Having read the first of three substantive sections in The Ecological Thought I have to say that Morton reminds me rather forcibly of a man who upon entering into the process we think of as enlightenment has reached the understanding that a mountain is no longer a mountain but has yet to reach the place where he sees once again that a mountain is a mountain.

Much of the first section (Thinking Big) is written to give you the experience/ knowledge that the universe is not what you think it—to move you, as it were, to the experience of no-mountain.

If you followed that link Cathy included in her comment, there is a moment in Bessler’s video (I downloaded the 3gp file) where she says that bacteria talk to each other, in groups (3:40) and that you, as a human being are only 10% human and 90% bacteria (4:00-4:30); without the ability of bacteria to communicate and act in groups we would not exist and in fact bacteria form 50% of the total biomass on earth. We are not what we think we are.

Morton’s point seems to be that we have to learn to think of the world in these terms and not in the illusory terms of human identity. Yes, but really, a mountain is a mountain and our identity is as present in the world as is bacterial communication. Both are the result of the the physics and chemistry of this spot in the universe we think of as home. Having said that, if his point is to say that both points of view (the immense and the local) are true then I am with Morton. The chapter doesn’t feel that way, but I do have the last two sections to go.

One of the things Morton does in this section is introduce terminology. He uses “mesh” and “strange stranger”. He is trying to give us terms that allow us to break free from the hold our being-centered framework has on us. That is, he wants to help us realize that a mountain is not a mountain.

Mesh is interconnectedness.

Who or what is interconnected with what or with whom? The mesh of interconnected things is vast, perhaps immeasurably so. Each entity in the mesh looks strange. Nothing exists all by itself, and so nothing is fully “itself.” (p15)

In the first chapter he opens the section on mesh by giving a long list of the ways in which things are not what they seem. “A tree includes fungi and lichen. Lichen is two life forms interacting—a fungus and a bacterium or a fungus and an alga. Seeds and pollen have birds and bees to circulate them. Animal and fungal cells include mitochondria…” (p33-34). It goes on, but the gist is that as a human you are actually 90% bacteria.

Strange stranger is Morton’s way of trying to provide us a vehicle to carry the feeling that surfaces when you realize that a mountain is not a mountain. His major idea (and title of the book) the ecological thought “imagines a multitude of entangled strange strangers” (p15). (I do wonder if he read A Stranger in a Strange Land.) In a sense, since the mesh has no center, and what we know of as a “ being” is a piece of the mesh, then a “being” also has no real center but is rather an “intersection in the unimaginably gigantic mesh.” Try to think of yourself that way, not as a being with an inside and outside but as a tangled mesh of chemical structures, themselves tangled structures of particles, and all these tangles stretched far beyond the surface of your skin. You don’t really have an edge. Does weird ass shit to your head doesn’t it? That’s what strange stranger is for.

We should instead explore the paradoxes and fissures of identity within “human” and “animal.” Instead of “animal,” I use strange stranger. This stranger isn’t just strange. She, or he, or it—can we tell? how?—is strangely strange. Their strangeness itself is strange. We can never absolutely figure then out. If we could, then all we would have is a ready-made box to put them in, and we would just be looking at the box, not at the strange strangers. They are intrinsically strange. Do we know for sure whether they are sentient or not? Do we know whether they are alive or not? Their strangeness is part of who they are. After all, they might be us. And what could be stranger than what is familiar?

But a mountain is a mountain, and beings are beings. While it is true that we are a tangled mesh of chemicals, part of the tangle’s product is the belief in beingness (one of the boxes from the quote above), in an inside and an outside, in me versus you. So while I take Morton’s point that in the mesh no “being” is more equal than another, by the same reasoning no product of the mesh in action is more equal than another—my sense of myself as a being is equal to my sense of myself as a part of the mesh.

But what does that say really? It only takes into account a single operational level—if I act in the world as if the beingness of broccoli is is equal to my own, eating is going to become problematic. I am a bag of chemicals equal to the bag that is called broccoli, but I am also an animal that requires the death of other life forms to maintain cellular integrity—as is the broccoli (just because it isn’t omnivorous doesn’t mean humus isn’t made via death). The mesh that constitutes bio-chemical reality is not a plane, not even a simple volume but more like a four-dimensional rubik’s cube that plays itself. As a being in that 4-d cube we are the relatively long-lasting alignment of that green-blue-red set of squares. That (verb-like) alignment is what we translate into the (noun-like) notion of our identity.

But we do translate. That’s what that particular alignment does, how it expresses itself.

Agreed that evolution (at the level of the mesh) has no telos in the way we normally think of telos, but for sure beings do. Telos is an expression of a particular set of mesh alignments. Of course I don’t mean an “assigned” telos. There is no designer, no Nature, nor God, nor any other divine intelligence except in as much as the combined interactions of the bio-chemical and physical world manifest local moments of “intent” (bacteria acting as a group – as a multi-cellular being, for example).

One of the things that makes a being a being (regardless of whether it is “alive” or not) is that its structure has mechanisms to maintain the mesh alignment for longer than it would without that mechanism in place. In other words, I may be a bag of chemicals but I am a bag of chemicals that has tools to keep on being this particular bag for as long as possible. That is what I mean by “intent”. (What we normally mean by “intent”—that feeling of purpose and choice—is almost certainly related to the chemical intent but it is not the same thing despite the fact that we use the same word to describe both—just as 435 nm ≠ indigo, but they are related.)

Telos = chemical intent. And yes, Na and Cl don’t join “in order to” achieve salt. It just happens that this is so, and that that happenstance can be later part of another happenstance that is a cow and a farmer, a field and a salt lick. But do remember that the capacity to think “in order to” is an expression of the mesh meshing. It is not correct, but it is also not incorrect.  It depends upon the operational level being explained.

I don’t want to give you the impression that I don’t think the book worthwhile. There are some stellar bits, some wonderful insights, phrases, ideas. And I have yet to work my way through the last two sections so it may be that my reservations will be addressed. The concept of junk space (p 51), the relationship between repetition, the foregrounding of environment and sense of the uncanny (p 50-59) is pretty interesting stuff, but it all feeds into the idea that a mountain is not a mountain.

So on to “Dark Thoughts” (the middle of three sections). I have to say I feel echoes of Dark Green Religion here. Wonder if I’m right?