TEAM ANIMISM
IT ALL LOVES YOU BACK
If we’re limiting ourselves to the archaic binary, for the sake of conversation - I have a very masculine trait.
I drive a pickup truck, and she is a glorious, autonomous entity. Every homecoming I lovingly pat her dashboard, thanking her for being my trusty chariot and keeping me safe and sound. When I’m overlanding, she’s an active participant in the decision on where to stop.
When I say “she” at the mechanic, instead of “it”, the men chuckle at me like I’m trying to be cute. I am not. I feel this is a little disrespectful to my girl, she is right there.
When driving, I fuse with her. I am a twenty-first century centaur on all-weather tires, I am a white Tacoma with a black shell on the back, I am giving outdoorsy stormtrooper.
I whip her with a grace and agility I am rather proud of. I’m a great driver, a fast driver. Or am I absorbing her power and mistaking it for my own?
Driving is a death trap, but I wouldn’t know, because I am with HER, precise and powerful steed. She knows it, because I tell her, often.
I don’t believe in holding back honest compliments under any circumstances.
This whole “she” business is usually assigned to the classic Vehicle Bro caricature - classic car enthusiasts, motorcycle dudes, etc. Although their vibe feels a little objectification-ish to me, like they might wanna fuck their car subconsciously or whatever.
Honestly, I get it.
The vehicle as feminine noun predates the modern shipping industry. Could be rooted in sailor superstition - “take good care of her, and she’ll take good care of you”.
Perhaps it’s an offering, invoking mother figures for protection during a treacherous journey. Columbus’ famous ship was named for the Virgin Mary - “La Santa Maria”.
Or it’s not that deep. The gender of the Latin word for “ship” : navis : is feminine.
Seems to me, an unqualified know-it-all, it’s likely a combination of the above… a linguistic habit as relic.
A reflection of the cultural norm of the time: universal acceptance that everything is just as alive as we are.
We live with an unspoken detachment from the world around us. It’s so basic we never even clock it as a Thing. It’s the bedrock of our reality and moral agency.
Some things are Alive, some things are Living (But Not Alive Like We Are), and some things are Dead.
ANIMISM is the antithesis - a worldview that regards the entire universe as conscious, relational, and infused with life force.
Any luthier worth their salt will tell you wood remembers stress, expresses gratitude and has strong opinions. Violins are said to “open up” for certain players.
Glenn Gould (one of the greatest pianists of all time) talked aloud to his piano during practice and recording.
He brought his same busted-ass chair to every studio, refusing to sit on anything else, even when it was falling apart under him.
He was famously loyal to a small number of pianos and believed that some were untrustworthy.
In recordings you can hear him muttering, coaxing, negotiating with his instrument.
Animism is often misunderstood as a primitive “belief” that inanimate objects have souls - this dummy really thinks her car is sentient. It ain’t that!
Animism is a mode of engagement: as busted wide open to reality, responsive to all you encounter.
WE DON’T KNOW SHIT, NEVER HAVE
In the grand scheme of things, “dead matter” is an incredibly recent hallucination. For most of human existence, we experienced the universe as inherently alive.
Obviously, the argument that We Believed This Long Ago So It Must Be True isn’t exactly bulletproof. So, let’s all just agree that we have no idea what’s going on.
The only certainty is that our current convictions will be devoured whole by whatever is coming next.
(It’s for this reason I can’t stand a “trust the science” MF!!!)
There are zero negative consequences here- save the faint possibility of feeling silly (an issue only for those invested in maintaining a rational, pragmatic facade) (something I would know nothing about).
Animism doesn’t require certainty, only participation.
Our perspective is all we got- it’s the place to take agency and choose the one that we PREFER.
I choose the one that’s brimming with teachers and friends and doorways to connection.
When we assume that we are the pinnacle of aliveness, things get significantly more lonely.
Declaring my fellow man as the only equal worth acknowledging and interacting with leaves a lot on the table.
I’m trying to squeeze every drop out of this incarnation, I’m tapping every source within my reach, I’m a greedy greedy menace - let me have it.
Across cultures, weapons act as the ultimate co-sign and moral participants.
Inuit hunters speak directly to the harpoon, knowing it will hold them responsible if they are off their game. A harpoon used wastefully or mistreated will refuse to strike in the future or cause storms.
Masamune’s swords in 16th century Japan were said to show ethical restraint. The sword executed justified killing only, and straight up refused to cut the innocent.
Answerability makes for a more principled community. It was much harder to engage in some fuckass activity when the whole village knew you.
The more intimately an object is woven into our days, the more it responds, mediates, and remembers our true nature.
When anonymity is dead, what do you stand for?
Indigenous people are the OG animists. They are kinship embodied - everything in the more-than-human world is a relative.
The land is an authority and an elder. Plants are individual teachers, each with a specific temperament and lesson.
Living so entwined with the great Mystery pares our bloated self-regard down to its small, rightful place - a quiet second thing.
As embodied participants, immersed up to our sweet little necks, everything is a Russian-doll of exchanges and relationships. We never encounter the world as detached observers, no matter how zen or intellectual we fancy ourselves.
Isolated experiences consisting of you alone with yourself do not exist because your entire life is experienced through EXPERIENCING.
We have to muscle our way into Abstraction, it requires deliberate effort.
This stifles the present moment in favor of a predictable, controllable world. Our signature move!
THESE GUYS GET IT
Merleau-Ponty is the daddy of embodied subjectivity. His masterpiece is Phenomenology of Perception.
It’s a chunky beast of a book that says: stop pretending you’re a disembodied brain. You know the world because you’re in it, flesh first. In 1945 I imagine this was a pretty punk rock stance to be taking.
He takes a swing at all the dualisms: mind vs. body, subject vs. object, inner vs. outer.
MP says: WRONG, all of these start from the same assumption. That there’s a pure thinking subject separate from the world it’s trying to know.
Perception comes first, it’s the sole doorway to everything else.
The world feels alive before our intellect intervenes. The mountain looms with presence, the crackling fire wraps us in instinctive safety. The old house broods, heavy and reflective even on the sunniest of days.
These are not metaphors but primary data of consciousness.
That’s why children live as animist. Kids report their unfiltered, first-hand experience - apologizing to a dropped toy, assuming the clouds drift with intention, bonding with imaginary friends that live in objects or spaces.
Before we come along and poison the well, that is - cultural conditioning shifts the innocent nugget toward objectification at around seven years old.
MP also kills the idea of objective, neutral space. Space isn’t out there, it’s oriented around whatever it is I’m doing right now. Sitting in my truck, the dashboard is “here,” the horizon is “there,” the trail is “ahead.”
When I change my posture or goal, space shifts with me.
That means perception is reciprocal. When you look at the world; the world looks back. When I touch a rock, the rock touches me.
“In touching, I am touched; in being touched, I touch. In the experience of touching, the hand itself is a visible part of the world; it is both subject and object.”
Anything that decentralizes us from the center of our own universe is a blissful release.
Failures are never entirely on us, as we were working collaboratively. It was a team effort. The resources we need are always in reach, regardless of our bank account or 3D circumstances.
MOST NOTABLY:
Wins and strokes of luck are no longer some nebulous unfolding or a result of our brilliance. It was a thoughtful gift, one that was bestowed by a comrade or guardian.
We say thank you when somebody helps us, that’s just good manners.
Cultivating a steady hum of thankfulness is a potent balm for the static of existential dread and the hard-to-kick pessimism addiction.
Philosophers like Martin Buber talked about the buoyant power of this reciprocity.
In the moments when we meet something as a full “you” instead of an “it,” life feels meaningful. A new relational space emerges (what Buber called “the between”) - something greater than the sum of the two individuals.
The opposite is treating the other (person, animal, object, God/Higher Source) as an It… making it something for using, analyzing, categorizing, manipulating.
I don’t feel the need to prove the world is alive. It obviously is. Here’s a banger of a list in case you disagree.
If we believe that:
our lived experience is a valid source of truth
our worldview shouldn’t suffocate our imagination
we are not the only Important Thing
then holding reality as animate is not poetic or even spiritual. It is the most honest and responsible stance.
Goddamn, should I join a debate team?
THE TREES TAUGHT ME
I used to say that I am in a “hermit phase”, but I no longer believe it is a temporary chapter.
In my gradual relaxation into the sweet nest of solitude, isolation has not touched me. I am never alone.
This Life around me is no replacement for my people, of course, and is not meant to be. It offers other dimensions of support and camaraderie.
The Magnolia blooms in June, but she shines all year. This magnificent guardian is the tallest tree on the block.
I’m brand-new to the neighborhood, boxes barely unpacked. I’m severely underfed and grieving, emanating the frequency of a (sexy) frayed wire.
In the dizzying waves of a big transition… Life decided to mirror it with a loud literality. That cheeky bitch!
Intense vertigo spells begin to hit me out of nowhere. Every couple hours I am utterly owned by some false gremlin gravity.
Vertigo goes a little something like:
floor buckles beneath me, room spins sideways, my eyeballs stutter in a freaky uncontrollable way.
I surrender to hurling on a carnival hellride for an unknown amount of time.
When it eases I am nauseous and shaky, two of the worst things to be, unable to engage in my usual grounding exorcisms (sprinting, sweating, gardening, etc). Humbling stuff.
I need help, not the human kind.
I curl up at the base of her trunk, dig my bare feet into the soil, and I ask her to teach me how to root
down
down
down.
Let me be sturdy and abiding.
Let every weather pass over me with peaceful indifference.
Let my presence be life-sustaining to all that grows nearby.
This is not my first tree ally. I hugged the same redwood every morning for six years. Backlit morning fog haloing one of the tallest, oldest living things is peak god-is-real-shit.
Dizzy or not, I spend many hours with my palms pressed to the Magnolia.
Endless layers of activity reveal themselves to me, sweet reward for Sitting and Watching.
She is the mothership, the entire neighborhood flocks to her for shelter and nourishment. Raven knocks from his preferred limb, rarely does he perch elsewhere. Tidy line of ants march up her bark. Post-rain mushrooms bloom from her roots.
Her signature move is to interrupt my deepest transfixion with a startling thwump - seed pod grenades plummet down at random, spilling crimson pods into the clover. They are shockingly heavy, could do real damage to a squirrel in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She has mischief in her, a touch of danger, which I adore the most.
As with all good mothers, she teaches by quiet example. Her capacity is unshakable- tending to brimming nests, hives, colonies, tender human newcomers.
She holds it all so easily.
Vitality hangs thick and sweet in the air.
Life is so much more fun when everything is alive. I resonate with this a ton, especially the part about us not knowing shit, how freeing that is, and how restrictive the 'trust the science' worldview can be. Reassuring to see others out there taking on similar stances. Also, had a little synchronicity here with the Glenn Gould mention, I'd just done a deep dive on him last night, having come across his name for the first time after reading it in 'Leave Society' by Tao Lin. Then I scroll Substack this morning and see this. Love it
Absolutely loved reading this, well done.