The Conquest of Nature--and What We've Lost

Thank you Bonnie for a great article.

I had a friend in from town this past weekend and she wanted to go to the San Diego Zoo. I am a zoo member as it is a great place to walk for my less than perfect mobility and as I spent months hanging out with the Gorillas seeing what I might learn from them about their trauma and how they work with trauma. What we watched all day was mostly humans as we wandered about. It struck me, as in the article, that as humans have moved into cities we have lost our daily interactions with the other kingdoms of other beings. At the zoo, humans were there, in my view, as consumers. There was food to be consumed. A lot of merchandise to be consumed. The plants were all labeled to be consumed. The animals were there to be consumed. And, in human-to-human interactions it was still about consumption of each other (the customer is always right mentality). We might not always consume with our hands, but with our noses, our ears, our eyes, our touch, our voices... It was quite striking that we have moved from living with and among animals to being separated from them physically, emotionally, and energetically. Some of our greatest teachers have been moved beyond notice and we are unaware (as a Western society) of them and the gifts they offer. We see them only as how we can consumer them, even our pets are to be with us at our whim, not as equals.

Again, thank you for the article. I would love to hear from others what they think of the article, especially in light of those of us that are practitioners who relate to power animals, animal guides, and etc. and is there discordance between how we see, feel about, and treat/work with the animals in spiritual work and the animals we encounter in the everyday mundane world?

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Jesse Masterson March 28, 2013 at 1:34pm

Thank you Bonnie for a great article.

I had a friend in from town this past weekend and she wanted to go to the San Diego Zoo. I am a zoo member as it is a great place to walk for my less than perfect mobility and as I spent months hanging out with the Gorillas seeing what I might learn from them about their trauma and how they work with trauma. What we watched all day was mostly humans as we wandered about. It struck me, as in the article, that as humans have moved into cities we have lost our daily interactions with the other kingdoms of other beings. At the zoo, humans were there, in my view, as consumers. There was food to be consumed. A lot of merchandise to be consumed. The plants were all labeled to be consumed. The animals were there to be consumed. And, in human-to-human interactions it was still about consumption of each other (the customer is always right mentality). We might not always consume with our hands, but with our noses, our ears, our eyes, our touch, our voices... It was quite striking that we have moved from living with and among animals to being separated from them physically, emotionally, and energetically. Some of our greatest teachers have been moved beyond notice and we are unaware (as a Western society) of them and the gifts they offer. We see them only as how we can consumer them, even our pets are to be with us at our whim, not as equals.

Again, thank you for the article. I would love to hear from others what they think of the article, especially in light of those of us that are practitioners who relate to power animals, animal guides, and etc. and is there discordance between how we see, feel about, and treat/work with the animals in spiritual work and the animals we encounter in the everyday mundane world?

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Shamanism, Ritual, & Medicine

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