with children aged 10 to 14. They were able to recognize about a hundred company brands. But for plants, they were unable on average to exceed the number of fingers on their hands.
We worry about the ongoing disappearance of animals and flora, but in a way, it has already happened in our heads.
This example comes from Ways of being alivean essay by the French philosopher Baptiste Morizot. I wanted to use it as a starting point for the beginning of a small series on ecology.
Climate disruption and the decline in biodiversity are not just a technical challenge to solve or an obstacle to overcome on the road to progress. Something more fundamental is at stake. It is also our way of inhabiting the planet, our mania for consumption, the dependence of our economic system on growth. And, above all, our relationship with the rest of life.
We see ourselves as a distinct species, apart from the natural world. Morizot sees this as the root of the problem. For him, the ecological crisis is a crisis of sensitivity.
Humans are a living species among others. Despite their particular intelligence, cultures and civilizations, our species belongs to the fauna and flora with which it maintains relationships of interdependence. For example, wetlands filter our water and pollinators feed our agriculture.
Etymologically, the term “ecology” refers to the relationships between living things. It invites us not to think of species separately from each other. And at the heart of these relationships is the notion of balance.
The ecological crisis is therefore not something we witness as spectators. It is our world that is burning. It is a part of us.
Perhaps it is the very idea of ”nature” that is problematic.
The word refers to a place outside of oneself. It is what we want to control, neutralize and exploit, like an inexhaustible buffet. We concrete over forests and water deserts to domesticate these wild environments. The tree only contributes to the economy when it is cut down.
American poet and naturalist Gary Snyder has titled a collection No Nature. For him, nature is not a place we visit. Rather, it is our home. We are already in nature. In fact, we East nature, us too.
Similarly, the word “environment” is a trap. It refers to what surrounds us, giving the impression of a world outside of us.
Other uses of the words “nature” or “environment” are more pernicious.
We fantasize about a sacred place that must remain inviolable. We establish a “protected area” to better continue the ransacking elsewhere. Or we go into nature to be alone with ourselves and fill up on silence. This vision leads us to see the cosmos as mute and absurd — insert the ruminations of your favorite existentialist philosopher here. But in the forest, silence does not exist, Morizot reminds us. Everywhere, life teems, transforms, dies and is reborn, and we are part of this cycle.
Morizot insists on the importance of relearning to feel our belonging to the community of the living, with whom we share the condition of being a mortal body on a planet from which we cannot escape.
Not so long ago, the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould insisted on the exceptional nature of the human adventure. It results, he explained, from a series of improbable coincidences that have led us from the amoeba to today. The late scientist thus tried to respond to the religious people who claim that humanity was created by a superior being.
According to Gould, if we were to roll the dice again and start the cycle of evolution over, the result would likely be very different. This is not so certain, replies Morizot. Quoting another paleontologist, Simon Cromway Morris, he recalls the similarities in the evolution of different species. For example, the eye appears in several animals and photosynthesis was acquired independently by more than 120 bacteria.
In other words, there is convergence between life forms. Between humans and other species, in this great mesh of life.
It is not about mourning a lost way of life, nor about reconnecting with a simpler and more authentic way of being.
Modernity has its advantages, starting with science. It is thanks to science that we understand the intelligence of octopuses or the molecular “communication” between trees. Applications allow us to identify birds by their song or plants by their leaves, and thus make them even more real.
This reconquest of sensitivity is therefore not a form of primitivism. Reason is not a problem in itself, and it is not opposed to sensitivity. On the contrary, the two can combine to amplify each other.
Morizot calls for being both more thoughtful and more sensitive. To mobilize scientific knowledge to better sense what binds the living and what threatens us in the disruption of ecosystems.
Rather than returning to a fantasized state of nature, he proposes to access a more faithful and complete vision of life on Earth, which recognizes both its usefulness for humans and its intrinsic value.
But to do that, you have to get out of the house. It’s become a challenge… According to a study published in 2001, Americans spend 92% of their lives indoors, and it certainly hasn’t gotten any better.1. Because since then, screens have invaded our lives.
At the time, people were beginning to talk about “nature deprivation syndrome,” described by essayist Richard Louv to mean disconnection from the natural world and increased risk of suffering from stress and other health problems.
It hasn’t improved since then.
Here is the percentage of Canadians who spent an average of 10 hours or more per week on each of the following three activities: playing games, watching videos and surfing the Internet.
2020: 5.1%
2022: 9.7%
Source: Canadian Internet Use Survey, 2020 and 2022
Another figure: in Quebec, in 2018, 27% of adults spent more than four hours a day in front of a screen. In 2022, the rate had reached 37%.2.
Sure, our computers, tablets and phones are used for essential activities, like work and news. But according to the survey, online entertainment is the main use of screens, and half of adults feel they spend too much time in front of their screens.
These phenomena are well known, but they are usually used to analyze problems on an individual level. However, they also have collective consequences, in our way of conceiving of climate and biodiversity disruption.
The fear of an “end of the world” is something that is very well experienced in front of the screen. We scroll through the anxiety-inducing news, telling ourselves that it is too late. This little thrill of despair is very convenient, deep down. It dispenses with the responsibility to act. It rushes us towards an imaginary end where there is nothing left to do, except complain and distribute blame.
In his essay Professors of DespairNancy Huston mocked thinkers proud of their pessimism, like Cioran and Schopenhauer, who despised family life and wanted to generalize their malaise to the rest of humanity.
We could take Huston’s thinking even further. For a more authentic life, we must take care of our relationships with other humans, but also with the entire living world.
The challenge is to find a new, more viable way to inhabit our world. To create an alliance between the living.
We return to the poet Gary Snyder, who has always doubted the usefulness of apocalyptic scenarios to encourage people to protect the planet. The priority for him is to learn to see the world. To know it and to love it.
1. Read the EPA survey
2. Consult the Laval University survey
Ways of being alive
Actes Sud, Wild Worlds collection, 2020
336 pages
The French philosopher offers a series of essays. Among other things, he talks about his time spent close to wolves in the French Alps, doing “tracking” — becoming aware of all the living world around him. In other, more theoretical passages, he suggests resituating humans in the living world in order to have a richer understanding of “nature,” and of ourselves as well.
What do you think? Join the dialogue
Read next Sunday: “Seeing the world as a donut”