Nice essay.

I rather like Sophie's fictional works.

But its about time we started relating to the real live, breathing, feeling, non-humans on a completely different basis.

http://www.fearnomorezoo.org/literature/observe_learn.php

http://animalliberty.com

Nice capture of nature moments. I've just finished David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous, so this article resonated with me.

I remember sitting with my labrador puppy, on a hill overlooking Byron Bay, staring for an hour at two green tree snakes curled up in the grass. They were like two fat luminescent tyres, gleaming in the sun.

Georgy, the dog, couldn't pull herself away. She 'gurred' a few times but was transfixed. Occassionally one of the snakes would open its heavy lidded eyes and slowly close it again.

It was mesmerising. I think we've lost much of the language to describe nature. I suppose poetry is close but it's the ability to interprit and remember the landscape.

Unfortunately our capacity to enter into free psychic participation with the the non-humans and the world process altogether has been systematically eliminated by the "culture" created in the image of scientism and its drive to power and control. See for instance:

http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/bridge_to_god/index2.html

Elsewhere the author points out that such free psychic participation is essential for our sanity. It is also the well-spring for any truly authentic art.

"True religion is based on the PSYCHIC CONNECTION to Reality. There can be no true religion without profond psychic activity. True religion expresses the inherent disposition and motive of the psyche, or the intuitive, feeling core of Man--male and female.The contemporay religion and "culture" of civilized popular societies has little or no psyche remaining from its psychic, feeling origins. The psyche is taboo to science and industry.

In order to live a true religious Way of Life, individuals must enter psychically into the play of their experience of the world altogether. We must move beyond the self-bound stupidity of the verbal mind, which has no sympathy, no heart, no feeling, no psyche. The psyche is the deep disposition of UNION with That which is Radiant and Alive. Only the unitary and self-transcending disposition of the psyche, rather than the separative and rigidly self-defining disposition of the conventional mind, can provide the foundation for true religion and a true humanity"

Oddly enough the loudest champions of this "culture" of scientism which suppresses such free psychic participation in the World Process are the very people that Sophie associates with. Namely the right thinking culture warriors that congregate around Quadrant and ALL of the right thinking think tanks both here in OZ, and elsewhere.

Plus the "religion" that such outfits promote is just an extension of this fundamental psychosis too.

The capacity to romanticise other species is -- as far as we know -- a uniquely human one. Gerald Durrell made a telling point about the real lives of wild animals when he described the parasite infections which most of them carry, their short lives and their bloody deaths, which are often attributable to other members of the same species.

Animal experience is confined to the immediate present, and largely consists of answering the question: should I eat this, have sex with it or run away from it? Objects outside the immediate field of interest are ignored. There are videos which show buffalo, for instance, grazing peaceably while lions snack on their still-living calves a few tens of metres away. If a cow could talk, it would talk about grass. We should treat animals well, but not because they're special: because WE are. Wind in the Willows and Blinky Bill are pretty stories; but let's not confuse them with reality.

"Gerald Durrell made a telling point about the real lives of wild animals when he described the parasite infections which most of them carry, their short lives and their bloody deaths, which are often attributable to other members of the same species."

Indeed yes John J - homo-sapiens to a T! Humans are often infested with parasite infections - bed bugs, lice, crabs, tics, fleas, etc etc.

That homo-sapiens have invented insecticides, pesticides etc to defeat the bugs has not contributed to earth's biodiversity in fact it has threatened it.

Many homo-sapiens have short lives and a bloodied death attributable to the other members of the same species. And yes homo-sapiens are also described as "wild animals!"

How man does romanticise about himself!:

"but not because they're special: because WE are." Ahem!

Its NOT about communing with nature, its all about economic GROWTH.

You people have to get used to living in sardine can apartments with pretty granite benchtops & commuting like cattle alongside all the other foreign smelling migrants. That's the reality of communal nature under Labor. That's Economic growth.

So if it moves, shoot it.

If it grows in your way chop it down.

If it frustrates you, make up lies and seul your lawyer onto it.

If it stands and muses at nature then its not paying enough tax, not spending and thus not contributing GST. Why hec, it probably doesn't even vote Labor, so just IMMIGRATE over the top of it & make it SPEND till it hurts, spend to survive.

Ah today, Port Botany replacing Penrhyn Estuary, tomorrow, Westmaq replacing the whole of the East Coast, including New England. Think of all the GST from the new migrants spending up big in all those new Westmaq shopping malls.

If I see a grey Kangaroo at twilight .. I'm gunna run over it .. for the good of Australia, all pulling together!

The Kevster PM, AMGSTEGFU