AN IMMENSE WORLD
I have just started reading a book suggested by Phil Diehn, An Immense World by Ed Yong. He couldn’t remember the name, but I quickly found it anyway. I already owned it on Kindle.
I am not yet a quarter of the way through the book and will soon learn more, but the first thing I have learned is how each animal or plant on earth lives in a different sensual world, a different factual and measurable world. This is because in the process of evolution with each incremental change through random mutation animals have developed different physical senses depending upon the senses needed for each species to survive. Sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing develops in a slightly different way with each evolutionary adaptation. It is not just that Maggie, the dog I am taking care of has a much more refined sense of smell than I do, it means that Maggie lives in a different world than I do. The world that I respond to is determined by my five senses. So is Maggie’s. It means that Maggie and I live in different worlds. We hear different things, see different things, smell different things, taste different things, feel touch in different ways. I am quite aware that Maggie isn’t fully aware of my world, what I am conscious of and say to her and what I see that I think is important. I don’t think Maggie knows what I am thinking or that Maggie is delighted by a beautiful sunset. Knowing this gives me the impression that I am superior to Maggie. But Maggie is able to pick up all kinds of information by sniffing as we go for walks and at the same time is leaving all kinds of information through the scent she leaves behind. It doesn’t occur to me that Maggie might think she is superior to me or that she has to make all kinds of allowances for me because I am clueless about so much information that she picks up easily. We live in different worlds. As the book goes along I will learn more and more about how the sense of each animal puts them in a different world.
But the first thing that comes to my mind is to take this discovery and to apply it to humans. Because my first thought is that because human DNA is different for every person including gender, and the cultural upbringing is different for each person, and the lived experience is different for each person (all of these mostly by chance) that what we think of as being real, actual, is also different for each person. We live in sometimes subtly different worlds and sometimes radically different worlds and because of this how we each make our way through is different for each one of us.
When I wonder why MAGA people whom I have casual relationships or meetings with are so pleasant to be with, are such nice people, who can yet believe in values completely different from my own, it is not because they are nuts, or because either one of us is smarter than the other, it is because we live in different worlds. The world they are moving through and the world that I am moving through are simply very different. It does no good for me to try and persuade them that I am right and they are wrong. They fully feel the world they live in and are irritated when threatened. I am the same. If I want to have empathy for their passage and accept them I have to do the same thing I do for Maggie, accept that they live in a different world. And of course, if we want to get along at all, they have to do the same for me. To really feel empathy I have to make the effort to understand a world that is different from my own, not as different as a dog’s world or an elephant’s world or the world of the California Sea Urchin that has eyes all over its body, but certainly different. If we are going to accept each other as good, pleasant people we have to listen to each other and not project our world, what seems real to us, on each other.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 