This is a topic I hope to talk more about in the coming weeks and months, because how we perceive others’ experiences says a lot about how we view our own.
– Quote from last week’s blog post.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how as humans, both collectively and sometimes individually, we state what is “normal” behavior or how other life forms perceive the world and expect that to be a single universal truth. My favorite fantasy author has a saying in her flagship series that is the core belief of the country she writes about: there is no one true way. I think this is a good saying for a lot of reasons, not just religion, which is what the phrase refers to in the fictional setting, but also in the way that we experience the world. So much pain could be avoided all together if we simply believed others when they talk about how they experience the world, if we listened to their experiences, and tried to understand them.
The wild in me sees the wild in you. This is my way of saying I see your wild nature, the way in which you experience the world, and I honor it.
De-centering humans is a part of this. What if just for a day, or even an hour, we acted as if we weren’t the only species on this planet that mattered? What if we dismissed the idea that humans are somehow higher life forms, more civilized than others, and believed that every form of life from the smallest microscopic being to the largest had value and deserved a place on this planet? What if we started with the idea that every human has worth and value intrinsically, just by existing, and that they deserved all of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from food, shelter, warmth (or coolness as necessary), and dignity all the way up to self-actualization.
Can you imagine how our planet would change?
One of the first steps we can take in doing this, in de-centering ourselves and de-centering humanness is to simply believe others’ lived experience, and in the case of creatures that cannot tell us their lived experiences, believe what they tell us. When the horse gets anxious at being handled roughly or penned in, instead of trying to “move its feet” or dominate it, think about how to release pressure, or if it’s an emergency situation, how to make the horse more comfortable. Instead of chaining up a dog to a tree, think about ways to give it room to move safely, and bringing it into the house at night. Outdoor cats need shelter. And you can’t look at a mother crocodile carrying her babies in her mouth, and not realize that more animals than you think have family bonds.
We can start with one another, with believing lived experiences. You may not see the world as I do, and my brain may not work like yours does, but we can reclaim our inner wild, the way that our brains work, our authentic true nature, and we can de-center ourselves by seeing that your viewpoint comes from your experiences, just as mine does.*
*I will be blogging in more detail about this, because this doesn’t excuse those who believe that other humans have less value or less rights than they do. It comes from a fear response, a type of conditioning that’s hard to break. Such behavior isn’t tolerated in the wild.
