#love the strange things
I’ve waded far enough into deep ecology that my perspective can seem kind of alienating to a lot of people, but I think it is so terribly important to be able to love the planet and care about non-human life without needing to anthropomorphize it. The non-human world is complex and surprising and wonderful, but it is strange. It’s weird. And… that’s okay. It’s good to value things we can’t fully comprehend, that are alien to us in so many ways. We should value our differences as well as our shared traits.
I think that’s why I like invertebrates so much. It is easy to empathize with another large mammal. We use the term “charismatic megafauna” to describe animals that have broad appeal to the general public because they have traits that easily align with our cultural values and instinctive proclivities. We can easily convince ourselves, often with disastrous results, that these animals think and feel as we do, and that’s why they’re important.
It is much harder to anthropomorphize a spider. We can praise the patience and delicate artistry of a golden orb-weaver, and see the fragile beauty in a ghost-green Luna moth. We can sing the virtues of the industrious honey bee—self-sacrificing, hard-working, bold and dedicated to her hive.
But we know that a beetle is not as we are. We do not look for secret dreams in the black poppyseed eyes of a scorpion. We realize that whatever we might find locked away in the mind of a centipede will not be a reflection of our own humanity. Centipede thoughts are not human thoughts.
They are with us, but not of us—let that be enough!
