Step 15: how are we doing? Part 2, with non-humans

Step 14 showed our contemporary Western interactions with other humans to be a mixed bag. On the one hand, there were examples of objectification of others, and we saw some of the dynamics by which this precludes the emergence of co-creation in relationship and with that, arguably, also our interaction with the sacred in the material. On the other hand, a group of contemporary Western humans engaged in a process of shared learning and creation in a rowing boat that saw agency move into relationship in a way similar to that described in Brian Burkhart’s jazz analogy.

So far, so good. But how do things play out when not everyone involved happens to be human?

The halfway house of step 8 showed that if we want to learn from and with Indigenous philosophies, then we will need to become open to non-humans being included in exactly that type of equation - the equation of learning from and with, not just of learning “about”.

Step 9 took a first look at some potential ways of communicating where no shared spoken language is available. Contemporary Western science was one of them: not the only one, but a valid one just the same, and endorsed by Indigenous and contemporary Western authors alike, for example by Robin Wall Kimmerer and by Gregory Cajete. There was nothing wrong with including contemporary Western science in the mix; there was only something wrong with excluding everything else.

One thing is certain: we could , in the contemporary West, relate to non-humans at eye level if we wanted to. We not only have our own ancient stories for that (Louise Westling’s, from step 9, for example): we also have recent research showing that both our adult inability to communicate with animals and our adult inability to communicate with plants are highly likely to be forms of learnt, not innate, incompetence.

—> Can you remember where to go if you need exact references? Step 1 and step 2 will tell you where they are.

So why do we teach ourselves not to be able to do something? And why did it take a philosopher (again Louise Westling) to point out some shared ground, years later, between the early findings of the new scientific discipline of ethology and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, which is widely cited by Indigenous authors, when both were available at the same time and at least one of the ethologists involved might well have been open to Merleau-Ponty’s ideas? And what does it all mean for our present-day relationships with non-humans?

Everyone has heard of Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, two of the founding fathers of the new discipline of ethology. There’s a great biography available that tracks their progress from their postgraduate student days shortly before the Second World War to their deaths in the late 1980s. Friends as well as colleagues, despite their political differences, they laid the foundations for much of what we know these days about animal behaviour and its relationship with evolutionary theory.

In relation to our question in step 15 - of human/non-human relationships at eye level - Tinbergen and Lorenz are going to be interesting, because it looks as if they may have had to sacrifice some of their convictions to obtain funding to live any of their convictions at all.

With Lorenz, it is debatable how much difference this will have made: evidence is available of Lorenz’s willingness to join the Nazi party, and (although he later tried to distance himself from this association) he failed to oppose eugenics on ethical grounds even at the very end of his career. Lorenz is famous for imprinting goslings, and imprinting is, by its very nature, relationship - but it is debatable whether Lorenz appreciated this relationship as a meaningful one rather than as a solely experimental one. A New York Times article shows him imprinting goslings to entertain an audience. When Shay Welch talks about disrespect precluding the knowledge process, it becomes difficult to imagine in Lorenz’s case that there could have been much shared learning and creation going on. It sounds more as if Lorenz’s learning was just learning “about”.

Tinbergen’s attitude sounds different. The biography quotes him as talking about acausal relationships alongside causal ones, which means he won’t have expected to treat others simply as billiard balls. It also quotes him worrying about science being too good at bullying nature into submission, and not good enough at developing genuine understanding. His admission referenced in step 10 - of his research having missed a trick when it didn’t think about feedback from an animal’s environment enough - shows sensitivity and provides more evidence that he was able to appreciate animals as living partners in relationship.

And yet, while working at Oxford, Tinbergen turned down an offer of some transdisciplinary collaboration with a colleague who wanted to look at science as a spiritual journey. He was also involved in the decision to place the question of an animal’s subjective experience outside the new discipline of ethology. In fact, Tinbergen’s comments in the previous paragraph - the sensitive ones - were made at the end of his career, not while he was active as an ethologist at Oxford and applying for grants.

The biography makes frequent reference to money being tight for the emerging new discipline. It stands to reason: zoological research doesn’t come cheap, and the world of funding applications is a competitive one. When we look at whether our present and future interactions with non-humans through contemporary Western science can be eye-level ones, with renewed scope for the emergence of genuinely co-creative inter-species jazz bands, an application process requiring expected outcomes and their monetary value to be stated from the beginning may turn out to be a stumbling block.

The good news is that some scientists are starting to speak out. David Cockburn (the philosopher empathising with a squid in step 9) is no longer alone: Frans de Waal and Marc Bekoff are examples of zoologists unashamedly talking about - and providing evidence for - our need to embrace knowledge from empathy because knowledge “about” cannot be the whole story. They accept knowledge “about” as part of the picture, especially at the beginning of what might otherwise be a difficult conversation with a sceptic - but the crucial point for them is that knowledge “about” is only one stepping stone on a journey towards shared becoming. Knowledge from empathy, for them, is equally important, not least for the simple reason that there may be something about an animal that we can’t know “about” because humans don’t have any reference points for it. (Think bats before humans understood what ultrasound is.) Knowledge from empathy becomes a matter of scientific rigour, then, at the same time as being one of respect: it is about entertaining the possibility that the animal might be good at something which is so far outside our own experience that we can only feel our way into it in relationship with them; we can’t set up a study “about” it because it is impossible for us to know what questions to ask.

Marc Bekoff changes profoundly through his relationship with a laboratory cat. The change comes with the emergence knowledge from empathy, not through propositional knowledge gained from his laboratory report.

Another case study, conversely, sticks to its project plan even as experiential learning is being offered on a silver platter and the project plan turns out to be problematic. A researcher wants to assess whether chimpanzees are capable of remembering specific past events, and whether they are capable of purposeful behaviour. The apes make a journey that they clearly don’t enjoy for its own sake (because it involves making an earlier start than they would normally choose). The journey is to take them to a previously identified food source. The apes then show in their body language that they are unhappy with the researcher following them and making too much noise. (It turns out chimps are better than humans at avoiding those branches that will break under their feet and alert predators to their presence.) The intrepid researcher, even though the answers to both her research questions are right in front of her, diligently follows due process and continues to follow the chimps. This is despite her knowledge of the chimps recently having lost one of their young to a leopard. Ellul, no doubt, took note.

It is unclear in this example where the line is (if any) between the researcher’s own expectations of her relationship with the chimps on the one hand, and any requirements imposed by her funding body on the other. What is clear, however, is that no inter-species relationship of shared learning and creation was given space to develop, and that this was at least in part due to an absence of respect. That’s two major boxes of the family resemblance unticked. This is the case even though the case study involves researchers whose choice of profession will almost certainly have been motivated by a genuine appreciation of non-human nature. The same can almost certainly not reliably be said of everyone working on a factory farm.

This means that at least for the moment, our search for already existing, contemporary Western, multi-species jazz bands is not looking too promising.

Step 16 will set out to look for a silver lining.