From the book, Rewilding Our Hearts by Marc Bekoff.
If we did not unwild, there would be no reason to rewild, and we need to reverse this distancing and destructive devolution. If by “rewilding our hearts” I’m naming our open and compassionate connection to nature, then unwilding refers to the opposite: It’s the process by which we become alienated from nature and nonhuman animals; it’s how we deny our impacts and refuse to take responsibility for them; and it’s how we become discouraged and overwhelmed, and thus fail to act despite the problems we see.
Many, perhaps most, human animals are isolated and fragmented from nonhuman animals and other nature, and so we become alienated from them. The busy-ness of our days, the concrete and steel of our cities, the buildings in which we spend the majority of our work and school lives — all this unwilds us and erodes our natural connection with nature. German psychologist Erich Fromm called this innate connection, this love of life and living systems, “biophilia.” Renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson later defined his “biophilia hypothesis” as “the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.”
Yet our modern world undermines this constantly. It unwilds us. We experience alienation from nature when we learn about, or participate in, the wanton killing of wild species, when fields and forests are clear-cut and paved over for suburban developments, and when ecosystems are ruined by pollution or other human impacts. We experience firsthand our separation from nonhuman animals when we keep them in cages in zoos. And we instill alienation from nature in our children by teaching them primarily indoors at desks and in front of computer screens. Alienation flows from the belief that humans are superior to all other animals and that we are meant to dominate other species and use the Earth solely for our benefit.
Many people run within very narrow worlds, so that they never feel and can’t imagine that all people are connected and that human life is inherently dependent on nature’s health. It can seem ludicrous to claim that what happens in New York City or Boulder, Colorado, really does influence what happens in other parts of the world. After all, from our perspective where we live, other parts of the world don’t seem to influence or impact us. Particularly in America, though this is true everywhere, some people are fortunate enough to live very comfortably, and they face few (or fewer) problems in how they live, and so the serious problems that exist elsewhere can seem distant. They aren’t experienced immediately and directly, and they are easy to ignore. The welfare of faraway places we’ve never visited, and of creatures we’ve never seen, doesn’t seem to concern us.
As we unwild, we lose compassion and empathy for other beings and for nature as a whole. We do not understand that landscapes are alive, vibrant, dynamic, magical, magnificent, and interconnected.
Nevertheless, unwilding can often lead us to experience a deep sense of loss for the connections to nature we are missing, even if the sense of what we’re missing is vague. Glenn Albrecht, professor of sustainability at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, has coined the word “solastalgia” to describe “the distress caused by the lived experience of the transformation of one’s home and sense of belonging and is experienced through the feeling of desolation about its change.” We experience solastalgia when we erode our relationships with nature and other beings.
Homo denialus
If alienation from nature is perhaps an unintended consequence of modern life, people also engage in a more deliberate form of unwilding: denial. As Homo denialus, we readily “see no evil, hear no evil, or smell no evil.” If we open our senses even a little bit to our surroundings, it is impossible to miss what’s happening and the dire consequences of our actions, but we can get mired in “magnificent delusions” (to quote political scientist Husain Haqqani). We ignore and redecorate nature in incredibly self-serving ways, as if we are the only species that matters, and we turn a blind eye to the suffering this causes.
An old Chinese proverb warns us that closing our eyes does not ease another’s pain. Claiming ignorance and denying what is happening do not make the destruction stop. When did we begin ignoring nature? Why did we start ignoring our need for untainted and healthy food, clean water, clean air, and reasonable shelter? How did we become so disconnected from nature and an understanding of basic ecological processes? What allows us to tolerate human-induced losses in biodiversity? There can be many reasons for denial. Some hide behind the claim of human exceptionalism, and so they ignore the suffering of other animals because they think those animals are less than us and don’t matter. Some deny the destruction that humans cause in the natural world in order to avoid having to take responsibility for it.
Also, in the hustle and bustle of modern life, it is easy to simply become too distracted and to ignore nature as we run here and there, not even knowing why we’re doing what we’re doing. We are removed from the larger impacts of our own daily lives, and so we lack any meaningful appreciation of our destructive ways and their wide-ranging consequences. To a degree, this distraction is self-inflicted and self-serving; we ig- nore nature because it’s convenient to do so. We choose to live in oblivion and deliberately not know and not feel what we’re doing. We prefer detachment and ignorance rather than to feel and share the pain experienced by other animals and nature.
However, denial is hard to maintain when the evidence of trouble exists all around us. Some persist anyway. They deny solid science and what is happening right in front of our eyes. This has real consequences, which Michael Specter makes clear in his book Denialism and Richard Oppenlander in Comfortably Unaware. Renowned conservation biologist Michael Soulé calls the climate change deniers “morbidly ignorant.” These are strong words from a world-famous scientist, one who is often called the founder of conservation biology. I agree with him, and it’s one reason why I have written this book — to help undo these unwilding mechanisms so we can start to rewild our hearts before it’s too late.
Combating Slacktivism: No More Excuses
Most readers of this article probably already recognize and acknowledge the very serious ecological problems facing us. What’s harder is actually doing something. Particularly when we are faced with unrelenting bad news about global issues like climate change, which make our individual efforts seem inconsequential and useless, it is easy to throw up our hands and give in to despair and inaction.
But everyone must do whatever they can. We cannot be slacktivists. Many people talk about making the world a more compassionate place for all beings and “living green,” but one recent US survey found that “fewer than 10 percent use any environmentally friendly products or curb household consumption.” This is slacktivism: talking about an urgent problem that needs to be fixed without walking the talk and actually doing something about it.
Doomsday thinking is another form of unwilding. It fosters alienation and isolation, from nature, nonhuman animals, and one another. Feeling overwhelmed, we may retreat into our individual lives, never realizing how keenly this disconnection is felt by others. What we do does make a difference, and rewilding our hearts is about fostering and honoring our connections to one another and all life. We don’t need to have all the answers to the world’s problems in order to make the world a better place where we live right now. But we do need the determination to push aside the excuses and rationalizations for inaction whenever they come up.
There are dozens of excuses for negativity: thinking that there’s nothing we can do to turn the tide; failing to consider future generations, who rely on our goodwill and efforts, even if we ourselves might not live to see the benefits of our actions; preferring our own immediate gratification or comfort rather than making sacrifices for another’s benefit; outright laziness; and hierarchical speciesistic thinking that we are “higher, better, or more valuable” than other animals. Some might also cite religious beliefs or proclivities, or appeal to economics — that it’s too expensive or time-consuming to care and make the necessary changes. Of course, politics gets in the way all the time: We know what’s “right,” but what’s right isn’t always politically expedient or in alignment with our faction’s dogma.
Fear of and unfamiliarity with the outdoors can also get in the way. These are other forms of unwilding. We can be reluctant to embrace or connect with something that makes us uncomfortable, and some might fear that animals are dangerous or that they are dirty or carry diseases. People may avoid the rugged outdoors because they are afraid to get dirty, afraid of falling and being injured, afraid of insects and of encountering wild animals. However, whatever one’s personal comfort level with nature, we can all work on nature’s behalf, for nature is a common good we can all recognize. Rewilding our hearts doesn’t mean becoming an “off-the-grid” survivalist, a radical “back-to-the-land” activist, or a hard-core outdoorsperson. It means, simply, acting with compassion and love for nonhuman animals and for the natural world that is our shared home.
We are also inconsistent in our caring. People are often outraged over specific incidents of animal cruelty — such as the massacre of forty-nine captive wild animals in Ohio in October 2011— but they remain unmoved by the slaughter of billions of animals for food and research, or the horrific and ongoing abuse of animals used for entertainment in zoos, aquariums, circuses, and rodeos. While not every situation is equivalent, rewilding means not selectively picking and choosing who to care for based on our own whims. As a comparison, it has been estimated that, each year, 37 to 120 billion farmed fish, 970 to 2,700 billion wild fish, and 63 billion farmed mammals and birds are killed for food.
Excuses for inaction are a dime a dozen: Life is too demanding, there’s too much to do, money is tight, individuals really don’t make a difference, someone else will take care of it, I’m not at fault…the list goes on and on. Clearly, bettering the lives of animals and healing our ecosystems are truly daunting tasks, and relatively few people in the world have the ability to make it their full-time job. Most people in the world are already doing all they can just to survive. Those of us blessed with good fortune often forget that the vast majority of people in the world, despite all their efforts, barely make it from day to day. And no one is completely free from the need to take care of their own welfare and that of their family. But that makes it all the more important that each of us do something and that we push ourselves to do as much as we can for as long as we can. Indeed, whatever our circumstances, rewilding is really a lifelong effort. We should think of it not as series of one-time actions that “do our part” for the environment but as a lens for viewing and remaking our life from here on.
Science and common sense tell us that we have made some egregious errors that have created numerous lasting or long-term problems and that we need to change our ways. But science alone won’t convince us to change. Science alone will not add compassion to the world or get people to do something positive for animals and their homes. Only rewilding our hearts will do that. Only by embracing rewilding will we avoid the alienation, denial, and complacency that undermines our efforts. Rewilding is a process that begins in each person’s heart and expands outward, one that heals our own connection to nature even as it heals the wounds of our one and only planet. Rewilding can give legs to a new social movement and paradigm shift for much-needed change.
Rewilding Comes Naturally
Over the past few years I have had the pleasure of talking with the renowned psychologist Aubrey Fine, who is keenly interested in the nature of human-animal relationships. He once asked me a simple question, “What do we need to do to get people to stop and smell the roses?”
As I told Dr. Fine, to me it should be easy. We are born biophiliacs who are inherently drawn to the natural world. This attraction is in our genes. People don’t need convincing to enjoy nature. When we take a walk outside, we notice immediately how much better we feel. I would love to see brain scans of people as they rewild and reconnect with other animals and nature. I would not be at all surprised to see their reward and pleasure centers firing wildly.
In the next chapter, I describe rewilding in more detail, but at the very least this is what rewilding is all about: encouraging, honoring, and growing our inherent connection to nature and nonhuman animals. After this chapter’s difficult summary of the problems we face, I want to end on a positive note by emphasizing that the solution, connecting with nature and interacting with compassion, is based on who we are.
For instance, the distractions of daily life can make it very easy and convenient to unwild. We become, in some sense, out of balance and disconnected within ourselves. As we rewild, we restore balance and our sense of connection. We achieve a sort of homeostasis and feel good once again — it’s like coming home to a comfortable place. From this place of connection, it’s easy to see and do “what’s right.” I love something that Ernest Hemingway wrote years ago in Death in the Afternoon: “About morals I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” I don’t see Hemingway’s view as simplistic at all. Rewilding is the same: You know it by how much better it makes you feel.
The challenge, of course, is to maintain rewilding and these feelings as a daily routine. But all sorts of evidence continues to emerge that kindness, compassion, caring, and cooperation are part of our evolutionary inheritance. For instance, research has shown that the roots of fairness and cooperation can be found in infants as young as fifteen months of age and that egalitarian instincts emerge in early childhood. Mounting research in evolutionary biology shows that groups comprising individuals who work together do better than groups comprising individuals who do not. This supports an evolutionary theory called “group selection,” in which cooperative groups provide an evolutionary advantage, in contrast to the more well-accepted theory of evolution that argues that natural selection operates on individuals. Group selection as a driving force in the evolution of social behavior has generated more support over recent years, including that of renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson, who for many years strongly opposed it.
I’ve often said that, across cultures, humans are really much nicer than we ever give them credit for. It’s a relative few who wage wars, kill people, and harm children, and they get in the news. This is true for nonhuman animals as well. Kindness is seen in a wide variety of species. I tell more stories of animal compassion later, but I love this story about Gus, a dog, which was shared with me in an email:
Gus, as most dogs are, was fiercely territorial about his yard. Any animal that showed up would be promptly and definitively chased off…except for one day: It was a scorcher of a day in Northern Alberta, and Dad and the family were sitting at the kitchen table with the door open, hoping for a bit of a breeze to cool things off. Suddenly, at the door appears a stray, starving dog. Right behind is Gus, who gives the stray a gentle nudge forward. He then walks in front of the stray animal and leads it to his food dish. Gus put his paw in his dish and looks at his owners as a sign to please fill this with food, which they did. They watched in awe as Gus stepped back and let the dog empty his food bowl. After Gus was confident the animal had a full belly, he then chased the dog out of the yard.
For Gus, and for all of us, there is always room for compassion. And there’s mounting evidence that being compassionate is good for our health and longevity. Further, studies show that people are willing to pay to enjoy all sorts of nature. Conservation psychologist Susan Clayton at the College of Wooster reports that people value and are willing to pay “for scenic beauty; for diversity of animal species; to protect habitat for the giant panda; to reduce invasive plant species; to protect biodiversity in urban areas,” and more. She continues, “Perhaps the most striking finding is that people are willing to pay for aspects of the landscape that they would never be able to benefit from personally. This idea has been described as ‘existence value’: We value the mere existence of things like the Grand Canyon, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and many other instances of nature that remain relatively unaffected by human activity.”
Rewilding only asks us to do what comes naturally and what feels right. And despite our current problems, we have an incredible amount of global momentum. More and more people realize that they too can make a positive difference in the lives of other animals, other humans, and in the health and integrity of our landscapes. The rewards for this work are felt immediately, and the effects ripple in all directions, influencing others to do the same. Each time we nurture the seeds of compassion, empathy, and love, we deepen our respect for and kinship with the universe. All people, other animals, human communities, and environments benefit greatly when we develop and maintain a heartfelt compassion that is as reflexive as breathing. Compassion begets compassion.
From the book, Rewilding Our Hearts © Copyright 2014 by Marc Bekoff. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.NewWorldLibrary.com