“Another thing that goes with that baseline, ordinary human experience of the world is a sense not just that everything is alive, but that everything speaks, that everything is expressive.”
In this episode, cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram—who coined the highly influential term “the more-than-human world”—invites us out of our humancentric perception and into the vibrancy and animism of the living world around us. Tracing the impact of the written word on our ability to hear the multitude of voices around us, he calls on the power of our senses to bring us back into relationship with the Earth. As he urges us to find “expressive potency” in the rich color of blossoms, the chorus of birdsong, the speech of breaking waves, he shares how we might tune our senses into the many ways the living world communicates.
This episode is part of the Emergence Magazine Listening Hour—a special limited series exploring the timeless connections between ecology, culture, and spirituality.
