Thesis post #5 : Biophilia and Biognosis

BIOPHILIA & BIOGNOSIS

BIOPHILIA & BIOGNOSIS

Cultivating in ourselves a deep fondness, connection, and love for all life forms and living things may be called the practice of biophilia. Likewise, expanding our knowledge of life through higher spiritual and intuitive faculties of mind may be called biognosis. These two practices support each other in a spiraling type of relationship where the strengthening of biophilia can lead to the growth of biognosis which, in turn, leads again to the possibility of an increase in biophilia. Nature, as a marriage of matter (from Latin mater: mother) and pattern (from Latin pater: father), reflects to us this biophilic/biognostic synthesis.

Stephen Harrod Buhner, in The Lost Language of Plants, identifies four factors which lead to the loss of biophilia:

(1) belief held by most industrialized societies that the Earth is a machine;

(2) loss of access to wild places and the diversity of life forms they contain;

(3)public schooling, since its entire curriculum contains embedded communication that the Universe is dead;

(4) television, since it replaces deep meaningful dreaming with shallow meaning-less dreams manufactured by industry.

In contrast, Buhner recognizes eight beliefs that are common to most ancient cultures:

(1) at the center of all things is Spirit,

(2) all matter is made from this substance,

(3) all things possess soul and logos (sacred intelligence),

(4) possibility for humans to communicate with soul in plants and all other matter,

(5) plants will help us when we are in need, if we ask them,

(6) it is not possible for new generations to become human without this teaching from the natural world,

(7) parts of Earth manifest more or less sacredness,

(8) humans are only one of many life forms of Earth; and other life in the Universe can and will become vengeful if treated with disrespect.

To restore biophilia, Stephen Buhner believes that we must begin by renewing our capacity for experiencing subtle feeling. We need to become aware, once again, of all that Nature has to tell us. The more urban our environment is, the more challenging this task. Yet Nature is never totally absent from a place. Life is constantly working to heal the damage that we inflict upon the Earth. Weedy vacant lots and cracking road pavement are a tribute to life forces.

Once we have renewed our sense of subtle feeling, Buhner says that we must place our thinking in the service of that feeling and the knowledge we gain through it. He claims that thinking, by itself, will never restore caring. As we restore an affection for life, as we restore biophilia, in this manner, we can then begin to develop a direct recognition of Nature, we can begin to develop biognosis. Through biognosis we are next able to gain a higher holistic understanding of our Earth. Buhner believes that this direct biognostic understanding is critical to overcoming the piecemeal reductionist nature of the schooling most of us have been forced through.

Finally, as our understanding of Earth becomes more holistic and our knowledge of the interconnections between ecological systems grows, we may, once again, find ourselves exploring new areas of the natural world, becoming aware of previously undiscovered subtle feelings, and thus deepening, in turn, our biophilia. This spiraling process may be similar to the one in which the ethic of deep ecology emerged. This theory, a kind of biognosis, grew out of the biophilic observation and intuitive feeling that we are, indeed, not separate from either the Earth or the many living creatures that inhabit her. The biognostic conclusion, then, is that we must work for the health and happiness of all beings.

This biognostic conclusion is a holistic one and so helps us in shifting paradigms. Restoring biophilia means restoring a biognostic model of the Universe. So the question, “How do we restore biophilia?” is directly related to the question, “How do we shift from a mechanical to an organic worldview?