This subfield is founded on the understanding that, in the words of Iranian-American philosopherSeyyed Hossein Nasr, "the environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis of values," and that religions, being a primary source of values in any culture, are thus implicated in the decisions humans make regarding the environment.
Burden of guilt
HistorianLynn White, Jr. first made the argument in a 1966 lecture before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, subsequently published in the journal Science, that Western Christianity, having de-sacralized and instrumentalized nature
to human ends, bears a substantial "burden of guilt" for the
contemporary environmental crisis. White's essay stimulated a flurry of
responses, ranging from defenses of Christianity to qualified admissions to complete agreement with his analysis.
Eastern religions and indigenous peoples
Some proposed that Eastern religions, as well as those of indigenous peoples, neo-pagans, and others, offered more eco-friendlyworldviews
than Christianity. A third, more obscure camp, argued that while
White's theory was indeed correct, this was actually a benefit to
society, and that thinning the populations of weaker plant and animal
species via environmental destruction would lead to the evolution of stronger, more productive creatures. See Kaitiaki in Māori religion.
Religion and ecology
By
the 1990s, many scholars of religion had entered the debate and begun
to generate a substantial body of literature discussing and analyzing
how nature is valued in the world's various religious systems. A
landmark event was a series of ten conferences on Religion and Ecology
organized by Yale University professors Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim and held at the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions from 1996 to 1998.[1][2]
More than 800 international scholars, religious leaders, and
environmentalists participated in the conference series. The conferences
concluded at the United Nations and at the American Museum of Natural
History with more than 1,000 people in attendance. Papers from the
conferences were published in a series of ten books (The Religions of
the World and Ecology Book Series), one for each of the world's major
religious traditions.
From these conferences, Tucker and Grim would form The Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology.[3]
The Forum has been instrumental in the creation of scholarship, in
forming environmental policy, and in the greening of religion. In
addition to their work with the Forum, Tucker and Grim's work continues
in the Journey of the Universe film, book, and educational DVD series.[4] It continues to be the largest international multireligious project of its kind.
An active Religion and Ecology group has been in existence within the American Academy of Religion since 1991, and an increasing number of universities in North America and around the world are now offering courses on religion and the environment.[5] Recent scholarship on the field of religion and ecology can be found in the peer-reviewed academic journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology and in reference works such as the encyclopedia The Spirit of Sustainability.
Religion and nature
Other landmarks in the emerging field was the publication of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature in 2005, which was edited by Bron Taylor.
Taylor also led the effort to form the International Society for the
Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, which was established in 2006,
and began publishing the quarterly Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture in 2007.
Religions and the environment
Buddhism
The best asset religion offers is the moral framework by which practitioners must abide.[6]
Since many environmental problems have stemmed from human activity, it
follows that religion might hold some solutions to mitigating
destructive patterns. Buddhism idealizes and emphasizes interconnection,[7]
thereby creating a mindset that creates a productive and cooperative
relationship between humans and nature. That all actions are based on
the premise of interconnection makes the Buddhist mindset effective in
cultivating modesty, compassion, and balance among followers, which may
ultimately mitigate the harm done to the environment.
One benefit of the Buddhist interconnected mindset is the
inevitable humility that ensues. Because humans are entwined with
natural systems, damage done upon the Earth is also harm done to humans.[8]
This realization is quite modifying to a human race that historically
pillages the Earth for individual benefit. When rational humans minimize
the split between humanity and nature and bridge the gaps,[6]
only then will a mutual respect emerge in which all entities coexist
rather than fight. Buddhism maintains that the reason for all suffering
comes from attachment.[9]
When release from the tight grasp humanity has on individuality and
separateness occurs, then oneness and interconnection is realized. So
rather than emphasizing winners and losers, humanity will understand its
existence within others; this results in a modesty that ends egoic
mind.
Another benefit of Buddhist practice to the environment is the compassion that drives all thinking.[6] When humans realize that they are all connected, harm done to another will never benefit the initiator.[8]
Therefore, peaceful wishes for everyone and everything will ultimately
benefit the initiator. Through accepting that the web of life is
connected[7]—if one entity benefits, all benefit[8]—then
the prevailing mindset encourages peaceful actions all the time. If
everything depends on everything else, then only beneficial events will
make life situations better. Acceptance of compassion takes training and
practice, which is also encouraged by Buddhist moral conduct in the
form of mediation. This habitual striving for harmony and friendship
among all beings creates a more perfect relationship between humanity
and nature.
Lastly, Buddhist mindset relies on taking the middle road or striving for balance. Siddhartha Gautama,
the founder of Buddhism, spent his life searching for the outlet of
human suffering, eventually concluding that a balance must be
established between self-destruction and self-indulgence.[10]
While modern, industrial humans emphasize economic and social aspects
of life and lastly environmental aspects, this view is lopsided.[8]
When human preferences are leveled with environmental
preferences—giving a voice to natural systems as well as human
systems—then can balance and harmony be realized.
Therefore, using this idealized and disciplined framework that
Buddhism has to offer can create lasting solutions to amending the
broken relationship between humanity and nature. What ensues is an
ethic, rather than a short-term policy or technological fix.[8]
When never-ending consumption patterns cease for the betterment of the
world as a whole, then all systems will harmoniously interact in a
non-abusive way.[8]
Without needing to adopt a new religion, just recognizing and accepting
this mindset can help to heal the environmental injuries of the past.
Buddhists today are involved in spreading environmental
awareness. In a meeting with the U.S Ambassador to the Republic of India
Timothy J. Roemer, the Dalai Lama urged the U.S to engage China on climate change in Tibet.[11] The Dalai Lama has also been part of a series on discussions organised by the Mind and Life Institute; a non profit organisation that specializes on the relationship between science and Buddhism. The talks were partly about ecology, ethics and interdependence and issues on global warming were brought up [12]
Christianity
Christianity has a historic concern for nature and the natural world. At the same time, ecological concerns operate in tension with anthropocentric values, such as the Biblical notion of human dominion over the Earth. (Gen 1:28) A broad range of Christian institutions are engaged in the environmental movement and contemporary environmental concerns.
Latter Day Saint movement
Mormon
environmentalists find theological reasons for stewardship and
conservationism through biblical and additional scriptural references
including a passages from the Doctrine and Covenants: "And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; for
unto this end were they made to be used, with judgment, not to excess,
neither by extortion" (D&C 59:20).[13] The Latter Day Saint movement has a complex relationship with environmental concerns, involving not only the religion but politics and economics.[14][15] In terms of environmentally friendly policies, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a history of utilizing elements of conservationist policies for their meetinghouses.[16] The church first placed solar panels on a church meetinghouse in the Tuamotu Islands in 2007.[17] In 2010, the church unveiled five LEED
certified meetinghouse prototypes that are that will be used as future
meetinghouse designs around the world, the first one having been
completed in 2010 in Farmington, Utah.[18]
Hinduism
In Hinduism, practitioners and scholars find traditional approaches to the natural environment in such concepts as dharmic ethics or prakrti (material creation), the development of ayurveda, and readings of vedic literature. Hindu environmental activism also may be inspired by Gandhian philosophy and practical struggles, such as the Bishnoi community in Rajasthan [19] and Chipko resistance to forestry policies in Uttar Pradesh, India.[20] Mahatma Gandhi played a major role in Indian environmentalism, and has been called the "father of Indian environmentalism".[21]
Gandhi's environmental thought parallels his social thoughts in that
environmental sustainability and social inequalities should be managed
in similar fashions.[22]
His non-violent teachings left a lasting impact, even agriculturally.
Contemporary agrarian practices use the Bhagavad-Gita to establish
practices that are deemed non-violent.[23]
Islam
Through the tradition from the Quran
and the prophets, the environment was made sacred. It is believed that
God did not create the environment for a random reason, but rather a
reflection of truth. One can gain profound knowledge from nature thus,
human beings are to preserve it and look after it. Many chapters in the
Quran, refer to the beauties of nature as well as the headings of many
chapters indicating the importance of it, such as: "The Sun", "Dawn",
and "Morning Hours". Thus man is God's representative on this planet, if
he is not charged with sustaining it, then at least he must not destroy
it.[24]
In Islam, the concept of a hima or "inviolate zone" refers to a piece of land that has been set aside to prevent cultivation or any use other than spiritual purposes.
Judaism
In Judaism, the natural world plays a central role in Jewish law, literature, and liturgical and other practices.[citation needed]
Within the diverse arena of Jewish thought, beliefs vary widely about
the human relation to the environment, though the rabbinic tradition has
put Judaism primarily on an anthropocentric trajectory. However, a few contemporary Jewish thinkers and rabbis in the USA and Israel emphasized that a central belief in Judaism is that the Man (Ha Adam - האדם whose root comes from Haadama (earth) - האדמה, in Hebrew language),
should keep the Earth in the same state as he received it from God, its
eternal and actual "owner" (especially for the land of Israel),
thus the people today should avoid polluting it and keep it clean for
the future generations. According to this opinion, Judaism is clearly in
line with the principles of environmental protection and sustainable development.
In Jewish law (halakhah), ecological concerns are reflected in Biblical protection for fruit trees, rules in the Mishnah against harming the public domain, Talmudic debate over noise and smoke damages, and contemporary responsa on agricultural pollution. In Conservative Judaism, there has been some attempt to adopt ecokashrut ideas[clarification needed] developed in the 1970s by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. In addition, Jewish activists have recruited principles of halakhah for environmental purposes, such as the injunction against unnecessary destruction, known as bal tashkhit.[citation needed]
In contemporary Jewish liturgy, ecological concerns have been promoted by adapting a kabbalisticritual for the holiday of trees, Tu Bishvat. Biblical and rabbinic texts have been enlisted for prayers about the environment, especially in Orthodox Judaism and Jewish Renewal movements.
In the U.S., a diverse coalition of Jewish environmentalists undertakes both educational and policy advocacy on such issues as biodiversity and global warming.[25] Jewish environmentalists are drawn from all branches of religious life, ranging from Rabbi Arthur Waskow to the Orthodox group Canfei Nesharim.[26] In Israel, secular Jews have formed numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations
to protect nature and reduce pollution. While many Israeli
environmental organizations make limited use of Jewish religious
teachings, a few do approach Israel's environmental problems from a
Jewish standpoint, including the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, named after Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Taoism
Taoism offers many ideas that are in line with environmentalism, such as wu wei, moderation, compassion and Taoist animism. Parallels were found between Taoism and deep ecology. Pioneer of environmentalism John Muir was called "the Taoist of the West". Rosenfeld wrote 'Taoism is environmentalism'.[27][28][29]
Jainism
In Jainism, the ancient and perhaps timeless philosophical concepts, like Parasparopagraho Jivanam, were more recently compiled into a Jain Declaration on Nature, which describes the religion's inherent biocentrism and deep ecology.
Jason Pontin (@jason_pontin) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED. He was formerly the editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review; before that he was the editor of Red Herring.
Now he is a senior partner at Flagship Pioneering, a firm in Boston
that funds companies that solve problems in health, food, and
sustainability. Pontin does not write about Flagship’s portfolio companies nor about their competitors. In May of 1969,
Apollo 10 flew at 25,000 miles per hour. Two months later, the crew of
Apollo 11 walked on the moon. Since then, no one has flown so fast nor
walked so high. NASA is now preparing for a human mission to Mars, but
if our descendants ever shrug off their terrestrial bonds, it won’t be Homo sapiens who leaves, but another, more intelligently designed species. We’re not fit.
For
evolutionary biologists, “fitness” is a measure of natural selection:
the average propensity of individuals of a species to survive and
reproduce. Anatomically modern humans evolved with their microbial symbionts
in Africa around 300,000 to 200,000 years ago and quickly spread all
over the globe. We are wonderfully fit for Earth, but space is inimical
to our species. It is cold, empty, and airless—and that’s the least of
it. The real problem is myriad stressors, especially radiation, for
which space suits and ships provide little protection.
Earth’s magnetic fields and atmosphere shelter us from the ionizing radiation
that streams through space like a fatal wind. On the surface of Mars
(which lacks a magnetic field or much atmosphere) or aboard a spaceship,
long-term exposure to the highly charged energies of galactic cosmic
radiation or the sudden flares of solar particle events would kill cells
and make them malfunction, or break strands in our DNA and knock out
base pairs. Dead or poorly functioning cells cause heart disease or
cognitive decline. DNA damage is worse: Cells attempt to repair their
own wreckage, but mis-repairs accumulate, leading to mutations that
cause cancer and heritable diseases.
Long-term spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit and the Van Allen belts exceeds NASA’s current bounds of “acceptable risk.” Barring an unlikely series of technological tricks—including an expedited route,
radiation shielding inside the spacecraft, subsurface quarters on the
planet, and a hurried return—our biology is incompatible with a Mars
mission. Permanent colonies there or farther out are unthinkable.
But
serious biologists, including some who work with NASA, have begun to
ask whether humans could be genetically altered for space travel. Their
queries prompt more profound questions about our responsibilities and
duties in the next phase of human evolution.
Their proposals are
also richly ironic. A defining characteristic of our species is our
mania for expansion. Other hominins didn’t share it, so far as we know;
our Neanderthal cousins, with whom we lived for 5,000 years, never left
Eurasia. With us, exploration is a mad compulsion. Think of how many
frail corracles and canoes set out with only the hope of land to
populate all the islands of the seas!
Mars is next. But we may have to employ all our technology to create an inheritor species to satisfy our longings. As George Church, a Harvard geneticist and leading synthetic biologist,
argues: “One likely path for risk reduction in space does seem to
involve biological engineering of adult would-be astronauts.” He has
identified 40-some genes
that might be advantageous for long-term spaceflight (and would benefit
those who stayed behind, too). His list includes CTNNBI, which confers
radiation resistance, LRPD5, which builds adamantine bones, ESPA1
(common in Tibetans), which allows people to live with less oxygen, as
well as a host of genes that might make us smarter, more memorious,
or less anxious. The menu even includes a gene, ABC11, which endows its
possessors with “low-odor production,” a friendly trait in a confined
space. (A spaceship with standard humans smells like the Harris County Jail, according to one recent inhabitant of the space station.)
Church cofounded Harvard Medical School’s Consortium for Space Genetics, along with other prominent biologists like the anti-aging researcher
David Sinclair, in order to study human health in space and promote
exploration. He imagines “virus-delivered gene therapies, or microbiome
or epigenome therapies” that astronauts would take to transform their
biologies. “Quite a bit is already known about resistance to radiation,
osteoporosis, cancer, and senescence
in mice,” he says. Church stresses that many of these genes are already
targeted by pharmaceutical companies, with drugs in clinical trials.
Using gene therapies as a kind of preventative medicine for astronauts
isn’t so far-fetched.
Gene therapies may make us fitter for space,
but if we want to colonize new worlds, humans would want to breed a new
race. The geneticist Chris Mason, whose lab at Weil Cornell is
participating in a NASA study of how twin astronauts changed when one spent a year in space while another remained on Earth, has proposed a “500-year plan”
for space colonization. Its three main components are expanding our
knowledge of genomics, including determining which genes should wear a
“do-not-disturb sign,” because their alteration would kill or disable
us; engineering microbes; and adding, deleting, and modifying genes to
create permanent, heritable changes in a population.
In the first stage of his plan, Mason is combining human cells with a gene called Dsup, unique to the indestructible tardigrade,
that suppresses DNA breaks from radiation. Tardigrades can survive the
vacuum of space; perhaps their genes might make us more fit for space,
too. His lab has also created an artificial construct of the gene p53,
involved in preventing cancer, which it hopes later to insert into a
human cell. Elephants have many copies of p53 and seldom die from cancer;
adding copies of p53 to human genomes might protect us from space
radiation. Mason’s less speculative research includes editing Deionococcus radiodurans, sometimes called “Conan the bacterium,”
a polyextremophile that can survive cold, dehydration, acid, and very
high levels of radiation, the last by rewriting its damaged chromosomes.
Mason wants the microbe to live as flora on our skin or in our guts, or
on the surfaces of spaceships, protecting us from the deadly rays of
space. “The microbiome is an extraordinarily plastic thing,” he says.
Some researchers have proposed more science-fictional projects. Harris Wang
of Columbia wants to coax human kidney cells to synthesize the nine
amino acids our bodies cannot make. A human cell able to synthesize all
the organic compounds needed for health would require around 250 new
genes, but if our tissues were made of such cells, astronauts could
thrive by drinking just sugar water, a liberating adaptation: Missions
wouldn’t have to lug bulky food or send it on ahead. Other scientists
have suggested photosynthetic spacefarers, or editing the personalities
of the space corps, so that they fearlessly longed for the high frontier
because it was their true terminus.
If humans hope to leave
Earth, we’ll need to be different. But if it’s possible to transform
ourselves so radically, should we? Politically, eugenics has been an
ugly word: the promise of genocidal tyrants. More generally, would it be
ethical to call into existence a new people who had no say in their own
design? The case for a race of astronauts is that they would not
really be the products of eugenics as the word is ordinarily used: No
one with undesired habits or traits would be coerced to have fewer
children; no captive populations would be sterilized or worse. As for
the new people themselves, none of us chooses our inheritance; we are
all the products of our parents. Mason believes
there is a categorical imperative to try. The primary goal of his
500-year plan reads: “Establish habitable environments in multiple star
systems, to avoid extinction due to a cataclysmic event in one solar
system.” He explains, “Whatever your moral priorities, you have to exist
first.”
In Mr. Sammler’s Planet, published shortly after the flights of Apollo 10 and 11, Saul Bellow asked,
“How long … will this earth remain the only home of Man? How long? Oh,
Lord, you bet! Wasn’t it the time—the very hour to go? To blow this
great blue, white, green planet, or to be blown from it.” Perhaps it’s
time to think of children who can leave home. Scientists are telling us
we should consciously direct our evolution, rather than surrender our
fate to time, chance, and death—evolution’s historical servants. Of
course, the inheritors
who left Earth would be as different from sapiens as we are from
Neanderthals. “There will be a speciation,” says Mason. “It’s not if,
it’s when.”
Animism (from Latinanima, "breath, spirit, life") is the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.
Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks,
rivers, weather systems, human handiwork and perhaps even words—as
animated and alive. Animism is the world's oldest religion, "Animism
predates any form of organized religion and is said to contain the
oldest spiritual and supernatural perspective in the world. It dates
back to the Paleolithic Age, to a time when... humans roamed the plains hunting and gathering, and communing with the Spirit of Nature."
Animism is used in the anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many indigenous peoples,[8] especially in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organised religions.[9]
Although each culture has its own different mythologies and rituals,
"animism" is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of
indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives. The
animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most indigenous
peoples that they often do not even have a word in their languages that
corresponds to "animism" (or even "religion");[10] the term is an anthropological construct.
Largely due to such ethnolinguistic and cultural discrepancies, opinion has differed on whether animism
refers to an ancestral mode of experience common to indigenous peoples
around the world, or to a full-fledged religion in its own right. The
currently accepted definition of animism was only developed in the late
19th century (1871) by Sir Edward Tylor, who created it as "one of anthropology's earliest concepts, if not the first".[11][12]
Animism encompasses the beliefs that all material phenomena have
agency, that there exists no hard and fast distinction between the spiritual and physical (or material) world and that soul or spirit
or sentience exists not only in humans, but also in other animals,
plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers or other
entities of the natural environment, including thunder, wind and
shadows. Animism thus rejects Cartesian dualism[citation needed]. Animism may further attribute souls to abstract concepts such as words, true names or metaphors in mythology. Some members of the non-tribal world also consider themselves animists (such as author Daniel Quinn, sculptor Lawson Oyekan and many contemporary Pagans).[13]
Theories
Old animism
Earlier
anthropological perspectives, which have since been termed the "old
animism", were concerned with knowledge on what is alive and what
factors make something alive.[14] The "old animism" assumed that animists were individuals who were unable to understand the difference between persons and things.[15]
Critics of the "old animism" have accused it of preserving "colonialist and dualist worldviews and rhetoric".[16]
Edward Tylor's definition
Edward Tylor developed animism as an anthropological theory.
The idea of animism was developed by the anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor in his 1871 book Primitive Culture,[1]
in which he defined it as "the general doctrine of souls and other
spiritual beings in general". According to Tylor, animism often includes
"an idea of pervading life and will in nature";[17] a belief that natural objects other than humans have souls. That formulation was little different from that proposed by Auguste Comte as "fetishism",[18] but the terms now have distinct meanings.
For Tylor, animism represented the earliest form of religion,
being situated within an evolutionary framework of religion which has
developed in stages and which will ultimately lead to humanity rejecting
religion altogether in favor of scientific rationality.[19]
Thus, for Tylor, animism was fundamentally seen as a mistake, a basic error from which all religion grew.[19]
He did not believe that animism was inherently illogical, but he
suggested that it arose from early humans' dreams and visions and thus
was a rational system. However, it was based on erroneous, unscientific
observations about the nature of reality.[20] Stringer notes that his reading of Primitive Culture
led him to believe that Tylor was far more sympathetic in regard to
"primitive" populations than many of his contemporaries and that Tylor
expressed no belief that there was any difference between the
intellectual capabilities of "savage" people and Westerners.[4]
Tylor had initially wanted to describe the phenomenon as
"spiritualism" but realised that would cause confusion with the modern
religion of Spiritualism, that was then prevalent across Western nations.[21] He adopted the term "animism" from the writings of the German scientist Georg Ernst Stahl,[22] who, in 1708, had developed the term animismus as a biological theory that souls formed the vital principle and that the normal phenomena of life and the abnormal phenomena of disease could be traced to spiritual causes.[23] The first known usage in English appeared in 1819.[24]
The idea that there had once been "one universal form of
primitive religion" (whether labelled "animism", "totemism", or
"shamanism") has been dismissed as "unsophisticated" and "erroneous" by
the archaeologist Timothy Insoll, who stated that "it removes complexity, a precondition of religion now, in all its variants".[25]
Social evolutionist conceptions
Tylor's
definition of animism was a part of a growing international debate on
the nature of "primitive society" by lawyers, theologians and
philologists. The debate defined the field of research of a new science:
anthropology. By the end of the 19th century, an orthodoxy on
"primitive society" had emerged, but few anthropologists still would
accept that definition. The "19th-century armchair anthropologists"
argued "primitive society" (an evolutionary category) was ordered by
kinship and was divided into exogamous descent groups
related by a series of marriage exchanges. Their religion was animism,
the belief that natural species and objects had souls. With the
development of private property, the descent groups were displaced by
the emergence of the territorial state. These rituals and beliefs
eventually evolved over time into the vast array of "developed"
religions. According to Tylor, the more scientifically advanced a
society became, the fewer members of that society believed in animism.
However, any remnant ideologies of souls or spirits, to Tylor,
represented "survivals" of the original animism of early humanity.[26]
In 1869 (three years after Tylor proposed his definition of animism), the Edinburgh lawyer, John Ferguson McLennan, argued that the animistic thinking evident in fetishism gave rise to a religion he named Totemism. Primitive people believed, he argued, that they were descended of the same species as their totemic animal.[18] Subsequent debate by the 'armchair anthropologists' (including J. J. Bachofen, Émile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud) remained focused on totemism
rather than animism, with few directly challenging Tylor's definition.
Indeed, anthropologists "have commonly avoided the issue of Animism and
even the term itself rather than revisit this prevalent notion in light
of their new and rich ethnographies."[28]
According to the anthropologist Tim Ingold,
animism shares similarities to totemism but differs in its focus on
individual spirit beings which help to perpetuate life, whereas totemism
more typically holds that there is a primary source, such as the land
itself or the ancestors, who provide the basis to life. Certain
indigenous religious groups such as the Australian Aboriginals are more typically totemic, whereas others like the Inuit are more typically animistic in their worldview.[29]
From his studies into child development, Jean Piaget
suggested that children were born with an innate animist worldview in
which they anthropomorphized inanimate objects, and that it was only
later that they grew out of this belief.[30] Conversely, from her ethnographic research, Margaret Mead
argued the opposite, believing that children were not born with an
animist worldview but that they became acculturated to such beliefs as
they were educated by their society.[30]
Stewart Guthrie saw animism – or "attribution" as he preferred it – as
an evolutionary strategy to aid survival. He argued that both humans and
other animal species view inanimate objects as potentially alive as a
means of being constantly on guard against potential threats.[31] His suggested explanation, however, did not deal with the question of why such a belief became central to religion.[32]
In 2000, Guthrie suggested that the "most widespread" concept of
animism was that it was the "attribution of spirits to natural phenomena
such as stones and trees".[33]
The new animism
Many
anthropologists ceased using the term "animism", deeming it to be too
close to early anthropological theory and religious polemic.[16] However, the term had also been claimed by religious groups – namely indigenous communities and nature worshipers – who felt that it aptly described their own beliefs, and who in some cases actively identified as "animists".[34] It was thus readopted by various scholars, however they began using the term in a different way,[16] placing the focus on knowing how to behave toward other persons, some of whom aren't human.[14]
As the religious studies scholar Graham Harvey stated, while the "old
animist" definition had been problematic, the term "animism" was
nevertheless "of considerable value as a critical, academic term for a
style of religious and cultural relating to the world."[35]
Five Ojibwe
chiefs in the 19th century; it was anthropological studies of Ojibwe
religion that resulted in the development of the "new animism".
The "new animism" emerged largely from the publications of the anthropologist Irving Hallowell which were produced on the basis of his ethnographic research among the Ojibwe communities of Canada in the mid-20th century.[36] For the Ojibwe encountered by Hallowell, personhood
did not require human-likeness, but rather humans were perceived as
being like other persons, who for instance included rock persons and
bear persons.[37]
For the Ojibwe, these persons were each wilful beings who gained
meaning and power through their interactions with others; through
respectfully interacting with other persons, they themselves learned to
"act as a person".[37]
Hallowell's approach to the understanding of Ojibwe personhood differed
strongly from prior anthropological concepts of animism.[38]
He emphasized the need to challenge the modernist, Western perspectives
of what a person is by entering into a dialogue with different
worldwide-views.[37]
Hallowell's approach influenced the work of anthropologist Nurit Bird-David, who produced a scholarly article reassessing the idea of animism in 1999.[39] Seven comments from other academics were provided in the journal, debating Bird-David's ideas.[40]
More recently post-modern anthropologists are increasingly
engaging with the concept of animism. Modernism is characterized by a
Cartesian subject-object dualism that divides the subjective from the
objective, and culture from nature; in this view, Animism is the inverse
of scientism, and hence inherently invalid. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour,
these anthropologists question these modernist assumptions, and
theorize that all societies continue to "animate" the world around them,
and not just as a Tylorian survival of primitive thought. Rather, the
instrumental reason characteristic of modernity is limited to our
"professional subcultures," which allows us to treat the world as a
detached mechanical object in a delimited sphere of activity. We, like
animists, also continue to create personal relationships with elements
of the so-called objective world, whether pets, cars or teddy-bears, who
we recognize as subjects. As such, these entities are "approached as
communicative subjects rather than the inert objects perceived by
modernists."[41]
These approaches are careful to avoid the modernist assumptions that
the environment consists dichotomously of a physical world distinct from
humans, and from modernist conceptions of the person as composed
dualistically as body and soul.[28]
Nurit Bird-David argues that "Positivistic ideas about the
meaning of 'nature', 'life' and 'personhood' misdirected these previous
attempts to understand the local concepts. Classical theoreticians (it
is argued) attributed their own modernist ideas of self to 'primitive
peoples' while asserting that the 'primitive peoples' read their idea of
self into others!"[28]
She argues that animism is a "relational epistemology", and not a
Tylorian failure of primitive reasoning. That is, self-identity among
animists is based on their relationships with others, rather than some
distinctive feature of the self. Instead of focusing on the
essentialized, modernist self (the "individual"), persons are viewed as
bundles of social relationships ("dividuals"), some of which are with
"superpersons" (i.e. non-humans).
Guthrie expressed criticism of Bird-David's attitude toward
animism, believing that it promulgated the view that "the world is in
large measure whatever our local imagination makes it". This, he felt,
would result in anthropology abandoning "the scientific project".[42]
Tim Ingold, like Bird-David, argues that animists do not see
themselves as separate from their environment: "Hunter-gatherers do not,
as a rule, approach their environment as an external world of nature
that has to be 'grasped' intellectually ... indeed the separation of
mind and nature has no place in their thought and practice."[43] Willerslev extends the argument by noting that animists reject this Cartesian dualism, and that the animist self identifies with the world, "feeling at once within and apart from it so that the two glide ceaselessly in and out of each other in a sealed circuit."[44]
The animist hunter is thus aware of himself as a human hunter, but,
through mimicry is able to assume the viewpoint, senses, and
sensibilities of his prey, to be one with it.[45]Shamanism,
in this view, is an everyday attempt to influence spirits of ancestors
and animals by mirroring their behaviours as the hunter does his prey.
Cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram articulates and elaborates an intensely ethical and ecological form of animism grounded in the phenomenology of sensory experience. In his books Becoming Animal and The Spell of the Sensuous,
Abram suggests that material things are never entirely passive in our
direct experience, holding rather that perceived things actively
"solicit our attention" or "call our focus," coaxing the perceiving body
into an ongoing participation with those things. In the absence of
intervening technologies, sensory experience is inherently animistic,
disclosing a material field that is animate and self-organizing from the
get-go. Drawing upon contemporary cognitive and natural science, as
well as upon the perspectival worldviews of diverse indigenous, oral
cultures, Abram proposes a richly pluralist and story-based cosmology,
in which matter is alive through and through. Such an ontology is in
close accord, he suggests, with our spontaneous perceptual experience;
it would draw us back to our senses and to the primacy of the sensuous
terrain, enjoining a more respectful and ethical relation to the
more-than-human community of animals, plants, soils, mountains, waters
and weather-patterns that materially sustains us.[46]
In contrast to a long-standing tendency in the Western social
sciences, which commonly provide rational explanations of animistic
experience, Abram develops an animistic account of reason itself. He
holds that civilized reason is sustained only by an intensely animistic
participation between human beings and their own written signs. Indeed,
as soon as we turn our gaze toward the alphabetic letters written on a
page or a screen, these letters speak to us—we 'see what they say'—much
as ancient trees and gushing streams and lichen-encrusted boulders once
spoke to our oral ancestors. Hence reading is an intensely concentrated
form of animism, one that effectively eclipses all of the other, older,
more spontaneous forms of participation in which we once engaged. "To
tell the story in this manner—to provide an animistic account of reason,
rather than the other way around—is to imply that animism is the wider
and more inclusive term, and that oral, mimetic modes of experience
still underlie, and support, all our literate and technological modes of
reflection. When reflection's rootedness in such bodily, participatory
modes of experience is entirely unacknowledged or unconscious,
reflective reason becomes dysfunctional, unintentionally destroying the
corporeal, sensuous world that sustains it."[47]
The religious studies scholar Graham Harvey defined animism as
the belief "that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are
human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others".[14] He added that it is therefore "concerned with learning how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons".[14]
Graham Harvey, in his 2013 Handbook of Contemporary Animism, identifies
the animist perspective in line with Martin Buber's "I-thou" as opposed
to "I-it". In such, Harvey says, the Animist takes an I-thou approach to
relating to his world, where objects and animals are treated as a
"thou" rather than as an "it".[48]
Religion
A tableau presenting figures of various cultures filling in mediator-like roles, often being termed as "shaman" in the literature
There is ongoing disagreement (and no general consensus) as to
whether animism is merely a singular, broadly encompassing religious
belief[49] or a worldview in and of itself, comprising many diverse mythologies found worldwide in many diverse cultures.[50][51] This also raises a controversy regarding the ethical claims animism may or may not make: whether animism ignores questions of ethics altogether[52] or, by endowing various non-human elements of nature with spirituality or personhood,[53] in fact promotes a complex ecological ethics.[54]
Fetishism/totemism
In many animistic world views, the human being is often regarded as
on a roughly equal footing with other animals, plants, and natural
forces.[55]
Shamanism
A shaman is a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual, and practices divination and healing.[56]
According to Mircea Eliade, shamanism encompasses the premise that
shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the
spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending
the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the
physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman
also enters supernatural realms or dimensions
to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may
visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and
to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements.
The shaman operates primarily within the spiritual world, which in turn
affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the
elimination of the ailment.[57]
Abram, however, articulates a less supernatural and much more
ecological understanding of the shaman's role than that propounded by
Eliade. Drawing upon his own field research in Indonesia, Nepal, and the
Americas, Abram suggests that in animistic cultures, the shaman
functions primarily as an intermediary between the human community and
the more-than-human community of active agencies — the local animals,
plants, and landforms (mountains, rivers, forests, winds and weather
patterns, all of whom are felt to have their own specific sentience).
Hence the shaman's ability to heal individual instances of dis-ease (or
imbalance) within the human community is a by-product of her/his more
continual practice of balancing the reciprocity between the human
community and the wider collective of animate beings in which that
community is embedded.[58]
Distinction from pantheism
Animism is not the same as pantheism,
although the two are sometimes confused. Some religions are both
pantheistic and animistic. One of the main differences is that while
animists believe everything to be spiritual in nature, they do not
necessarily see the spiritual nature of everything in existence as being
united (monism), the way pantheists do. As a result, animism puts more
emphasis on the uniqueness of each individual soul. In pantheism,
everything shares the same spiritual essence, rather than having
distinct spirits and/or souls.[59][60]
The New Age movement commonly demonstrates animistic traits in asserting the existence of nature spirits.[64]
Some Neopagan
groups, including Eco-Pagans, describe themselves as animists, meaning
that they respect the diverse community of living beings and spirits
with whom humans share the world/cosmos.[65]
Animist life
Animals, plants, and the elements
Animism
entails the belief that "all living things have a soul", and thus a
central concern of animist thought surrounds how animals can be eaten or
otherwise used for humans' subsistence needs.[66]
The actions of non-human animals are viewed as "intentional, planned and purposive",[67] and they are understood to be persons because they are both alive and communicate with others.[68] In animist world-views, non-human animals are understood to participate in kinship systems and ceremonies with humans, as well as having their own kinship systems and ceremonies.[69] Harvey cited an example of an animist understanding of animal behaviour that occurred at a powwow held by the Conne RiverMi'kmaq in 1996; an eagle flew over the proceedings, circling over the central drum group. The assembled participants called out kitpu
("eagle"), conveying welcome to the bird and expressing pleasure at its
beauty, and they later articulated the view that the eagle's actions
reflected its approval of the event and the Mi'kmaq's return to
traditional spiritual practices.[70]
Some animists also view plant and fungi life as persons and interact with them accordingly.[71]
The most common encounter between humans and these plant and fungi
persons is with the former's collection of the latter for food, and for
animists this interaction typically has to be carried out respectfully.[72] Harvey cited the example of Maori communities in New Zealand, who often offer karakia invocations to sweet potatoes
as they dig the latter up; while doing so there is an awareness of a
kinship relationship between the Maori and the sweet potatoes, with both
understood as having arrived in Aotearoa together in the same canoes.[72]
In other instances, animists believe that interaction with plant and
fungi persons can result in the communication of things unknown or even
otherwise unknowable.[71]
Among some modern Pagans, for instance, relationships are cultivated
with specific trees, who are understood to bestow knowledge or physical
gifts, such as flowers, sap, or wood that can be used as firewood or to
fashion into a wand; in return, these Pagans give offerings to the tree itself, which can come in the form of libations of mead or ale, a drop of blood from a finger, or a strand of wool.[73]
Various animistic cultures also comprehend as stones as persons.[74]
Discussing ethnographic work conducted among the Ojibwe, Harvey noted
that their society generally conceived of stones as being inanimate, but
with two notable exceptions: the stones of the Bell Rocks
and those stones which are situated beneath trees struck by lightning,
which were understood to have become Thunderers themselves.[75]
The Ojibwe conceived of weather as being capable of having personhood,
with storms being conceived of as persons known as 'Thunderers' whose
sounds conveyed communications and who engaged in seasonal conflict over
the lakes and forests, throwing lightning at lake monsters.[75] Wind, similarly, can be conceived as a person in animistic thought.[76]
The importance of place is also a recurring element of animism,
with some places being understood to be persons in their own right.[77]
Spirits
Animism can also entail relationships being established with non-corporeal spirit entities.[78]
Other usages
Science and animism
In the early 20th century, William McDougall defended a form of Animism in his book Body and Mind: A History and Defence of Animism (1911).
The physicist Nick Herbert has argued for "quantum animism" in which mind permeates the world at every level.
The quantum consciousness
assumption, which amounts to a kind of "quantum animism" likewise
asserts that consciousness is an integral part of the physical world,
not an emergent property of special biological or computational systems.
Since everything in the world is on some level a quantum system, this
assumption requires that everything be conscious on that level. If the
world is truly quantum animated, then there is an immense amount of
invisible inner experience going on all around us that is presently
inaccessible to humans, because our own inner lives are imprisoned
inside a small quantum system, isolated deep in the meat of an animal
brain.[79]
Herbert's quantum Animism differs
from traditional Animism in that it avoids assuming a dualistic model of
mind and matter. Traditional dualism assumes that some kind of spirit
inhabits a body and makes it move, a ghost in the machine. Herbert's
quantum Animism presents the idea that every natural system has an inner
life, a conscious center, from which it directs and observes its
action.[80]
Socio-political impact
Harvey opined that animism's views on personhood represented a radical challenge to the dominant perspectives of modernity,
because it accords "intelligence, rationality, consciousness, volition,
agency, intentionality, language and desire" to non-humans.[81] Similarly, it challenges the view of human uniqueness that is prevalent in both Abrahamic religions and Western rationalism.[82]
In art and literature
Animist beliefs can also be expressed through artwork.[83]
For instance, among the Maori communities of New Zealand, there is an
acknowledgment that creating art through carving wood or stone entails
violence against the wood or stone person, and that the persons who are
damaged therefore have to be placated and respected during the process;
any excess or waste from the creation of the artwork is returned to the
land, while the artwork itself is treated with particular respect.[84] Harvey therefore argued that the creation of art among the Maori was
not about creating an inanimate object for display, but rather a
transformation of different persons within a relationship.[85]
