The myth of human dominion and exceptionalism is as old as the Bible and as unquestioned as gravity, at least in "modern" society. Rob, Asher, and Jason explore the ways that humanocentrism has come to dominate the planet and our minds, while pointing to ancient and newly emerging ways that the more-than-human world is respected and protected, even the dung beetle.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Eileen Crist defines (and critiques) anthropocentrism.
• Global biomass of wild mammals
• Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass.
• Decline of pollinators
• Decline of flying insect biomass
• Daniel Quinn’s book Ishmael
• Human Nature Odyssey podcast with Alex Leff
• Tom Murphy’s journey of understanding the pitfalls of human exceptionalism
• Two-thirds of the world’s longest rivers have been dammed.
• Declining wild bird populations in North America
• Ed Yong’s book An Immense World
• Yellowstone to Yukon conservation initiative
• Restor
• Douglas Tallamy’s book Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard
• Story of mining permit revocation in Panama
• Timeline of expansion of the rights of nature that was compiled by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
• Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights
• Stop Ecocide International
• Crazy Town episode with Danielle Celermajer on multispecies justice
• Robin Wall-Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass
• Prominence of nature in the Tuvan language
• Holding the Fire episode with Anne Poelina
• Quote by Kenneth Brink of the Karuk Tribe
• Quote by Sammy Gensaw III of the Yurok Tribe

Support the show

Jason Bradford

Hi, I'm Jason Bradford.

Asher Miller

I'm Asher Miller.

Rob Dietz

and I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town, where the menu consists of barbecued habitat, fricaseed ecosystems, and coral reef pudding

Melody Travers Allison

Quick warning sometimes this podcast uses swear words. (LANGUAGE!)

Rob Dietz

Hey, it's good to be here in Crazy Town.

Asher Miller

You sound like a radio show host.

Asher Miller

Geez louise.

Asher Miller

"Hey, everybody."

Rob Dietz

Hey, everybody. It's good to be here with my friends Jason and Asher in Crazy Town, I think.

Jason Bradford

W-H-Y-Z.

Asher Miller

That's where we put the crazy in Crazy Town.

Rob Dietz

Okay, I have an opening question for you two. Maybe this is because of all the superhero movies that have dominated pop culture. But I want to know --

Asher Miller

Dominated your mind at least.

Rob Dietz

Well, not just mine. I mean, come on. It's all over the place.

Asher Miller

I boycotted those movies.

Rob Dietz

Well, I'm gonna force you in because I'm asking you, what is your favorite superpower from another animal, or plant, or organism that you would have if you could. You can pick anything.

Jason Bradford

I know. Should I go first?

Rob Dietz

Yeah, go ahead.

Jason Bradford

Okay, I love the birds, of course, that have evolved the ability, of course, to not only fly, but they dive underwater to fish.

Jason Bradford

And we're talking like cormorants, anhingas, grebes, murres, diving ducks.

Rob Dietz

Wow.

Rob Dietz

Pelicans?

Jason Bradford

Pelicans. I mean, it is so awesome because they're adapted to both flying and then they can swim.

Rob Dietz

You should totally take Pelican because not only does it fly and then dive and swim, but it also is like the eating champion, right? It's like Joey Chestnut with the hot dogs.

Jason Bradford

Cormorants are also kind of amazing in how much they can eat. I think grebes are just adorable.

Asher Miller

What about penguins? They just flopped into the water.

Jason Bradford

They can't fly but they're the best swimmers. I mean, just incredible. They can go down hundreds of feet. Anyway, I can go on. I gotta stop.

Rob Dietz

That's a pretty good one. You're getting a lot of skills in there.

Jason Bradford

Yes.

Rob Dietz

I'm more limited. I was thinking closer to home, mammal, cheetah. How cool would it be to I'm just walking down the street and suddenly I'm going like 65 miles an hour on my own power.

Asher Miller

Suddenly?

Rob Dietz

Yeah. Have you ever seen a cheetah take off?

Asher Miller

No, I know.

Jason Bradford

They go quick.

Asher Miller

I was just trying to think about what would suddenly get you to take off like that.

Rob Dietz

Whatever I want. There's an ice cream over there and I just run up and get it.

Asher Miller

There's a bag of Cheetos.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, a car is about to hit me. I'm out of the way.

Jason Bradford

Wouldn't it be cool if we could look down on the farm over here and there were cheetahs chasing stuff. Oh my gosh.

Asher Miller

Like your dog Dylan? That would be cool.

Rob Dietz

Or what if it was me at 65 miles an hour chasing stuff?

Asher Miller

Well, I'm scared of death. So, I'm going with the tardigrade.

Jason Bradford

Oh yeah.

Asher Miller

I mean, they could survive anything.

Jason Bradford

That's incredible. Way to bring it to like the simple little creatures. Thank you.

Asher Miller

Yeah, little, little microscopic.

Jason Bradford

Very little creatures.

Rob Dietz

You know, we had a whole episode on terror management theory that I can recommend to you.

Asher Miller

No, I know. Well actually, that put the fear of God in me. So I want to be a tardigrade someday.

Jason Bradford

That's good.

Rob Dietz

So I bring up the question of what animal superpowers you would want because today's topic, it's kind of the opposite of that. Instead of praising the animals and the plants and treating them with respect, this is all about us. This episode is about humanocentrism. Or you might call it anthropocentrism. Or you might call it human supremacy.

Asher Miller

Or I might call it the natural order of things.

Rob Dietz

Right. You might.

Asher Miller

What God bestowed upon us.

Rob Dietz

Coming from the mouth of the tardigrade over there. But you know, basically, this is the belief that human beings are the most important entity on this planet. It is a philosophical worldview that sees that we are somehow separate from and superior to what else we find in nature. You know, they're just components of whatever's out there for us to exploit. For us to take and use how we want. I've met Eileen Crist in the past. She's an environmental philosopher and was a professor at Virginia Tech. And she really delved into this issue quite a bit. She says that this idea of human supremacy or human exceptionalism, it professes that we, because they were so special, with our consciousness or ability to remember things, that somehow we're distinct and superior. And then everything follows off of that, you know, how we treat the natural world.

Asher Miller

Yeah, and it's funny. You call it philosophy, which it is, but I think you could argue that it's such a deeply embedded philosophy that people don't recognize it as such. At least in in Western culture, right?

Rob Dietz

Yep.

Asher Miller

And it's arguably the oldest and maybe most pervasive paradigm of Western society. I mean, you might be able to argue some other things. But the whole idea of Dominion goes straight back to the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible.

Jason Bradford

Genesis.

Asher Miller

Jason Bradford

Peter Gabriel, or . . .

Asher Miller

I'm going to Phil Collins.

Jason Bradford

Phil Collins, okay.

Asher Miller

And in one of their best songs there's a lyric in there, "God bless them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. And rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Okay, it's not actually a Genesis lyric, it's from the book of Genesis

Rob Dietz

That's ruling over Jason as the bird that goes into the sea. It covers all of it.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, it does.

Asher Miller

Yeah, that's an expression, I think, of a belief system, but certainly has expanded, been adopted by all forms of at least religions that came from that part of the world. In might be the ultimate example of cultural materialism, which we've talked ad nauseam about.

Asher Miller

And will continue --

Asher Miller

And will continue to on this podcast, the Marvin Harris view of infrastructure influencing structure and superstructure. So, I think it's a sound argument to say that that belief, that human centric worldview, comes from the infrastructural change in terms of how we actually source energy and food for ourselves, and society. So when some human societies moved from hunter gatherer to agrarian societies, they created hierarchies

Jason Bradford

Or even pastoralism to more, you know, settled agriculture even.

Asher Miller

Yeah. You could say it's a product of that infrastructural change. Now, of course, hunter gatherers also exploited nature. They rendered other species extinct, particularly when they came across new, abundant ecosystems. So it's not exclusive to sort of agrarian or pastoral societies. But I think you could say that many of those hunter gatherer societies sort of learned lessons from overshoot. And if they survived that, they learned how to live in greater balance with nature. And that shifted their understanding of the relationship of humans to the more than human world. We haven't done that, those of us whose descendants come all the way back to the Levant and Mesopotamia, particularly, have not internalized that.

Jason Bradford

Rob Dietz

This is all mammals, right?

Jason Bradford

All mammals.

Rob Dietz

We're not talking fish and birds, just mammals.

Jason Bradford

Rob Dietz

God, can we can we just appreciate for a second --

Asher Miller

Appreciate?

Rob Dietz

Yeah, well, you know, lament, I guess, is a better word. But 17 to one. Like you think about all the wild mammals out there.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, you can go out there and look at them and say, "Wow, how glorious and abundant," but --

Rob Dietz

And how much bigger -- like the all the world's oceans, the whales, the frickin' dolphins.

Jason Bradford

Sea lions. I know. Yeah.

Asher Miller

It's also a really relatively recent phenomenon. That's really remarkable to think about. I wonder what the ratio used to be.

Jason Bradford

Right. The opposite. Flip it.

Asher Miller

Was it completely flipped? It was probably more than that.

Jason Bradford

Of course.

Asher Miller

It might have been 10,000 to one in the other direction.

Rob Dietz

You're talking about the writing of Genesis and, you know, around that time, you could measure human population in I think it was like around 190 million, right. And now it's in the 8 billion range. So that's the speed of that change, right? It's us multiplying.

Jason Bradford

But I mean, even with that biomass measurement, a lot of it's for us. Like think about the managed forests, you know, the timber and the cropland. This is all included in biomass.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. So that's crazy.

Asher Miller

I see no problems with this.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I don't know. Stats like that . . . When you start unpacking them, it's just, it's astonishing. So that kind of thing that's happening, the consequences of us and our economies exploiting nature to this level, you could file that under what I find to be a terrifying word, ecocide. So, you know, that's the killing of the ecosystem. This includes consequences, like loss of habitat, loss of species and species diversity, and then the loss of things like water as we irrigate crops in the desert or the erosion of topsoil, mining of sand and other things you find in nature for our own economic use, and then you go on down to the alteration of climate. It all flows so naturally from the humanities centric worldview.

Asher Miller

You know, you could look at Dominionism, you know, sort of the idea of what was laid out, let's say, in Genesis. It doesn't necessarily have to lead towards ecocide. In fact, you could argue, hey, you have a responsibility as a species to care for the other living beings or the natural world around you. We didn't just say, it's our responsibility, we were like, let's exploit the living shit out of it, or get rid of the stuff that doesn't matter to us, basically.

Rob Dietz

Do you ever wish, Jason, that Asher had been the one who had written Genesis? He would say instead of subdue, he would say, "exploit the living shit out them." And people will be reading that in church.

Asher Miller

It's hard to translate from the old Hebrew or Aramaic.

Jason Bradford

That's maybe what they were trying to write at the time, but we didn't have the translation. It was lost in translation.

Asher Miller

You're right.

Rob Dietz

We need a new Bible.

Asher Miller

I'd be happy to write a new translation. That'd be great.

Rob Dietz

New PCI project.

Asher Miller

Asher Miller

What was your favorite character in the movie "Roadhouse?" What was the guy's name?

Asher Miller

Come on, it's gotta be Dalton, the lead guy?

Jason Bradford

Well, what about the bad guy?

Rob Dietz

Oh, you're talking about the bad guy, Brad Wesley.

Jason Bradford

Wesley had a whole room of like, you know, animals' heads on the wall.

Rob Dietz

Trophy animals that he had hunted from the world.

Asher Miller

I gotta say, when I was living in Sonoma County, there was an environmental group that was doing something, I can't remember what the group was. But on their board, actually, I think it was a climate organization. On their board, or a supporter of theirs was a woman, and I'm not going to name names here, who was married into this family that owned like shopping malls in the area. And she had married a man who is now quite a bit older. And they had like a fundraiser at their house up in the hills. So I went up there into the hills, and I walk into this great room, and the whole thing, the entire periphery of this great room is basically parts of dead animals that this guy had hunted. You know, the legs of like zebras. Like what the fuck is going on here? And then straight ahead was an enormous head of a bull elephant with its ears stretched out and pinned against the wall. And I was like, we are here for what? Like it was so horrific. And everybody else in the room was like, what the fuck is going on here? Just so disturbed. And he was proud. He was like proud to show off his trophy room.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I'm affected right now. The elephant taxidermy . . . That is . . .

Asher Miller

Yeah, unbelievable.

Jason Bradford

Well, okay. Now, there's an interesting way you can think about critique of humanocentrism, or questioning the wisdom of it from an actual self-interested perspective, which is kind of ironic.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, that's a pretty humanocentric way to think about this.

Jason Bradford

But, you know, this is one of the ways that --

Asher Miller

So you're saying even if we just cared about ourselves, there's a critique of it.

Jason Bradford

Yes. Okay. And so, this is one of the kind of utilitarian or instrumental arguments that people who are trying not to humanocentric make to try to counter humanocentrism. I'm going in circles here.

Asher Miller

It's a tongue twister, brain twister.

Jason Bradford

So, it takes a systemic view of nature, right, and in removing and degrading critical components of nature we are putting the broader system at risk. So you know, there's this whole thing about you know, the tapestry of life. And you start removing species and populations, you fray that tapestry, and then it becomes weak and can fall apart. So the basic life support functions become at risk.

Jason Bradford

I think our life support functions --

Jason Bradford

Ours, exactly.

Rob Dietz

I think about it in other systems. Like if you have a car. And if you start removing parts from that car, like, you know --

Asher Miller

The wheels.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's okay. You could take like the interior panel off the door and it would still run.

Asher Miller

The radio. You don't need the radio.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, you could take the radio. But yeah, you start taking the wheel, or you take the engine out, or whatever.

Asher Miller

The gear shift.

Rob Dietz

It's like, okay, this thing's no longer a car.

Jason Bradford

Exactly.

Rob Dietz

It doesn't function.

Jason Bradford

Right. I mean if you lose the cigarette lighter, just forget it. You're not going anywhere.

Rob Dietz

When was the last time you had a car with a cigarette lighter?

Jason Bradford

Asher Miller

And we are heavily dependent on pollinators. Let's be honest.

Jason Bradford

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I actually remember when that study came out reading how they were looking at areas that were pretty naturally intact too. It wasn't like the apartment block in a big city, or whatever.

Jason Bradford

It's like a National Park kind of thing.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. Well, okay. Well, if we're going to question humanocentrism, how about from maybe instead of our own self interest and our own survival, there's a moral and ethical piece to this too, right. Like, it seems like more and more by the day we're learning that animals have complex feelings, complex emotions, certainly the ability to feel pain, to understand lots of things.

Jason Bradford

I know. When I step on Dylan's tail or something like that, he yips.

Rob Dietz

Yeah.

Asher Miller

Well, we see that they are capable of communication and complexity.

Jason Bradford

Well, I just want to say, so far we've been emphasizing animals a lot. What about plants and fungi, single celled organisms.

Asher Miller

I talked about the tardigrades.

Jason Bradford

I appreciate that. But single celled organisms with or without organelles are something we should consider. You know, what about slime molds?

Asher Miller

I care deeply about the COVID-19 virus.

Jason Bradford

Yeah. What about prions?

Rob Dietz

This is good, right? One advancement from humanocentrism would be maybe mammalianism and then we're just human and animalism. But you're bringing in the whole tent here. I appreciate that.

Asher Miller

You don't want to do this incremental movement away from humanaocentrism?

Jason Bradford

I mean, I look at lichens. I'm looking at lichens on that tree right there. I mean, they're just so cool. Come on, come on.

Rob Dietz

Well, so if you're talking about sort of a philosophical perspective on this, I have to recommend Daniel Quinn's book "Ishmael." I'm not going to go into a big plot summary here, but --

Jason Bradford

It involves a gorilla, I think.

Asher Miller

Well, and there's a version of taker and leaver that can also be humanocentric in the sense of like, if you're just concerned about the welfare and sustainability of future generations of humans, you might also consider the downside of being in a taker culture versus a leaver culture. There's actually a podcast called "Human Nature Odyssey" that was produced by a guy named Alex Leffe. And it's, I thought, a really well done podcast. A lot of soundscaping and kind of an immersive experience. It's a bit of a journey that he went on discovering both that book and sort of wrestling with a lot of these questions.

Rob Dietz

It does. But the book really is talking about the distinction between taker culture and lever culture. And so the whole idea is taker culture is what we've been saying. This humanocentric worldview, widespread adoption of agriculture, and it's centered around the belief that humans are above other organisms. And you know, we're meant to expand ourselves and to dominate the planet. Whereas leavers try to live within what nature provides, try to have a relationship with nature. They don't see themselves as the inheritors of Earth. And if they're really good at it, you take what you need to live, but you also give back what the rest of nature needs to live.

Jason Bradford

Ishmael?

Rob Dietz

Yeah. And I listened to it as well and thought, yeah, he did a really good job of tying it to his own neighborhood where he grew up in the broader city, from Philadelphia. And he's kind of looking at, what was my relationship to nature during all of that?

Asher Miller

Yeah. And this is why I've actually heard from a lot of people that Daniel Quinn's work has been really impactful. Our friend, Tom Murphy, who we've had on the podcast before, who is as steeped as you can get in sort of Western scientific thought. Having been an astrophysicist and a university professor, shooting lasers at the moon. I think he was deeply impacted by reading Ishmael. You know, he's already on a journey, but certainly now he's gone into a very interesting place. And we publish a lot of pieces by him at Post Carbon Institute's website, resilience.org, where he's exploring human exceptionalism and modernity. And I think really challenging those notions in a way that I think is really powerful coming from somebody who's so steeped in the scientific method, you know, the rationalist discourse.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I think his personal journey is fascinating. It's fun to talk to him about that, you know.

Asher Miller

You know, we're talking about questioning humanocentrism in different ways. And I actually want to question a little bit of the environmentalist, take on humanocentrism, too. Because typically, you'd say environmentalists are obviously concerned about the welfare of the planet or ecosystems. But oftentimes, what you see is still a very humanocentric approach. You know, sometimes conservation efforts are really around conserving something you have a personal connection to, which is wonderful. I mean, I take that over not having that. And we've argued a lot for people actually getting out into nature and having a connection with nature. So I'm not poo-pooing that. I m just saying, it's still kind of often driven by us having a personal connection to something and people caring about a specific place because of their own interest in it. And sometimes that leads to nimbyism on things, like I want this green space so that I could walk my dog in it, or whatever. But it also, you could look at it in terms of efforts, I think, probably within environmentalism to work within the system, right. And that is things like putting a price on nature. So trying to show that nature has ecosystem services -

Jason Bradford

Yeah, value that has monetary --

Asher Miller

Maybe if we can convince people it's worth this amount of money or provides this much, you know, to the global economy, it's worth kind of keeping. Which is still saying it's for us, basically. What's the benefit to us humans? Rather than having intrinsic value on it.

Jason Bradford

I play that game with wetlands. You know, they're worth so much because we don't have to pay for the cleanup of the water.

Rob Dietz

I struggle with it because I don't want to be aiming our anger at environmentalists who are probably just trying to do whatever they can to save the whatever, the last of the wetlands.

Jason Bradford

And they're having to talk to an insane society.

Asher Miller

Or get money from capitalists, you know.

Jason Bradford

Guys with like elephants on the wall.

Asher Miller

Exactly.

Rob Dietz

Now I say that, and let me tell you might personal one that kind of grates on me. The putting a price on nature stuff is very grating, but the whole idea of maximum sustainable yield. Like this is a commonly used term in fisheries. And the idea there, on one hand, it's like, okay, we want to maintain a viable population of fish, but on the other, we want to take out the most possible that we can without crashing that population. And to me, it's like, what are the rights of the fish, or even of the ocean? Or, you know -- And I get that people are hungry, but if you wipe out every fish species out there, you know. I don't know. I just have trouble with that whole, you know, it's very humanocentric.

Jason Bradford

Sure. The other thing I think about is, what species or ecosystems do we decide are worthy of our attention and conservation. And so the classic is the World Wildlife Fund has the panda as their as their logo, their icon.

Rob Dietz

Charismatic megafauna.

Jason Bradford

Yes. By contrast, you know, there's a newer organization called the Xerces Society, which has a butterfly, and so it's insects that are suddenly getting attention. But that hasn't been the trend, right? The trend has been these big, charismatic, maybe umbrella species that perhaps the conservationists know if you have enough habitat preserves for pandas, then you're probably getting a lot of other species going along. So that's the rationale. But it really ties into having a sell it to people.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. I mean, I do think people feel more kinship with animals that look like them. I look like a bug. So I like the Xerces Society.

Asher Miller

Yeah, a dung beetle, right.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. Way to bring the poop in.

Jason Bradford

Thank you.

Rob Dietz

This episode's listener feedback comes in from Michael who says, "We are big fans of Post Carbon Institute and Crazy Town." I'm sure that means Michael and their squirrel collection.

Asher Miller

Or Michael could have multiple personalities.

Jason Bradford

Could. That'd be fine.

Rob Dietz

No judgment. So, being big fans of PCI and Crazy Town they go on to say, "The frank and humorous but also factual way you talk about the converging crises has sharpened the way we frame our work, and has given us courage to call a spade a spade."

Jason Bradford

A spade is a wonderful garden tool for sure.

Rob Dietz

Well, I call it a shovel.

Jason Bradford

Yes. Excellent. Excellent.

Rob Dietz

Actually, it's my favorite suit of cards as well.

Jason Bradford

Well what is it then?

Asher Miller

Wait, which spade is Michael referring to?

Rob Dietz

I don't know. As long as they call a spade a spade.

Asher Miller

But Michael said, "A spade is a spade."

Jason Bradford

Write back and help us out here. You're leaving us hanging.

Asher Miller

Which spade, Michael.

Rob Dietz

Thank you for listening and thanks for the kind words.

Rob Dietz

Welcome to the Marvin Harris Memorial lens of doom where we explore cultural materialism, starting with infrastructure, the environment, things that we build, the stuff that surrounds us. And how that influences structure, which is the laws and the policies of the land. And how that then influences superstructure, which is the culture and the beliefs and the worldview. Which is really what we're talking about today, the worldview of humanity centrism. So I'm going to I'm going to start with the most obvious infrastructure of humanocentrism and that's the way that we've replaced nature with human built environments. And especially talking about modern urban environments where you've got big apartment blocks and skyscrapers and roads, and you know, sort of all the pavement and the transportation networks.

Jason Bradford

Well, that's the obvious thing to look at. If you can imagine the city and what was there before, right?

Rob Dietz

I like to be known besides the 80s cultural guy, as the purveyor of obvious things.

Asher Miller

Well, at least we did an homage to nature by making sure everything is like straight lines. That's ubiquitous in nature.

Jason Bradford

But also, you know, the city has occupied places that were formerly covered in soil, obviously, or forests, or wetlands. They may have like filled in the bay, right? So aquatic habitats --

Asher Miller

Usually cities were put near water of some kind, right?

Asher Miller

So there's the infrastructure of, in a sense, removing the natural world. There's also the infrastructure of us sort of putting remaining parts of the natural world into a box of some kind, right. And those efforts are often wonderful and laudable efforts, like the National Park system, for example.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, exactly. Right? Like the like the San Francisco Bay is half its former size or something ridiculous, right. But also, I think about the farms and when I drive around and look at farmland because I live, you know, the country, I've also seen places that have gone back. Where they've taken a farm field and within 10 years it's now a prairie habitat. And you just realize, wow, the extent that this used to be. That the amount of flower, like this is the springtime and with the prairie in bloom it's just so stunning. And to imagine that this landscape was actually dominated by, you know, millions and millions of these plants and all the richness and color. And what do we replace it with? You know, mostly these mono cropped big fields. It's rather shocking.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, love me some National Parks. Love them.

Asher Miller

Yeah. It is a little weird, though. I mean, you think about it. It's like, what is the experience? You know, it's people going in there with their cars and RVs, you know, riding their ATVs or their snowmobiles.

Jason Bradford

I guess getting that permit to get into Yellowstone is almost impossible. You need to get it a year ahead of time. You're going to be in a line of traffic the whole way through the park on that one road or something.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I've tried to do some hikes in Yosemite where you have to actually pay money to get in a lottery system. And then you lose your money and you don't get picked in the lottery. So, you don't get to do that hike.

Asher Miller

It's weird because we've decided these are the lands that are worth preserving, versus others. And it reminds me a little bit of the whole thing we're just talking about with sort of charismatic megafauna.

Rob Dietz

A really special case of major infrastructure of humanocentrism that I want to highlight is dams. The big dams on major rivers. Think of the hubris it takes to block up a river and just utterly change the habitat, change the species composition, change the kind of --

Jason Bradford

Flood a canyon.

Asher Miller

But Rob, we're creating cheap and clean electricity.

Rob Dietz

Clean, yes. Well, I started looking up. Well, just how much damming are we doing? And National Geographic reports that two thirds of all the world's longest rivers are damned. Two thirds. Like we're well on our way to --

Asher Miller

That means we still have 1/3 left to go. Opportunity awaits.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, so that's 60,000 large dams worldwide. So, to your point, Asher, there's more than 3,700 that are currently planned or under construction. So we're still going in that direction.

Asher Miller

That's a lot.

Rob Dietz

Yeah.

Asher Miller

Well I want to talk about the infrastructure of human physiology.

Jason Bradford

What do you mean by that?

Asher Miller

Yeah, not something you typically think of, right?

Rob Dietz

My physiology is excellent. Look at these biceps.

Jason Bradford

Oh my god you're huge.

Asher Miller

We have certain physical traits as a species, right?

Rob Dietz

Biceps.

Asher Miller

Yeah, shut up. Certain number of cones in our eyes. The range of things that we could smell. Our taste buds, like, our senses.

Jason Bradford

The distribution of hair in my nose and ears.

Asher Miller

Exactly. Which is more in the years, and more coming out of the nose than it used to.

Jason Bradford

Right, totally.

Asher Miller

Yeah, I mean, it changes over time.

Jason Bradford

I'm sorry.

Rob Dietz

Well and think about glass, right, and the windows. And how many bird strikes and kills that causes.

Asher Miller

You're evolving. But, we have kind of created the world in an infrastructure around our particular physiology versus the physiology of other species, right, and the way experience the world. And we don't even think about it. There's a great book by the journalist Ed Young who wrote a book it's called, "In the Men's World," and he documents the differences in senses between humans and other species. And it just goes to show how, I mean some of it is absolutely antagonistic, maybe not even intentionally antagonistic of species. The whole idea of like LED lights. It's because we experience it a certain way, and others other species experience it completely differently. Well, and all the shit that we're doing the oceans with with sonar and . . .

Jason Bradford

Oh my gosh, yikes. Looking for more oil deposits and just like ruining the lives of the cetaceans. I know. It's just awful. That was fun. Let's talk about the structure of humanocentrism. These are the rules, right? Well, property rights, right. So ownership of animals and land. So when you have ownership, you can kind of do what you want. Now we do play some restrictions. You can get in trouble for abusing animals. There are laws, or lack of laws, related to mining and logging and tilling, paving, damming, hunting, fishing, release of pollutants.

Rob Dietz

I feel like all of that stuff, you know, you have restrictions as a hunter, right? There's a hunting season for example -

Jason Bradford

Licenses.

Rob Dietz

But it's not like there's a restriction on paving, right. The zoning laws are mostly there to help you pave when you want to pave.

Jason Bradford

Well, I don't know. I mean, they're talking about, you know, encouraging, I know you see parking lots around here nowadays. They tried to have some permeability, and they tried to have a catchment area so that the water runs to a filtering wetland. So I think they're trying to use structure, rules of the structure, to mitigate to some extent.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, and most parking lots also have a tall grass prairie for Buffalo to roam wild as well.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, it is all absurd.

Asher Miller

I mean, but it's true. You said, I guess you probably need to get a permit, but you could, on your own property, you could just like lay down a huge fucking concrete pad if you wanted to, right?

Rob Dietz

You know how many places I've seen --

Asher Miller

So that my helicopter can land.

Jason Bradford

Yeah.

Rob Dietz

Well, you know many places I've seen in Portland have astroturf for their lawn, you know, it used to be grass, I guess. But they don't want to mow it, so you just put down plastic lawn.

Jason Bradford

Oh, this is driving me crazy. That's one of my pet peeves.

Asher Miller

I love plastic lawn. It's so fun to lay on.

Jason Bradford

All the kids playing on plastics and oh gosh.

Asher Miller

Eating it.

Jason Bradford

I mean, here's the thing is like, we do not have a voting system right now for the slime molds. Alright. So again, here's a structural thing. We're the ones that get to decide their fate without any say, and that's frustrating to me.

Rob Dietz

Well, that was almost more fun than the infrastructure conversation. So let's turn it to the superstructure the culture and beliefs that surround humanocentrism. And I think this is really where it's at. Because we're talking about a worldview here. I want to dive in with Robin Wall. Kimmerer's book, "Braiding Sweetgrass." It's not braiding Jason's nose and ears hair.

Jason Bradford

Please, you don't have to bring that up again. I'm going to shave them after this.

Rob Dietz

It's "Braiding Sweetgrass."

Jason Bradford

I'm going to get the clippers out.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, Shaving Sweetgrass is not as good a book, but It's an excellent book where she is describing kind of the confluence of indigenous thinking and science. But she opens it with a comparison between two origin stories. One is Eve's origin expulsion from the Garden of Eden, versus Sky Woman, an indigenous mythology. And the difference is, Eve eats the apple and gets thrown out of the garden. And then it's basically like, you were going to roll around in the dust and fight your way, struggle against nature for survival. It's you against them kind of thing. And the mythology of Sky Woman is she gets dropped out of the sky into a giant body of water. And then the turtle rises up and helps her get to shore and all the other animals are helping her get a foothold in this land and become part of the community.

Jason Bradford

That's why they call it Turtle Island. I never knew this. It was always confusing.

Rob Dietz

I don't know if that's true or not.

Jason Bradford

It must be.

Rob Dietz

Maybe so. But two very different views on humanity's relationship with nature.

Asher Miller

Talking about superstructure, there's the origin stories, the myths, the narratives that we have. There's also maybe the more subtle, but pervasive use of everyday language. Consider terms like natural resources or natural capital, resource. Like we use these terms, regularly.

Jason Bradford

I hate doing it.

Asher Miller

It's so common. And actually, it took Gloria Flora, somebody who used to be a Post Carbon fellow to challenge me on this a little bit. She was talking about oil production --

Asher Miller

Right, it's extraction.

Asher Miller

It's extraction. And so it's just like the everyday language that we use. Natural capital, again, turning it into financial context. We don't think about it. Just it's ubiquitous everywhere you look.

Jason Bradford

I love it when someone calls me an animal.

Rob Dietz

Animal!

Jason Bradford

Yeah. Like, "You're an animal man!"

Asher Miller

Animal is my favorite Muppet.

Rob Dietz

He is an incredible Muppet.

Jason Bradford

But for most people, that's a derogatory term. And some people reject the idea that humans are even animals which drives me crazy. But a lot of these terms are used to denote being uncivilized or brutish, which itself drives me crazy. So what are some other euphemisms? Like treating them like a dog. Or you know, squash you like a bug. Or beat a dead horse. Or kill two birds with one stone, you know.

Rob Dietz

You got a lot of these.

Jason Bradford

Or like freeze that tardigrade.

Rob Dietz

I wish you would treat me like a dog because you treat your dog very kindly.

Jason Bradford

Thank you. And you treat me like --

Asher Miller

Do you want a belly rub?

Jason Bradford

If you had a tail, it would be cool. And I could see when you're happy.

Asher Miller

You gotta work on wagging your nose, Rob.

Rob Dietz

Wagging my nose hairs. The one that gets me with language is the way we name so many of our natural features. And you see this in the landscape all around us. So many things are named after dead white guys. And of course, mostly colonialists. Like I used to go camping in Jefferson and Washington National Forests. You got Mount McKinley named after a President that probably would have been forgotten.

Jason Bradford

At least they changed that.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I know. I do love that more people know it as Denali now. That's really cool. And then you got the Columbia River, Vancouver Island. I mean, isn't it kind of weird? Like, can you fathom the level of arrogance to say, I'm sailing past this island? I'm gonna name it after myself. It's the way Trump names all of his businesses.

Asher Miller

What's even better is near Vancouver Island is Cortes Island, one of the most sadistic killer people.

Rob Dietz

You know that one of the things about when Vancouver was sailing in the Puget Sound region, he really liked the mountain that we know as Mount Rainier. And you look at the spelling of it, I thought, oh, maybe it's Rainier. Like it's a rain thing. Or maybe that's an indigenous word. No, it was one of his buddy s names. He's like, Oh, I like this guy. This Admiral. So I'm going to name the most massive, awesome, awe-inspiring natural feature on the landscape after my buddy over here.

Jason Bradford

Well, you know, they're going to change a lot of these bird names now to be not the names of old dead people, because they, you know . . . So that's interesting. I think that's kind of nice.

Asher Miller

So while they're out there, maybe they want to change the official name of Canada.

Jason Bradford

What's that?

Asher Miller

Because the official name of Canada is actually the Dominion of Canada.

Jason Bradford

Oh my gosh. I did not know that.

George Costanza

Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be.

Jerry Seinfeld

If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite what have to be right.

Rob Dietz

Alright, let's think about some personal stories of doing the opposite. And I want to start with birds, Jason. You're gonna like this, okay.

Jason Bradford

Let's just keep talking about that.

Rob Dietz

Let's do it. So we know the population of wild birds in North America has fallen by 3 billion over the last 50 years now. Sad.

Jason Bradford

Ouchie.

Rob Dietz

Sorry to bring that up. But I had a problem with a bird. Or maybe it was a couple of birds recently. So you know, when I come down here to work with you guys on the podcast, I stay in a tiny house that's over at my friend's place.

Jason Bradford

It's adorable.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, well, sometimes in the morning, you hear some knocking. And it's flickers, northern flickers banging on the side of this thing. And so --

Jason Bradford

They're cheeky. They're cheeky.

Rob Dietz

I know. Beautiful bird. Yeah, I mean it looks a lot like to me trout look in the water. With beautiful spots and red streaks

Jason Bradford

In the woodpecker family.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Bradford

So anyway, continue.

Rob Dietz

Anyways, it was doing some damage. It's knockin little holes, you know. And I'm like, God, that's bad. And I hadn't realized how much damage. So I went around. And there was a fist sized hole in the side of the tiny house. And so I'm like, ah, how am I gonna deal with this? And luckily, there's a lot of resources for, you know, I didn't want to poison the bird and want to kill the bird. So the idea that I did, and it's kind of working, is you put up a birdhouse that a flicker could move into. So rather than trying to excavate a hole in your house, it could just move into the home you gave to it.

Jason Bradford

That's so heartwarming.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. Well, and I use the home to cover the hole. No flicker has moved in yet, but they're not pecking the house anymore.

Jason Bradford

Oh that's cool. Well, let's keep talking about birds because I like that. So I'm kind of proud of the statistic. I'm like 25th in the county or something like that for like bird sightings for the year for species. So I'm kind of a middling birder. But this is a competitive County, Benton County,

Rob Dietz

But you're a novice. You're good. You're good.

Jason Bradford

I'm good.

Asher Miller

You take this seriously though.

Jason Bradford

I do take it seriously. But I'm good. I'm just not elite. But guess what is elite? What's elite is my yard. My yard is my personal birding location, which is the farm here.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, let's not -- your yard. I mean, this is a what? Like a 100 acre property here?

Jason Bradford

115 if you include everything. So yeah, I mean, but that's elite. I got 96 species for the year, which is yard numero uno for the entire state of Oregon by a good margin right now. I'm thinking about by about five species over my nearest competitor, which is up towards like my sister's area.

Asher Miller

I'm feeling -- did you hear our episode we did on individualism?

Jason Bradford

Yeah, so this isn't about --

Asher Miller

Did you learn anything from that?

Jason Bradford

This isn't about me. This is about the birds. The fact that this is a paradise for them.

Asher Miller

This is a very humanocentric conversation about birds.

Jason Bradford

I just happened to be the one walking around observing them.

Asher Miller

I will say coming here, the thing that I'm always struck by when I come to your house and the farm is the sounds of birds just everywhere.

Jason Bradford

Yeah. It's noisy. Sometimes they're noisy like the flickers.

Asher Miller

It's amazing. I love it.

Jason Bradford

It is interesting.

Asher Miller

And there are so many different ones.

Rob Dietz

And when Jason comes to our houses, he's amazed by the diversity of motors and cars and blowers.

Jason Bradford

It is true.

Asher Miller

The leaf blowers, the lawn mowers.

Jason Bradford

I am a bit shocked by it.

Asher Miller

It's great. Lots of diversity in two stroke engines.

Rob Dietz

I can't go to sleep at night without like starting a weed whacker in the bedroom and having that motor running.

Asher Miller

You just have it running on the side. Some people use, you know, sounds of nature to fall asleep to, you're doing that.

Rob Dietz

I've actually hired a team of weed whacker and blowers to do that.

Asher Miller

You're contributing to the economy. That's one thing,

Jason Bradford

I wish a whip-poor-will would come here and I could hear that at night. That would be nice. Haven't had one of those yet.

Asher Miller

How about a cougar? You could hear one of those hunting on the property.

Jason Bradford

They're around for sure.

Asher Miller

Back to Ed Young's book. You know, when I was reading that, there's, early on in the book, he talks about the sense of smell of dogs. And how they experience the world, so much of it through that olfactory experience. And it really got me to think differently about the experience that my dog Willow would have when he and I go on walks together.

Jason Bradford

He's such a good boy.

Asher Miller

And you know, I have to walk them on a leash in the neighborhood. I do take him places where he can go off leash, and he's the happiest on the planet when he's able to run around. But even just walking through my neighborhood or nearby neighborhoods, I would find myself, and actually it started from both reading Ed's book and then trying to be a little bit more mindful when I go on walks. I have all these podcasts I like to listen to. I mean, the one I listen to the most is our own.

Jason Bradford

Of course. Over and over.

Rob Dietz

Love the sound of your own voice.

Asher Miller

I love listening to us. Yeah. But there are a couple others. But no, I love listening to podcasts and learning about things, but I realized, like, I'm just constantly filling my head with noise, with inputs all the time. So I need to stop that. I need to go out and be more present. And then thinking about what Willow's experiences are like when we go on these walks. And realizing that when he stops to smell something, there's a whole experience there for him. And me being like, no, we gotta hurry up. Or you know, stop yanking on the on the leash because all of a sudden you've got a new sense of smell. I really try to -- I can't experience the world that he experiences it. Sometimes I try to think of it in terms of more visual things. So it'd be like if I dropped acid or something and I'm walking around and seeing all of these vibrant colors. That's what I sort of imagine what his experience must be like.

Jason Bradford

But it's through the nose.

Asher Miller

It's through the nose. And I can't see that but I can at least try to be empathetic and realize like --

Jason Bradford

Do you know how much dog piss he's smelling along the way from different dogs? I mean, it must be incredible.

Asher Miller

It's dogs but there's also other creatures, and there's probably other things that I'm not even aware of.

Rob Dietz

What I appreciate about what you've changed is how sometimes you let him leash you up and he walks you. That's the coolest part.

Asher Miller

He loves that part. He yanks on it so much.

Jason Bradford

That choke chain, jeez.

Rob Dietz

Okay, here we are in the do the opposite. We've shared some personal stuff. But let's look at the visions for different infrastructure superstructure and structure. And starting with infrastructure, what could we do different? Well, maybe you've heard about this idea of rewilding. It's kind of a land acquisition, but also ecological restoration strategy. And these are happening in various places around the world. The one that I became familiar with more than a decade ago is the Yellowstone to Yukon conservation initiative. And what they're doing there, they're making a huge partnership, collaboration among conservation groups, of course. But also local landowners, businesses, government, indigenous governments, nonprofits, scientists. Anyway, the whole idea is let's make a connected, well protected habitat all along the spine of the Rockies. And they've done things like get proposals accepted for land acquisition that helps make the already protected areas more protected, bigger, connected. They've done ecosystem restoration, you know, things like tree plantings, and all that. And they've also gotten animal crossings over roadways built and other things that help animals have that connectivity in the landscape that they need.

Jason Bradford

Asher Miller

The good news is there are plenty of ecosystem restoration efforts out there across all kinds. I mean, there's reforestation efforts marine reserves, wetland conservation, farmland habitat. You've talked about that, Jason. There's also the Half-Earth proposal, which is probably the most bold idea that's been put out there. And that's, you know, reserving half-earth you know, for biodiversity. I do have a little bit of a critique of that, which is, it's still sort of this idea of separating humans from the rest of the world, you know, the natural world. And that's not really how indigenous cultures have sustained themselves over time. You know, they've actually lived with ecosystems, as part of ecosystems.

Jason Bradford

So you think that's part of the Half-Earth mindset or worldview? Is it sort of the sacred and profane, or you know how much fluidity there is?

Asher Miller

I don't know. It all depends on how things like that are done. But it does feel a bit to me an extension, maybe the most bold version of this idea of like, let's concentrate humans into their places.

Jason Bradford

In cities and stuff.

Asher Miller

In the cities, and then we can protect nature from us.

Jason Bradford

When it should be the whole earth.

Asher Miller

Which is, that's still humanocentric in the sense of like, no, the shift that has to happen here is a reorientation in terms of our relationship with the more than human world.

Jason Bradford

Every place is sacred and worthy of protection.

Rob Dietz

And taken to its extreme, the proposal is to literally cut the earth in half. And humans are on one side and everything else is on the other and we just orbit around the sun together.

Jason Bradford

Oh that's fascinating.

Asher Miller

Is that a flat earth, or a round, or like. . . What's in the center?

Rob Dietz

Well, we will be on the flat part of earth for sure.

Jason Bradford

Well, if you want more inspiration on what to do, Douglas Palamedes, a professor in the U.S., wrote a book called "Nature's Best Hope: A new approach to conservation that starts in your yard. And I think it's a great book. What I got out of it was how critical native plants are. And a good example is like the Norway Maple. And I've actually got a pair of Norway Maples out here.

Rob Dietz

I'm gonna guess where they're native.

Jason Bradford

Good. I'll keep that in mystery. But you can guess.

Asher Miller

Norway, Oklahoma.

Jason Bradford

Right. And if you were to like look at, say, a Norway Maple versus, say the native maple here, like say the big leaf maple. And you were to count how many insect species and the biomass of insects on the two, there might be 100 times more insect biomass on one versus the other. So it's remarkable the difference. And what that translates into is little lepidopteran larva. That would be like caterpillars. And the ability for little birds that are trying to feed their young to go out and grab those and bring them to the nest. You know, a little chickadee pair might feed off of a few 100 little caterpillars a day for their nest. And they just aren't available when you have these landscapes of non-natives. And then of course, the same thing happens with all the pollinators. When you have a diverse landscape that's not just a lawn but has all these native plants, then you can support all of the insects that require pollen and nectar as food sources. So really interesting organization that then also helps people figure out how to read landscape where they live.

Rob Dietz

It really feels humanocentric to think you could take whatever tree species you want, plant that on your wherever you are, and think that it would do the same thing that the thing that evolved there overall time would do.

Jason Bradford

Well, it reminds me of what Asher was talking about like not being aware of the dog's point of view. We're so unaware that all these species were relying on -- We think we think, oh, it's a tree. It's creating shade, it's green, it's photosynthesizing.

Asher Miller

It will give us oxygen.

Jason Bradford

It's fine. And realize that we're just shredding all these important relationships.

Asher Miller

Yeah. Speaking of that, I get really excited thinking about how we might teach children differently. So there are efforts like at the Center for Eco-literacy and others who have been doing projects in schools, working with young children, in particular, to create more connection to the natural world. And some of the things that they do are actually trying to teach science through either like a school garden project or other kinds of things. It's in some ways, multidisciplinary. But imagine if we taught kids to recognize what Ed Young talks about in his in his book, you know. The different ways that other living beings experience the world, the different senses that they have. Imagine seeing kids with their imagination and trying to have them experience as best they could, with our limited senses, what their physical environment might be like for other species. And then try to think about how to change that infrastructure, even on a small scale, to better suit and be more -- This sounds stupid, but we were more mindful now, right? We think about ADA compliance, and we think about physical spaces that are more conducive to different humans, right, with their different abilities. If we try to do that for other species as well, and particularly starting with young kids, then that sort of gets embedded in them. Even though it's an infrastructure project, in some ways it's a superstructure project.

Rob Dietz

The problem is the rats and the roaches and the crows and the other things that really liked the infrastructure we have, they're gonna be pissed.

Asher Miller

It's true. It's true.

Jason Bradford

Well, so you know, what you're talking about makes me think about the structural changes that may evolve with a society that's thinking like that. They would want to make different rules, right? And there are these discussions, these notions of rights of nature, and so called, you know, personhood for members of the more than human community, which fascinates me that you can actually do or say that. But I see it as like, we're using the legal system, because it cares so much about individual rights. So it's weird.

Rob Dietz

Like corporate personhood.

Jason Bradford

Rob Dietz

Asher Miller

Awesome.

Rob Dietz

Jason Bradford

Sit down Dominion of Canada!

Rob Dietz

It was unconstitutional, and they had environmental and human rights violations. So think about the consequence. They actually closed this mine, okay? Took an economic hit. It's the biggest open pit copper mine in all of Central America. So this was 7,000 direct jobs, 33,000, maybe indirect jobs. 5% of national GDP.

Jason Bradford

Wow.

Rob Dietz

I mean, it's the biggest case I'm aware of where you said nature has rights and it's more important than these dollars and economic benefits.

Asher Miller

Jason Bradford

Transformative.

Asher Miller

But they have like a 50 year timeline of kind of what's been happening. And it really does accelerate. It has been accelerating in more recent years, which does give me some inspiration.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, there was a podcast recently, our friend Nate Hagens interviewed us. A Swedish environmental environmentalist, Pella Thiel, on the great simplification. And she was discussing the rights of nature as we've just covered, but also the idea of making ecocide a crime in international law. Similar to how we have human rights violations that are illegal. And you could charge corporations and CEOs, you know, with the crime of ecocide. That would be -- I think that would be really cool.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. And you would think that sounds kind of like, okay, an environmentalist coming on a show and saying, "Hey, let's make this a crime," but it's actually happening. She talked about an organization called Stop Ecocide International, and they're trying to get this into international law. And just this year, Belgium became the first country in Europe to actually recognize Ecocide as an international crime.

Jason Bradford

Extradition.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, and the punishment pretty big. If you commit ecocide, you could be thrown in prison for 20 years, and have a fine of up to 1.6 million euros.

Jason Bradford

Interesting.

Asher Miller

I think he's they should just take those people and throw them into like remote wilderness and see if they could survive on their own.

Rob Dietz

No, they'd be taking down trees. Throw him into a really big shark pit. How about that?

Asher Miller

There's this other effort that's been happening, I think, growing some attention and focus around the concept of multispecies justice. Some of our listeners may recall an episode that we had done -- An interview we had done with Danielle Celermajer who's a professor at the University of Sydney, on the work that she's been doing there. She's become a great friend of mine, someone I really adore. And she defines multispecies justice as quote, "A theory of Justice that includes not only the interests of all humans, but of the nonhumans such as other animals, plants, forests, rivers and ecological systems. Taking their interests seriously as justice claims means there's a moral and political obligation for the basic institutions of society, including our political and legal systems to take those interests into account when making decisions. They can't be dismissed simply because they're inconvenient and costly. And attending to them is not a matter of charity or generosity." So, I mean, just think of it in simple terms, like, how we would view human rights.

Rob Dietz

That is really comprehensive. But Jason, I did not hear a mention of slime mold anywhere in that.

Asher Miller

I'll talk to Dani about that. And see if she has a . . .

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I was gonna you've got a connection here. Maybe we can slip that in.

Jason Bradford

I would appreciate that. Yes. I would appreciate that.

Asher Miller

I'll talk to her about that. Yeah, it should be written into law.

Jason Bradford

So I'm just imagining a society that goes through the change infrastructure we talked out and the structural laws that are being worked on. I think that what you would get -- You would get this sort of superstructure or mythologies, belief systems, more akin to what might be called deep ecology nowadays, as opposed to the environmentalism that you were talking about, Asher. And so what we mean by that is that these other species and nature has an intrinsic versus an instrumental value. And humans are connected and part of everything else, as opposed to being separate and special. And there's a good quote from Aldo Leopold in the Sand County Almanac. I can't remember what year that was written. But that, you know, that's early to mid 20th century, right? "We abused land, because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

Asher Miller

We talked about language earlier. So thinking about a shift in language, Rob, you mentioned Robin Wall Kimmerer's book, "Braiding Sweetgrass." She discusses how her indigenous language, Potawatomi -- Did I pronounce that right?

Rob Dietz

Maybe? Potawatomi is how I would've guessed, but I'm not sure.

Asher Miller

How it differs from English, right? Objects and animals are spoken of as persons as well. Not only are the plants and animals intimate, but the rocks of mountains and the rivers. I do think that that's an edge for a lot of people. So when people talk about the more than human world, the reason I think that they use that language versus just talking about other species is because it includes things that may seem inert or inanimate to us.

Rob Dietz

Well, I remember in New Zealand, like the tallest mountain in English is called Mount Cook, named after, whatever, Captain Cook. And the indigenous word for it is Aoraki or cloud piercer is what that means. Which is yeah, you know, which one is poetic? Which one is the one that you're in relationship with, right? Utterly amazing. I have an example to share from the Tuvan language, which is people of South Central Siberia, Mongolia. Tt has a very nature centric vocabulary, and really descriptive words for animals and natural processes. And some of their words sound like things that you would hear in the landscape around you. So that's kind of cool. But apparently, nature is also built into the structure of their grammar. So the preferred way that they say to go somewhere, it refers to the direction of the current in the nearest river and your trajectory relative to the current.

Jason Bradford

Huh.

Rob Dietz

So yeah, it's kind of wild.

Jason Bradford

An example would be helpful.

Rob Dietz

Well, so they keep track of that information, which way the river is running as they're moving around the landscape. And so there was this linguist who was studying Tuvan, and then he wants hosted a friend in Manhattan. And the Tuvan friend said, "Hey, where's the river?" So the linguist took him over to the west side of Manhattan, and showed them the Hudson River. And the linguist said that he took note of it so he could use Tuvan topographic verbs properly in New York City. I was just thinking, the Tuvan in that moment probably became more indigenous to New York City than most of the longtime residents, you know, the probably don't even . . .

Jason Bradford

I mean, if you can find a good deli that way, too, I'm sure. You know?

Asher Miller

That's how the Jews in New York orient.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, exactly.

Rob Dietz

Jason Bradford

Yes. And this river runs essentially through the northern part of Washington and into southern Oregon. And so it goes to the Pacific Ocean.

Rob Dietz

Jason Bradford

Asher Miller

Yeah. Sammy Gensaw III was Yurok leader, I think put it really well. He said, quote, The restoration is not just about meeting the state conservation goals or adapting to climate change. It's about justice, and healing, and returning to a more balanced relationship with the natural world." Sammy is the director of a group called Ancestral Guard. And they're focused on teaching traditional fishing and farming methods to indigenous youth. So in some ways, this is like superstructure, structure, and infrastructure all coming together in this one sort of project.

Melody Travers Allison

That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.

Jason Bradford

Dominionist theologian Walter Crankship was walking on his Branson, Missouri lawn one morning when he came across a congregation of Fuligo septica, also known as dog vomit slime mold. His fascination with this curious organism was so great that by that afternoon he was asking, "Do Slime Molds Go to Heaven?" Such is the title of Reverend Walter's new book, where he uses his understanding of Hebrew, Greek and Sumerian to reinterpret original biblical texts. What he discovered is bound to transform Christian thought. We now know that the phrase, "Be fruitful and multiply" was meant to apply not only to humans, but to all of God's creation, including slime molds. And that the Romans mistranslated the original word of God, inserting the Latin, the dominimum, meaning lordship or right of ownership, instead of what our creator intended, which was deminimis, meaning to be small and humble. Get your copy of "Do Slime Molds go to Heaven?" today and experience the discomfort and potential social isolation of now thinking everything you used to believe is bullshit.