501
only humans remain locked out of these theories. Barred from entry by our own
worst behavioral traits, yet forever desperate to get inside, somehow circumventing those evolutionary logic gates (Fig. 53.1).
One look at what Jonathan Balcombe has termed “the exultant ark” yields to
consciousness (or, for that matter, Barthes’ “hyperconsciousness”) an expanse of
biological joy among those Others that further highlights our own isolation, and
lends additional commentary to the crisis we are in. The absence in ourselves of
some organ akin to a tuning fork that can help us to be re-united emotionally with
other, unfamiliar species; to erase a great emptiness. In that gap is a reciprocity
potential, as we have termed it elsewhere; a dormant joy, and a deep level of appreciation so untapped as to pose the full seriousness all at once, of our predicament. A
situation much like the huge attenuation of the very seeds we have obfuscated one
way or other—93% of all varieties, lost, just within the United States between 1903
and 1983, as earlier referenced just in the case of apples. But of course, the same
winnowing has occurred in our very extinctions of experience across most taxonomic suites in the world.
10
In missing out on nearly everything outside our human-sated selves, by all indications we are rapidly giving up on this world. Stated simply, Balcombe writes, “To
relate to others’ feelings is to consider their experience, to try to imagine things
from their perspective.” It is the first rung of the ladder to ultimate compassion, the
longing for communion that is fundamentally the nature of ethology, interspecies
10 From The Neutral, by Roland Barthes, Lecture Course at the Collège de France (1977–1978),
Translated by Rosalind E. Krauss and Denis Hollier, Text established, annotated, and presented
by Thomas Clerc under the direction of Eric Marty, Columbia University Press, New York, NY,
2005, pp. 7, 101.
Fig. 53.1 Iberian Wolf (Canis lupus signatus), Critically Endangered, at the Portuguese Sanctuary
of Grupo Lobo (Iberian Wolf Recovery Center). (Photo © M.C. Tobias)
53.3 Languages and Paradigms with Which to Reunite
only humans remain locked out of these theories. Barred from entry by our own
worst behavioral traits, yet forever desperate to get inside, somehow circumventing those evolutionary logic gates (Fig. 53.1).
One look at what Jonathan Balcombe has termed “the exultant ark” yields to
consciousness (or, for that matter, Barthes’ “hyperconsciousness”) an expanse of
biological joy among those Others that further highlights our own isolation, and
lends additional commentary to the crisis we are in. The absence in ourselves of
some organ akin to a tuning fork that can help us to be re-united emotionally with
other, unfamiliar species; to erase a great emptiness. In that gap is a reciprocity
potential, as we have termed it elsewhere; a dormant joy, and a deep level of appreciation so untapped as to pose the full seriousness all at once, of our predicament. A
situation much like the huge attenuation of the very seeds we have obfuscated one
way or other—93% of all varieties, lost, just within the United States between 1903
and 1983, as earlier referenced just in the case of apples. But of course, the same
winnowing has occurred in our very extinctions of experience across most taxonomic suites in the world.
10
In missing out on nearly everything outside our human-sated selves, by all indications we are rapidly giving up on this world. Stated simply, Balcombe writes, “To
relate to others’ feelings is to consider their experience, to try to imagine things
from their perspective.” It is the first rung of the ladder to ultimate compassion, the
longing for communion that is fundamentally the nature of ethology, interspecies
10 From The Neutral, by Roland Barthes, Lecture Course at the Collège de France (1977–1978),
Translated by Rosalind E. Krauss and Denis Hollier, Text established, annotated, and presented
by Thomas Clerc under the direction of Eric Marty, Columbia University Press, New York, NY,
2005, pp. 7, 101.
Fig. 53.1 Iberian Wolf (Canis lupus signatus), Critically Endangered, at the Portuguese Sanctuary
of Grupo Lobo (Iberian Wolf Recovery Center). (Photo © M.C. Tobias)
53.3 Languages and Paradigms with Which to Reunite