You're listening to the reversing climate change,
podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace.
This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs
developing solutions to climate change.
Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change
podcast. I'm Ross Kenyan I'm the creative
editor at Nori's carbon removal Marketplace.
Today I have with me Melanie Challenger writer of
environmental history podcaster at the new show.
Enter the psycho sphere and Author of her latest book, how
to be animal, a new history of what it means to be human.
Welcome to the show. Melanie, thank you for inviting
me. Yeah, I'm happy to have you.
I'm going to start with maybe the biggest question of all,
which is what does it mean to be human, in your opinion?
And if this takes the entire hour that's okay, yeah you
should probably takes a bit longer than an hour in the book.
What I'm answering there is actually a critique of the idea
that being human is Thing separate or even separable from
being animal. So the reason it has that
subtitle is really because not in all.
Absolutely, all societies. And obviously this this just
does change culturally and it does change historically as
well. That said there's remarkable
commonality in certain ways in which you in which humans have
thought about what it is to be human.
And one of those is that we have tended to live by a sort of
substance dualism. So we've Ross all societies
whether hunter-gatherer Societies or sort of large kind
of monotheistic societies. We've had this idea that there's
this animal better versus fleshies Mortal part of us and
then there's this spiritual part of us.
Now, it could be the sole. It could be the kind of living
Essence. That let's say, if you were a
Navajo, Indian you might think was the living Essence that did
all creatures have, and that it's connected together as the
kind of advice. Source that is in all living
things, whatever your culture. We've tended, to have this idea
of this animal mortal part of us in this spiritual part of us
now, in modern civilizations and particularly in monotheistic
civilizations, we've taken those that sort of duelist idea that
there's this sort of immortal, spiritual part of us in this
fleshy, bit that dies. And we've started, not only to
play sort, Value judgments on it.
So we've said, it's this actually assist spiritual bit.
That makes us humans this spiritual bit that matters that
has value. And increasingly we said, well,
we're the only beings with its two.
It's become a sort of human exceptionalist narrative as
well, and that takes us right the way through.
Now originally, that was a theological idea and partly a
natural history idea. Was partly a question of what
is, what is the substance of us? What are we made of and what
matters about us but it was always knitted in Theology.
So, it was always the idea that this is how we've been created,
that this is the human soul versus in the animal part of
life. Then you arrive at the
Enlightenment and you get a slight as sort of twist on this,
which is the idea that actually, what really makes humans stick
out within the biotic Community as our kind of cognition.
Our ability to reason to rationalized have free will and
this is the mind as this kind of this Soul like part of us.
And really that's carried right through to the present day.
So when I'm talking about what it is to be human, I'm really
trying to push up against that a little bit and say well we have
no evidence for that kind of substance dualism and where it
should be true. The older idea that it's
probably in all living things would certainly be more likely
parsimonious wise to be the true to be true.
So the human exceptionalist narrative looks very problematic
at this point in time in our learning and in Tree.
But I argue that this idea that we've had for a long time now
that the animal bit of us doesn't matter or it could be
separated out and that there's this human, either cognitive or
spiritual part that somehow separate is likely to be true,
doesn't serve as well. And that, actually, to answer
your question, being human is being animal.
So that's my point. That would be, that would be my
answer. That would be what I would say.
Surprisingly graceful given, how enormous that question is.
Well done. Okay, I'm catching definite
Echoes of the episode we did with Paul Kings North.
In fact, I found out about your book because Paul Kings North
blurbed it and then posted about it on social media and we hardly
exhausted. This topic.
We spent most of the time talking about mind-body dualism
and what he sees as the problems that have led to us feeling
disconnected and in some cases, trying to transcend the body or
physical reality entirely and becoming pure idea or spirit.
Being uploaded into machines, Souls into the cloud, perhaps
you could phrase it, but one of the things I noticed that was
interesting about your approach that was quite different.
Is that what did you know, that Paul converted to Eastern
Orthodoxy and we followed that whole Saga now.
So pull I've known for a long time.
He so I was born in Oxford and went to Oxford University and
poor went to Oxford and is innocent in a small room is kind
of pulls older than me but we're in a kindness.
A group of people who sort of loosely a floated around the
Oxford area, George Formby. Oh, Casper Henderson who writing
these sorts of areas and, and kind of or know one another and
value. One another but have very
different approaches. Put us at a pool in.
I've corresponded for a long time and we've sort of
collaborated on one or two things.
I'm really fond of Paul that we don't necessarily agree on
everything, but we but, you know, that doesn't matter to,
you know, you shouldn't have to intellectually it Delight day.
I haven't followed this part since he's Be wary of telling me
about this, but he did tell me that he was really when he went
to Ireland, because I knew, you know, I've seen him when he was
in Cumbria as well and he shifted over to Ireland, with
his family, his young family, and in his correspondence, since
he's been engaging more and more initially with a sort of ancient
vestiges of Christianity that we're in.
And this particular Chapel, I think that he'd found and I ate
they've been these little tidbits that means been dropping
into two Two messages to me but virtually no, and I haven't
teased it out, possibly out of fear, I don't know what, he
might tell me where he's got up to, so you tell me what's
Paul's. Awesome, Paul's head.
Now, what he converted to no, no, that's that's fine.
I'm going to make this episode about Paul either.
If you're listening, Paul, sorry, we're talking about
Melanie today. We love you pool anyway.
I thought this Divergence was really interesting because he's
open. Now he talked about it on the
show, becoming orthodox. He's been writing and thinking
about this lately in public, so I don't think it's a surprise to
anyone who follows his work, but he's really seized upon this
idea. And the Apostles Creed of the
resurrection of the body and sort of Catholicism and
Orthodoxy of being away. That Christianity doesn't have
to have this mind-body dualism, that involves a disembodied,
Soul floating up to heaven. It could actually be a kingdom
of God on Earth kind of thing. It could actually be located
within the body. There doesn't have to be the
split. Within Christian thought, but it
sounds like, maybe you see it differently and you think
because you single out, Thomas Aquinas and angelology, kind of
what a horrible word that is the sounds of that don't even fit in
my mouth. I know, sweetie, but do you
think that's there's something to that or do you think that's
been a wrong turn? Perhaps, Do I think, do I think
it's possible or what are you asking me?
I mean, I look, it's really difficult when we cherry pick
from history and this is because I do big history stuff.
That's something. I'm acutely aware of because I
also work, you know, within philosophy and within
philosophy. There's a great resistance to to
those kind of big panoramic, sort of because she views and
that you have to be careful and and indeed historians are
always, you know, because they specialize in a particular area
always and In Christian thought, broadly, it's so unbelievably
diverse and once you start going into the detail of different
ways in which so the theological arguments, if we were to look
even and aquinas's time that were happening about what might
be possible, how to interpret text, how to interpret, you
know, theologically either, what they're finding in scripture or
kind of ideas, theological ideas that are going to matter to
Christians. It's so complicated.
That that There's lots and lots of diversity of ideas, but I
would say, if I was going to be generalizing about it, you could
pick out a couple of things from that sort of time.
Period. First is the Angel ologist
thing. So this is the idea that you
know, that was debated a lot, you know, how if the Angels
aren't sort of beings in a physical sense.
How are they even recognizing, say, married to be able to come
and give a met deliver a message?
So these are the sorts of conundrums that feel that, you
know, feel Your fingers were having to think about, like,
what substance can also recognize a living person know
that that is different to another big number.
You know, biologically. That's a really reasonable
question to ask, isn't it? Like recognizing who's kin who's
knocking? Who's pray?
Whose Predator is. Crucial to all biological
systems but it led on to ideas about whether we really even
needed bodies to recognize things, whether you could have a
kind Kind of cognition that was ethereal in that sort of way.
And those Echoes from those only debates and possible solutions
to these debates weave their way into into philosophy and into
intellectual history and you know we see them returning
another one in terms of Resurrection that is that is
interesting with the idea that you could take the troubling
idea that you don't Saints, who might have been cut up into
different parts or you know Someone might have a saint, so
active artifact in one church and might be another one.
How were these parts of the body?
Going to Rico here at the resurrection?
And this was a real concern, but that led on.
When we look at the early, scientific Endeavors to
understand the workings of movement and body and anatomy
and so forth. To the experiments, only kind of
150 years ago to work out if a soul could extend.
Into another room and so they would sort of cut off a frogs
head and, and you know, apply some, you know, some fun with
stimulation and see if it still moved and see if it if you took
the head into a whole other room but it's still moving.
How far could you keep going? How far would the soul extend?
You see this weird interplay of theological and scientific and
philosophical ideas that kind of bubble along through the
centuries? We have a very incomplete to
answer your question. No, very incomplete idea.
Out what we are but I'm very cautious when looking at
intellectual history about extrapolating from theological.
Dial a into you know scientific ideas or assumptions.
I'm certainly. You know we they can really
mislead us. I think sometimes it's not an
area that I tend to go down. It must have met enough mean,
Paul locates your question at all Ross?
Sorry. Yes it does.
And we're going to follow it up and I think what I I want to do
is close the door to some of the way that Paul sees it because
you approach it from a different angle.
I just want to address those and then we'll close it off and then
we'll take it for given that Christianity is by necessity a
dualistic philosophy that has separated mind and body or soul
and body. Because he locates it with in
gnosticism not Harris that heresy?
Or is it the heresy depending on who you are really, but of
everything matter is bad. Everything spirit is good.
The material world was created by a demon essentially and God
is as pure spirit. And this is an early Trend in
Christian thought that was, you know, sort of stamped out and
then revived with people like Dan Brown and The DaVinci Code
and stuff like that. So let's ignore fights like
that. And just say that, yeah,
Christianity. And most religions have an idea
of a soul and a body and their distinct and your work, Blends
philosophical insights, but also science science has tried to
locate whether there actually. Is a soul.
And you have this example, you just gave of the Frog, which it
sounds silly, right? But there's not a lot of work on
this and I know I have friends who work in philosophy of mind,
and I don't know that most of them by the idea that there is a
soul separate from the body, which is that, is that probably
true, you know, it's really serve as a great neuroscientist
called Alan. Yes, enough.
Who's at Harvard and he's done a huge amount to try and Miss bust
on this sort of really for him near.
Essentialism, which is the idea that we only need to look to the
brain if you like to answer questions, if mind and
Consciousness, he says, well, no, it's very wet, it's very
messy. You know Consciousness?
Yes. It's brain-based it draws on the
whole of the body and you can't ignore the body when we think
about mind and Consciousness. And and we preferred kind of
these simple algorithmic. Kind of electrical national.
He says, merits kind of fits more messily biological than
we've liked. To admit but I think that if you
ask most scientists even you know deeply religious scientists
who deal in cognition, they would say that they're not
drawing on any idea of the Soul or any that they're not
Duelists, you know, that they're very much looking for material
explanations for Consciousness and mind and so forth.
But if you were to talk to them about how they feel about, let's
say, A doing Consciousness experiments on macaques, why
that might be doing a distressing experiment, you
know, even with the best care in the world, you know, it is it is
a distressing situation that an animal might be in is
permissible, but it's not permissible with humans.
They would say well because you know, we have a kind of
cognition, they don't have and it morally matters more and you
know, if you were to talk to them about what matters about
us, they would probably talk in A sort of human cognitive
exception of this terms because that's kind of how our world is
structured now. So the funny thing is, is that
you can accidentally have quite sort of duelist ideas that are
that if you get really questioned about them, actually
very difficult to fully justify or even in entirely explain.
Why you think that that creep in and often creeping to Scientific
papers and scientific ideas? These little sort of value
assumptions are actually suspicious, To an assist even in
neuroscientist of cognitive scientist, who might be really
DieHard, materialists about mental phenomena.
So, and I think some of that is really just bias on our part and
it completely understandable by us, you know, we have a
cognitive Niche is a species, there's no question about that.
And consequently, we put a huge premium on it and it deeply
deeply matters to us. But the kind of neat sort of
ideas about being human and and what our mental experiences that
often sort of admit a certain dualism, you know, allow it
through the door. Go unexamined.
So I think that's where we can still see it in the present day.
For instance, it's coded into English, right?
I have a body versus I am a body.
Yes, if you said, I am a body. Someone be like cool.
Your like a new age freak, huh? Yeah, it's so true.
It's so true. Yeah, I've always found it.
Incredible. That the Vanity is the way in
which our subjective Consciousness works, is that it
does? I mean, it genuinely does feel
people like Sam Harris. If really tried to take this on
and show people that it's, it's a sort of Illusion, this idea
that we are some sort of floating thing, kind of trapped
inside, you know, in Christian terms or Earthen vessel, you
know, that that we are somehow being carried around by our
body. It does kind of feel like that
and all Also, if you ask people to think about what a life would
feel like, you know, the affective states of experience
without subjectivity, it's really difficult for people.
It's much easier to imagine as John Locke.
Did, you know, the kind of it? I have a thought experiment in,
which you can imagine thinking in a different body, then you
can imagine being feeling in a body without subjectivity and
so, that's so Wrong that such a strong sensation for human
beings. Even if it's, you know, to a
certain extent illusory not to say that subjectivity is still
is in illusion but just that idea that there is this kind of
Duality is an illusion rather than a reality of our of our
condition and of How It's actually biologically, you know,
and hormonal and chemically emerging in us, you know, I
think that, you know, you can understand why for millennia
Here we have have tended to think in that kind of way
because that is what our experience feels like.
That's what I've experienced presents us.
You know, it's really really difficult to think in it
differently about it. I think you keep using this term
human exceptionalism or things that can do that.
What does that mean? Yeah, you know is that it's it's
funny isn't it these little kind of phrases that we have I guess
probably the phrase that people would be more familiar with
nowadays is anthropocentrism, you know, which is akin to human
exceptional. Exceptional ISM.
But put simply is the idea that there are unique parts of human
beings that have unique Ali-A and from which are valued
arrives. So it is a philosophical idea.
If you like, because it is a value assumption about often
biological traits, but it hasn't historically always had to be
biological trait. So, the soul, you know, the idea
of the unique Immortal, human soul would be an example of
human exception, a list thinking.
But equally well, the idea that human beings the modern-day idea
they'd only human cognition has can have A full moral status
legally or philosophically as also a human exceptionalist
idea, but have obviously a very different character, you know,
it's related to anthropocentrism because I suppose
anthropocentrism. So the idea that you know human
beings not just at the center of the world but are ultimately
what matters and where meaning resides, you know, and therefore
we are justified in doing what we want or be taking priority in
certain dilemmas or situations or where that what As you know,
follows from a human exceptionalist idea.
So I guess you know that that's a relationship between the two.
Okay, that makes sense. I'm going to pose an objection
that you both address in the book /.
I'm sure it's the most common thing that someone says to you
which is that appealing to our natural rather than exceptional,
qualities is a risk reading. Your book actually reminded me
of. Did you ever read Timothy
Snyder's? Black Earth?
Have you read? W, I haven't done.
I yeah, it's on the list to read.
I haven't read it. So you'll have to fill me in.
I thought it was really fascinating but he describes
Hitler as a Zoological Anarchist and and the basic sense that
it's the strong should rule the weak should submit.
Almost imagine it. As kind of like old-school.
The pejorative version of how we view pre-christian or Pagan
society as being a dominated by Harem culture alpha males that
Rising Above This sort of, I don't know our Base level
nature, which doesn't always seem so good.
It seems almost a moral and self-interested.
How do we become an animal without reverting to some of
those behaviors that we think are are actually really bad and
we should rise above. So this is so key.
And to be honest, I mean this is the stuff that I think very very
deeply about and you know, I see you're right writing for a
mainstream audience and it frustrates.
To me that, you know, you're not allowed to to really go deeply
into that. You mean, this is not just the
lifetime of one person's thought, but this is, this is
the sort of thing that whole societies of thinkers, well, for
thousands of years, you know, these are really, really deep,
really, really complicated and gnarly questions about the
meaning of life. And how good emerges in a
seemingly amoral biological system.
Let's sew on Privia like I can't even sew anything.
I'm about to say is going to be ridiculously you know, baguette
version of this and not in my thinking is incomplete on this,
but I eat keeps me up, I think about it all the time but to
answer where I'm at now with that.
So one of the things in the book that is is not my idea of
philosophically. It's an old idea is that this is
the kind of naturalistic fallacy.
So the idea that what we ought to do, you know, morally
speaking. So this is more our philosophy
cannot follow from how we find things in nature, and that's
primarily, you know, that, as a highfalutin way of pointing out
the obvious, which Darwin was very acutely aware of, you know,
he understood that biological continuity was not just a threat
to the idea of a creative intelligent designed universe
that he grew up in but it A threat to our moral ideas that
if we have real gradual continuity with everything
around us then our moral systems must have emerged from the same
world in which lots of very horrible things happen like
parasites, like Predators like aggressive attacks.
You know, to get your own way of one individual over another
rape. All of these sorts of things
that take place in. Nature that are the business of
how individual organisms, try to retain energy and survive.
It looks pretty, you know, its nature red in tooth and Claw.
And you can understand that why we wanted to separate out our
idea of, of, of how our lives matter.
And our moral systems from that chaos, and the fear is that, if
you start to tread back into our to associate or align ourselves
too much with that, The emerald nature of the world from which
we came is that it threatens or undermines?
I suppose what we might call not at not just Society not just you
know the ties that hold us together but the whole moral
project of human life, my response to that is you have to
well I suppose my inclination as an individual and as I think is
that you cannot build on a false Ian.
So it's no good Alta mately will come of drawing a Line in the
Sand where no line exists. You have to fit.
Look at your business. You have to face the reality.
And then if you want good to emerge from that, you have to
understand the conditions in which good emerges.
So, for me, there's a, there's an example from the Holocaust
that and I've done a lot of work, historically with
conflict, in my earlier, life and works a lot with people.
She who are survivors of and indeed soldiers in various
different conflicts around the world and through time.
And so I'm kind of across that sort of literature and also
just, you know, the experiences and there's an anecdote of a
woman who is in one of the camps and is Staffing.
And there is a man beside her who is dying and is, you know,
hours from death and she could take his food.
At this stage, but she chooses not to.
And she chooses not to because she understands that it's the
choice that makes, you know, you're going back to your first
question that that makes her human even though I think in
anybody's book, we would in. We were morally judge her, but
she's been so dehumanized by her situation.
And by, what's been done touched had all power taken away from
her, but she still has the power of that kind of impulse control
and, and that choice and also to make that Choice according to
her beliefs about who she's going to be.
So in terms of building her sense of self and who she is and
that to me is a reminder of several things, it's a reminder
that it's not, it wasn't her spirituality that pushed her
into that conclusion. It was her recognition that
fundamentally. What is remarkable about human
beings is the behavioral choice that we have that derives from
Our moral sensibility. Now, I think that we have to
understand that is having emerged naturally, that is in,
is not just some abstract, it's actually about Behavior.
She acts in a different way than she might have acted, just
purely, you know, to survive. She acts because of how she
wants to remember herself because of who, how she wants to
build her identity and who Wants to be that is a very now we
don't know because we have nowhere fish surviving humans or
you know, members of the homo lineage.
It's possible that neanderthals and other human species might
have shown this if they were still around, but we're an
outlier. But that will have emerged
naturally that's a natural part. So we can.
And it's that if we understand morality naturally, if we allow
it to be something that, that is Embodied and natural and animal
that specific, you know, to us, that's our part of our adaptive
Niche. It's how we come to be better
people with one another and a lot of that is very cognitive.
If we accept that, then it allows us to for me, it allows
us to align ourselves with our animal reality.
We don't need to abstract it. We don't need to separate it
out. We don't need to tell ourselves.
Stories, even though it is exceptional.
We don't have to put the value on it in that kind of way.
We just recognize that that is how we flourish our moral
capacity. And how we remember and
understand ourselves as good beings is is are niches.
It's our behavioral Niche, it's how we flourish.
And so that allows is never going to be a neat fit because
biology is not going to allow that but it's a pretty good fit.
It's a pretty if you pay attention.
To it. I think it allows you to be a
good animal if you like and prefer us to somehow marry those
two things together. That's a comprehensive answer to
a difficult question. And the Very way in which I
asked it, I think smuggled in some Concepts that needed
unpacking to. I, it's funny that upon
reflection. I had smuggled in the idea that
the natural biological state of human life.
Is one of endless war against all Melville has a line of Moby.
About the universal cannibalism of the sea.
And that's the world that I had imagined, but actually, there's
examples from nature of mutuality and commensalism that
you've single out in your book. But there's also just countless
idea that I smuggled in is a liberal anthropology or an
anthropology of liberalism of a rational independent individual.
But in a more natural, or are quoted primitive State, there
really wasn't an individual. That's a sort of modern creation
of the last couple hundred years right before that.
That we saw ourselves primarily as members of packs of groups of
people that were working together in a sort of mutual
mutualism being the operative. Maybe philosophy here that was
happening. Is that it's an appropriate
reaction. Yeah, I don't know.
Again, I've mold this one. I don't we, you know, we can't
be sure of what the mental experience of people.
Hundreds, tens of thousands of years ago was like, my suspicion
is that once you have the Kind of cognition that we have that
will have emerged, which is not to say we all have the same
cognition. I mean, I get a bit weary of
that, you know, I assume I baked variation into all of my
thinking so I'm assuming that, you know, when you're talking
about we or that we have this and we have that that, you know,
there is obviously variation within that assumed but you
know, nonetheless human beings are species.
Certainly has and likely other members of Other hominids have
had a particular kind of cognitive capacities and
behavioral capacities. That are very general, very
adaptable and involved. Subjectivity my suspicion is it.
As soon as you have that regardless of what cultural, you
know, whether you've got a collectivist culture at work, or
whether you've got a more individualistic culture at work,
you're still always going to have individual thought.
Chain and Rebellion at work, you are still going to have moments
when we're not a super organism. And to me, we really don't look
like a superorganism not cognitively.
We might behave like that because we are capable of
extraordinary acts of collaboration and cooperation,
you know, into the millions of us, which is amazing.
And does almost looks super organism it, but I don't think
so. I think edit cognitive level.
We're off. An individually rebelling all
the time against, you know, and it's slightly stressful to be in
social groups. It's slightly stressful to have
to suppress, emotions, and feelings, and needs, and
desires, and impulses. It's not some happy clappy
togetherness, no matter what group you're in.
And so, yeah. And, you know, people in small
hunter-gatherer, communities have affairs, there are sexual
tensions and flare-ups, and all sorts of stuff that goes on.
So, And I suspect that we'll have been there always from the
moment that you have any kind of really strong subjectivity at
work. So yeah.
I don't know about that. I know I think it's a little bit
Messier through history and now I would be my instinct.
Wow, I respect that answer so much because it's certainly way
easier to sell a book if you probably just have a
straightforward opinion on. Yes the laps Aryan moment was
mind-body dualism and a liberal. Anthropology of the says, you
know, is self-actualize independent individual, you're
saying? Yeah, I don't know.
Actually the old ways of doing things we're not really that
simple either in there were tensions.
Yeah. You know what to eat in some
ways? I see ice to only talking to my
mom about this today because I make my work through, you know,
through writing and, you know, obviously there's a pressure on
you to produce content that will sell in.
Which numbers and simplified messages, of course, sell more
easily. As do, you know subjects that
allow people to sort of, either get feel that they've got kind
of handle on something very quickly or that are kind of just
is, you know, appealing to a large numbers and wish I could,
you know, financially, I guess so wish and probably in terms of
status and reputation. I wish I could be that kind of
person, but I'm afraid. I am absolutely.
And Hunter of the truth. Seeker treasure seeker of what
is actually going on. I mean, and I, right to engage
with other people, other thinking, people of any kind of
any, you know, just any inquiring mind and because I
write also, because it's happy is where, I think.
I remember the poet Ted Hughes talked about his poems, as
subsidiary brains, they were these little external brain
Extinction. He would do his thinking it's
very much that way for me and I see them as you know then
connecting so that we could become a kind of Super Brain
with readers and we're all thinking through these things
together for me you haven't thought hard enough.
If you are offering some your great story that's like
absolutely straightforward or that, you know, it and it's seen
as a it seen as a failing. That's such a sorrow to me that
we think that someone not providing all the answers Azure.
Not providing the one Theory or whatever is seen as a failing
for me. That's that's the beginnings of
thought, you know, you should be asking questions and then you
should be working out how you can ask better questions and
leave behind the questions. You know, were too simple were
too kind of, you know. But that is sadly, it's not it's
not the way commercial publishing works but you know,
it is the beginnings of thought, I think.
You can't see me right now but I'm grinning like a fool.
I I love that and that's what we try to do on the podcast to.
I don't know that I have a set of finite answers that I could
discreetly present to someone to solve all the world's problems
your book absolutely reads like this to one of the blurbs on
described it as lyrical. And I absolutely think that's
the case. It has this beautiful flowing
kind of expansive question, presenting and engagement but it
doesn't strike. A strictly linear in its
presentation. Either, it almost feels like
there is a strong poetic kind of quality to it.
And it did make me. Think am I reading too much into
that? Or is that how you see your work
as well? Well, I'm not, I'm never doing
anything by Design in that kind of way in the end.
So, my first book that I wrote called on extinction, which was
really a exploration of the young person, General Zhang when
I wrote it and it was A Young Person's sort of squaring up to
really how we derived at this point where we have such a.
And when I say we, I just mean, you know, broadly human
civilization, you know, is endangering.
The other systems, is how we've ended up with climate change,
biodiversity crisis? What were their stages that took
us there? And I looked very much from a
biocultural and Industrial Extinction.
So so I used Extinction Ring poetically.
You know, this wasn't some sort of category ever.
I was actually just using trying to use that idea that concept of
Extinction. Very broadly to look at the
cultural industrial and intellectual and historical
forces that had thought of that were in the background to this
point that we'd arrived at and really is in many ways.
It's a story of the Industrial Revolution, what led up to that
and the consequence This is that flowed from it in some ways, but
it's also the kind of dominant industrial societies came to
think about what it is to be human, and what was, what was
right and wrong and what was justified, and what we should be
pursuing and investing in in our societies, which, you know,
obviously still resonates now. But I did it in this way, where
that was actually much more poetic than in this.
I trained in literature and language, English, literature,
and language and I regionally That I would just work in the
creative arts. I actually still work in the
creative arts. Now more In classical music as a
librettist. And I started you know
publishing poetry when I was young and I still have a big
part of me that works with artists and in the creative arts
and I totally get that world. But right from the get-go I was
always asking I guess historical and natural history and
philosophical questions that I couldn't simply answer
artistically. That I actually needed to shift
into nonfiction Ian and research to be able to answer
satisfactorily for me. Maybe that's my weakness because
as an artist a bit that was where I needed to go.
So I've had those two things running in tandem, but because
they touched more closely at the time when I wrote that book,
there's a lot of deliberate. If people pay attention, there's
a lot of recurring imagery which is you know very metaphorical
and kind of echoing things that I tried to create really is a
way in the way that a poem does to I need to provide stocking
points for people to think because I want my book to
provide little their lighting, little churches.
If you like little chapels that I want people to come in to, not
to be told but to think and to question the world around them.
And so I was trying to do that quite deliberately in that first
book but I don't know how successful that was truth.
Be told in the second book in, how to be animal, I probably
just have that kind of Ethically in me to a certain extent that,
you know, my use of language comes from that.
So it does have probably automatically have a little bit
of a poetical and kind of a for a stick aspects to it.
That that is just my style. Now that I probably just you
know do without thinking but it's much more straightforward
in a lot of ways. And the reason it's not linear
is ultimately because I'm trying to float above these very big
topics and very big. Time spans to give people a
sense of how all of these things are coming together to affect
us. So it's a bit birds like, I
guess in that way and that's how you getting this these spans of
time and Topic in any given chapter.
So but I think the style is probably maybe slightly more,
you know I guess authorial in some ways than my first book was
and certainly there's much less sort of personal essay and
narrative in it partly because I I feel that the ideas are a bit,
you know, I'm genuinely concerned.
So, so I felt like I had to be pretty straight with people as
much as possible. Well, I think it's a necessary
approach for writing a big history in the capitalized,
like, will Durant kind of of way where if you are going to write
something about thousands of years or more of human history,
there's a real risk that you just find the one angle, the one
acts you want, Ryan throughout I just read a history of food like
that. You actually have a number of
moments where you say, you'll present a case that someone has
made and say you don't have to buy that or you don't have to
you may or may not accept that or something like that.
Yeah that is not cause I love it.
So I don't mean to harp on it too much but I wish more people
could think and write like that because I connect with that
strong, like is what I try to do here.
Not that Pat myself on the back too much, but nobody is really
important for. It is something that greatly
concerns me about. The messaging around
sustainability around, climate change around, invite all
environmental issues, you know, I'm obviously quite immersed
because I do work in ethics as well.
So, I do have a practical end to my working life.
Very engaged in deliberative democracy in bioethics, you
know, and I'm active in those areas and increasingly at the
moment. Active in representation of
non-human animals, for instance, procedural, Justice, Those sorts
of things. So there is a practical element
to my life as well beyond just writing and so I hear you know
consequently I'm kind of really embedded in the environmentalist
movement and I have a lots of colleagues who who are engaged
in all of this and always my worry and it's the same with
with working in bioethics. So for any listeners who don't
necessarily know what bioethics is bioethics is basically he's
not he's basically working out the ethics that have emerged
from the life. Sciences.
So it's keyed, for instance, to a pandemic, you know, it's a lot
about what happens, you know, what, should happen in medical
context. For instance, how we should do a
genome editing crispr, all of those sorts of things are all
in, you know, in the kind of purview of bioethics.
But even in that sort of field, you're very rarely allowed to go
back to First principles and to work your arguments out again or
to have hesitation because it directly relates to policy.
Setting policy makers or decision maker Is one a simple
clean answer? They want to be told what to do,
and why and then they'll, you know, Churn it through their
political, kind of, you know, all their stakeholders, or
whatever that, you know, their real world scenario, and it will
come out in some slightly mangled version.
But but ultimately, that's what's going on in the
decision-making process. But my inclination of course is
to stop and to think if we are trying to save a gorilla, we
need to understand why a gorilla matters.
We need to understand how we need to understand what they
might be communicating to us. We need to think about our
history of ideas. We need to think about first
principles and reasoning again. These are slow processes of
thought and deliberation that are often very messy and often
very difficult to read them out. And people are kind of allergic
to that. But for me, you know, when it
comes to climate change, let's say you need to understand why
Things matter in any given situation.
And then you need to understand how to think critically about it
that sort of which is very much within the humanities, broadly
that sort of thinking has been pushed to the sidelines.
And I don't think it can stay in the sidelines for much longer
because ultimately we can't just rely on the science.
The science tells us the best version available at the time
with the best data you have available at the time of what is
happening. Being out and what might happen
in the future but to understand what we should do and how we
should evaluate that data, that is the work of philosophy and we
can't continue to think it's just the whims of opinion or it
is just the political kind of, or cultural point of view of any
moment in time or any particular, you know, party that
happens to be in power. These are, you know, difficult
areas of reasoning that require time and deliberation, and I
feel weak. Absolutely need to do those and
that requires accepting uncertainty and admitting doubt.
And that's what, you know, a lot of people just do not want to
do, but, you know, yeah, I'm all about that.
I think that's the important work we need to do but it is,
you know, it's, it's difficult. I have a question for you
Melanie. And it's a strange one to ask
without it sounding like an implied threat, right?
Oh God. Yeah, amazing preface.
I know. Do you want to die?
How do I say in a tone? That doesn't communicate it like
a threat. Do you wish do you wish to die?
That's an interesting question. Nobody's lost me that?
Well dumb for asking that. Yeah, I mean we were just
talking about climate change and you know, why does it matter to
us? Why does Extinction matter to
us? Why do we not want to be
animals? All of these things that I'm
talking about? You know, death is in the Ground
to all of them and the value of Life, what a good life is in,
what, how long a life should be, how, you know, how valuable an
individual or, you know, a set of lives are all of these sorts
of things. Again, these are things people
push from you and don't want to talk about.
And think about, I had to really square up to the to mortality a
lot in this book. One of the reasons for that is
because of course, the appeal of the idea that We're not really
animals or that we are somehow this have this exceptional sort
of separate part of us. It is buffers us from our fear
of death. One of the reasons we don't like
to look at death very much in with all sorts of ways, that
human beings hide death. We hide the death that we create
through predation because we continue.
We've always been predators and we continue to be Predators.
We just do that in organized way.
Now in farms and factory farms and so forth.
But that's, you know, we're still obviously, that's what it
is in essence biologically, you know, not absolutely
conceptually but that is what it is.
And we hide all of that away from ourselves and we hide our
own deaths away from ourselves and we, you know, we really got
to a stage that's different across different cultures.
Of course, but all human beings do battle with the idea that we
are mortal. And the idea that human Deities
will eventually die. The idea that the human Journey
will eventually end in extinction is one of the main
reasons that we are trying to avoid the climate disruption.
We're trying to stay alive for as long as possible, but it's
also, one of the reasons that we find it, very frightening to
accept that human civilizations will at some point in time,
eventually end that life on Earth will at some point in
time, eventually end, which it will we I'm not really an
absolute assault to what it is to mean.
Something that to me, is something that we must all as
individuals at some point in time, if we can come to terms
with, I think morally, we need to have better conversations
about it. I personally don't find the fact
that human civilization will end threatening to the moral
business of life in the here. And now, you know, I've said
this in other discussions that I've had since this book came
out so morality, you know, I don't think morality is
threatened by, you know, it reality happens that the
individual scale it, that's where we should pay our
attention. And I don't think that the
meaning of Our Lives has to be threatened by the fact that
eventually the human species will likely die out.
So I think we still have to do the busy, you know, even if that
would, we understand that about where we're going and it is some
Time in the future that doesn't smell get-out-of-jail-free card.
You know, it doesn't, it doesn't mean you can, you can just
tumble into nihilism and ignore the moral, you know, realities
of the here and now in your lives.
And so that's one aspect of death that I respond to.
And so if you ask me that question, do I mind the human
that I will die? And that our species will die
out? No, no I don't.
I understand that life is finite and at every scale, Gail that
the universe is finite that the likely, you know, we don't quite
know, of course, but likely finite, it's certainly.
The Earth is. We do know that certainly, the
sun is finite and our lives are finite and I think it's really
frightening. It's really deeply frightening.
I have small children. They when the idea of death
drops into their minds, you know as a parent you want to protect
them from its you know, I I kind of kicker of anxiety when I can
see it Dawning on them and I know they're going to ask me and
I know they're going to ask me if I'm going to die.
And if nannies going to die and of Grant is going to die.
And if you know and if they are going to die and you can see the
fear, you know, they are growing up in a household where we don't
have a religion, so, you know, they don't have that buffering
them at all. Either my kids are deeply
immersed in Natural History. My husband's an ecologist and
biologists. And you know, I work on that
true history so that they're totally in nature all the time
and they don't they see the Stope grabbing the baby rabbit,
they know what's going to happen.
You know, they understand all of this and it is frightening.
And so I have really had to square up to that myself and
accept that. My life is finite and to do my
very, very best in the time that I'm here.
And I've tried to encourage my children, not to be frightened
of death, not to seek it, but not to be frightened of it.
I was very frightened of death as a child.
But now I do, I'm not frightened to death in the way that I was,
it's simply because I accept that it is how it has to be.
That, that is the nature of the way, life emerges.
And the, I don't think it's the right path to fight that if we
were, maybe you think this is a difference of degree and maybe
you think it's a difference of kind, but if we were able to
live, you know, Old Testament Patriarchs tile and live
hundreds of years or or maybe just Be functionally dancing.
Lots of children. Yeah, if you still want to start
by getting how do you stop, should we not be pursuing
something like that? What's the difference between
eliminating polio or something like that?
And then having life extension, I think there's a difference
between that and uploading your Consciousness into a machine.
I'm not really sure where it is. Yeah, it's very difficult.
And this is another example, of the fact that lazy easy
thinking, About moral dilemmas is, you know, we should be wary
of them because that's a really good example of the fact that
where is the line? Is there a line anywhere?
Where we move from the moral imperative, that many people
would see to eliminate the diseases that cause suffering to
cure cancer to, you know, extend life.
It's very very recent that we've arrived at the point where we
think our life expectancy, See we even imagine me.
Just think about the words. Life expectancy we now come into
the world and we expect a certain amount of time, you
know. It isn't that extraordinary
Korean title, this is very recent, I mean, he's just it's
very much this moment because, you know, most people came into
the world and death was really everywhere and there was a huge
amount and that's not like they just thought that was fine.
You know, as usual amount of suffering, Darwin is an example
of that who really suffered when his child Was Annie died.
You know, his that he sort of admitted was his favorite and
really struggled with that. So even even people born, you
know, in Generations, where there was a lot of death that,
you know, mothers died, in childbirth and all sorts of
things are in. We didn't have anywhere near the
kind of sophistication. We have now, people never
accepted death or just sort of didn't care when they buried
their babies, of course, they didn't.
And there is a moral imperative, you know, if you can, as the
dentist eliminate some awful genetic disease.
We have crispr now. And that's, you know, the big
kind of hope is that these sorts of new genetic Technologies.
Might, you know, really get at some of these very difficult to
cure or treat rare sort of genetic disorders.
For instance, why would you not be trying to do that?
And obviously, people are weird looking for Universal.
Flu vaccines. We're looking for, we're
constant. And this is strong moral
imperative to do that because we don't want to And because we
want to maximize our opportunity to flourish and it feels morally
bankrupt to not want to continue doing that.
But at what point in time does that become unsustainable who
has to pay the price for that because the realities of the
cake, you know, chaotic nature of how life emerges including
human life is that you can't just have lots and lots of
organisms living Forever Without there being a cost.
So that Cost could be other species that cost could be you
know, resources that cost could then start to be future
Generations. Who haven't been born yet but
who are not going to you know, that, you know that bit of extra
10 years of extra life. For a few Generations back is
going to then be paid for in the flourishing of some generations.
If you know, it's very messy, it's very difficult to be sure.
So I think the easy response to that really To think about the
kind of the clearer situations where we should be cautious.
So for instance, if you're developing a drug that might
extend life, let's say well how does that drug have to get
developed? You know, does it mean that we
have to do huge amounts of animal testing?
For instance, is that justified? Does it mean that we have to
mine? You know, a certain kind of
chemical or something? Is that adjust?
Defied. Does it mean that we you know
it's so to look at the discrete ethical level can sometimes just
help in it. But I think also, are you doing
it? Because you want us to live
forever and is that a reasonable end goal?
Again, you can put apply some scrutiny better so you can stop
and think what is that? End goal a good goal to have.
My own feeling is it's not a realistic goal to have and
therefore it's dangerous too. Steer it and we will be better,
applying our technology and intelligence to more realistic,
you know, and positive goals in the here and now.
But, you know, there's been a lot of people hell-bent on
getting rid of death. That's for sure if they can.
I think those are all fine. Nuances to explore one perhaps
more elliptical response. I've heard came from an Alan
Watts lecture. I've heard, I think it's
something called like on becoming I'm nothing.
I don't know. He has so many thing called
things like that. So, yeah, it's something within
that genre of his butt about how important Youth and birth is to
curiosity. And how we sort of lose the
natural sense of wonder, it's hard for me to even say this
without kind of choking up a little bit but that's just
listen to Alan Watson General. He pushes my buttons in this
kind of way maybe for you too. Yeah, yeah.
But I think if we lost that, would we not had just have
thousand-year-old? People have been like, I've seen
everything I've done everything. I'm still going because I'm
scared of dying and I've not made peace with my having a body
that was that was God, I guess, I guess that's what I mean by an
unrealistic goal that it derives from a fundamental
misunderstanding about where we're actually deriving pleasure
and meaning from and it's deriving from fear, fear is
really not a good motivator for human beings.
As a general rule, it tends to lead us astray.
I know, we focus on Greed. We focus on all of these sorts
of things would be better if we We pay more attention to how
fear drives us and trying to sort of ameliorate that at the
point of Their Fear. There's so much in the
immortalization kind of obsession that is it derives
from misunderstanding. So one of them would be how do
human beings become well-rounded.
Well mostly a really crucial phase is not 23 years.
So the environment in the womb, Nurturing of the of the mother
and then after the in, that's not too.
I'm very aware of not being by a conservative in a way that is
that you know, deniers people who can't have children in the
conventional way. I understand all of that but
this is her. Most children are born and
biologically. We have to focus on what is
maximum sort of flourishing for us that it comes to what we are
adapted for. Which is not to say that the
natural path is best in any kind of simplistic way that it means
you can't ignore it. So most people will come to life
in their mother's room and therefore that environment is
really important and we know this.
Now we have so much evidence and data for this.
Now we know it's really crucial that we try to make sure that
mothers are well supported that, that environment is healthy
right from the get-go. We then have to try it, so
stress. I wasn't too bad, all of that,
sort of thing. Health is good food is good etc
etc. That they're being looked after
and then that the notch of three years, the amount of touched
children receive the amount of, you know, closeness and
proximity to primary caregivers most often mother's again.
But you know, just making sure that whole environment.
And that whole network of caregivers is supported and that
the child is touched and valued right from the get-go.
We know this has an effect on the whole bodies of, you know,
Respond to this, our bodies respond and therefore, our
building of identity and our resilience, our ability to cope
with stress our ability to cope with fear our responses, to
aggression are very affected by this year's.
There's a lot of plasticity, of course, you can undo some damage
if it's done in those times. And it's not all absolutely
biologically deterministic, because if biology doesn't work
like that, it's not neat and deterministic but it's still
again, it matters and getting that right matters.
And we have to remember, That a lot of people who are trying to
push this sort of live forever thing often, man, they're often
men of a certain status and they totally ignore what it would
mean for how we bring children into the world for the fact that
how, you know, even learning mathematics is affected by our
body movements by gesture. It's not just a matter of
staring at numbers on a page. It actually matters what we do
with our bodies. It matters who's talking to us
and have a showing us, you know, we live, deeply embodied, lives
our bodies man. Citrus profoundly, but to try
and simply live forever. You would really have to
industrialize all of that process, right from the
beginning, right from conception.
And that I do not think is that they're in Madness lies?
I do think. Yeah, I think that's a fine
place where we can start wrapping it up Melanie.
I think we covered all of human history, the fear of death.
I think we've exhausted all these topics.
Now, there's a lot more to cover and if you like this
conversation to do, Haven't we roast?
It's all sorted? Yeah, I don't know if I can take
credit. I think of much of its driving
from the simulation of your book, but I imagine someone's
listening and they dug this, how to be animal, a new history of
what it means to be human, they would clearly enjoy that as
well, right. I hope so.
Yeah, yep. So that's the athlean 10.
Was you can buy wherever you buy books?
Is there anything else you want to tell people about Melanie now
that you have them here? No, not really.
Just I supposed to do. Do you like hearing from people?
So it have I have my podcast that I Just recently started,
which is all about diverse intelligence actually, which is
my sort of next project. So how did agency and
intelligence emerge and how does it all interact?
All of the different diverse intelligences on the planet.
So we kind of cover everything from me account intelligence,
which I was actually doing earlier today, was just
completely fascinating tip, teaching, in meerkats, through
to Neanderthal, Moines, through to philosophy of Mind, AI
everything as so, I guess if people are interested in that
sort of thing, then then hot To enter the psychos Ferran and
listening on that. But but I do like getting less,
you know, people reaching out and engaging for me readers
often, see things that I didn't see or have their own knowledge
to bring to bear and I really love that aspect of the writing
life. So I guess that's what I would
say. A great links to all of those
things are in the show notes and thanks so much for being here.
Melanie, it's been my pleasure has been mine too, and if it has
been Yours as well. Listener, please rate and review
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