I find this perceived divide between nature and humanity fascinating, because to me it seems to be the exact same sort of divide which exist between me and any given person I pass on the street. I mean, I will never know what it is to be a snake, true, but I'm also never going to know what it's like to be that homeless guy on the corner. I think for anyone to ever assume that they share experiences with anyone else is pretentious, or at best overly optimistic.
I started trying to figure out what the difference was, and I finally decided it was language. I can't be the homeless guy on the corner, or understand the way he sees the world-- for all I know, to him the color purple might look like the color red does to me, but this doesn't matter to me, on some level, because we can both point at a purple grape and say "that is purple". We might not be talking about the same purple, but we can label the experience and feel reassured and affirmed because we've both used the same label. We think we've shared an experience. But really, have we? Is there any way to know?
We can't receive any similar sort of validation from the snake, which I think is the difference. The snake is not going to answer if I say "Hey, do you think that's purple?" and there's something a little frightening about my ability to engage in dialog with him. But that doesn't mean that the snake is any more alien to us than the people we pass by every day. I think so, at least.
I was thinking about this the other day. I think that language can be a barrier in some ways. People don't need to be present and communicate fully when they can speak. Speaking often negates instinct and experience. I think people are really afraid of honesty. They are afraid of being open to others and the world around them because of the constrictions that society has put on behavior.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm posting here because I do not wish to start a new topic but to widen this same vein of thought we've been digging at. In class when we were talking about a snake's perspective, I was reminded of a conversation I had with my roommate the day before. We were talking about death and the nature of existence, etc. and I mentioned how I had always wanted to be able to experience existence in another form, whether it be a tree or a creek or lily pad or caterpillar or dandelion seed or shrub, etc. Of course soon I was brought to the centuries-old (or beyond) desire to know what it is to fly, to be a bird turning with a flock. Rather than sighing and agreeing, my roommate spun the conversation on an different curve:
ReplyDeletewe only would want to be another creature if we could experience it as a human being another creature, or in another creature's body--if we could maintain our perception through it (check out my tail!! look what I can do!!). It would be completely different to actually BE this animal, have its perception and perspective. Does a bird know its a bird? Can it enjoy flying? Or is it just like anything else? Now, this still does not discourage me in craving a new molecular arrangement (in which of course I would no longer be me, but simplicity does not lose its appeal), but it did raise some questions parallel to Amelie's post. Is it possible to ever grasp what another experiences? A perspective, graspable perhaps, but perception, not. Consciousness is a crazy phenomenon of isolation, but to save us from desolation we have empathy, which is probably the closest one could ever be to understanding someone else's experience. We can "feel what they feel" (maybe), but we will never be able to "get into someone else's head." Or the head of a snake, in fact.