wisdom
we are temporary arrangements
of ancient matter
The lion is a predator; the impala is prey. They look different, behave differently, and occupy different roles in the ecosystem, but we instinctively recognise them both as part of nature. So how is it that we, in a vehicle, observing the chase, are not? The answer seems obvious: we’ve built cities, invented machines, altered landscapes, cultivated crops, constructed institutions, and developed technologies capable of transforming the planet on an unprecedented scale. But none of this makes us less natural. Every organism alters the conditions around it simply by existing. The vast distinction we make between ourselves as humans and the rest of nature is, at its core, an illusion. The atoms that compose us are indifferent to the boundaries we draw between them. They move endlessly between soil and root, ocean and
atmosphere, organism and earth, death and life. We are temporary arrangements of ancient matter. Brief configurations in an otherwise continuous cycle of becoming and transference. This perspective may be humbling, but maybe that isn’t a bad thing if it means we think twice before killing the spider, because we see ourselves in it, and it in us. We are born with a wild intelligence that predates knowledge. It is felt. It’s the reason we feel home in wild spaces. The divide between humanity and the rest of the natural world exists only in the stories we tell ourselves about where we end, and where it begins. Stories can be rewritten. Atoms don’t recognise this distinction. Other life doesn’t recognise this distinction. Why should we?
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