Have you ever felt "lost in translation?" Language barriers present challenges in any context - especially those fraught with imminent danger, threat, or impediments to life and health. Language barriers are the root of communication erosion, and can lead to the dissolution of relationship, or worse, violence and warfare, if not abuse and neglect. Effective communication is challenging even among those whose primary language is the same, or similar. Translators, interpreters, and mediators often bear a heavy burden to make meaning accessible to two parties whose means of communication depends on their keen language and interpretive skills, including the ability to read and communicate sub-text, colloquialisms, and nuanced speech forms like humor and cultural convention. It's a whole new adventure if the parties separated by a language barrier are other-than-human.
Learning a new language has always been a thrill for me, but I know that is not the case for many. I have had the luxury of studying and teaching languages and hermeneutics (the art of interpretation) in controlled settings - mostly University contexts - where my stumbling, bumbling, rambling, searching, and language failures were received with measured patience and bolstering encouragement. Those who find themselves immersed in a new language context without the courtesy of protected learning environments often feel that sense of total overwhelm, confusion, and isolation. Immigrants, refugees, and travelers know the experience well, and when met with hostility from less-than-gracious native speakers, the language barrier may mean the difference between survival and peril. It helps to know the language.
What about learning other-than-human languages? What would it take for us to immerse ourselves in the languages of our creature-kin and arbor elders who have been native to the biosphere much longer and have lived more in sync with the planet than humans?
Learning the language of trees, like forest ecologist Suzanne Simard (https://suzannesimard.com/finding-the-mother-tree-book/), or forest conservationist, Peter Wohlleben (https://www.peterwohllebenbooks.com/) is a good beginning. How do our arbor elders - whose very respiration we mirror - teach us through their intricate communication patterns? What can we learn from their mycelial networks about energy and nutrient transfer, mutual protection, resiliency and growth? How can we learn from the "lungs of the planet" about the good of the wider "We?"
And what about our creature-kin? What can we learn from their communication models in a post-human context when our premier technical languaging is calibrated and reduced to ones and zeros? Where is the beauty and nuance of the digital? How might we relearn the language of the full sensorium? How might we re-wild the primal languaging of poetry, art, and music - the language of Earth?
Primatologist - anthropologist
Dr. Jane Goodall (https://janegoodall.org/),
father of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson (https://eowilsonfoundation.org/),
and revolutionary landscape ecologist, Mary Reynolds (https://marymary.ie/)
are just a few examples of stellar ambassadors to our more-than-human kin. They have attempted to bridge human and bio-diverse language gaps so that we might begin to understand, to comprehend beyond our ingrained prejudices that we are one web of life, truly interdependent and mutually beneficial. They have modeled for us the humility of being students, lifelong learners, cultivating a deep wisdom by assuming the posture of curiosity, reverence, and awe before the unknown. And their work has prepared us to leave center-stage in the drama of life, which is the very nature of post-human existence and meaning. Now that humanity is irrevocably cyborg - a cyber-organic life form - we must learn to play an exemplary supporting role for the good of the wider "We." Anthropocentrism - human-centeredness - is in its last stages. The Age of Earth - Ecocentrism - is upon us.
Eco-hermeneutics - the art of interpretation in the realm of ecology - is prerequisite in this Ecozoic Era (https://thomasberry.org/life-and-thought/about-thomas-berry/the-ecozoic-era/). If we want to revive the home planet and sustain a fragile biosphere whose inherent value lies beyond human consumption, domination, and excess, we must learn the primary language. We must dedicate ourselves as devoted students of the Mother Tongue - Lingua Terra, Glossa Gaia - the language of Earth. And we must mostly listen. "How do you say...?"
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