Imagination And Stories Are Impediments To Revolution

Monday, 19 May 2025, 7:43 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Many writers are reimagining humankind’s relationship with nature by “new storytelling,” which extends to nature the same rights and laws as people. Such anthropomorphizing of nature remains anthropocentric however, and therefore doesn’t touch the roots of man’s rapaciousness of the Earth.

To anthropomorphize means, “to ascribe human form or attributes to an animal, plant or object.” For example, there’s a sad fad in America of viewing the pet dog as a full-fledged “member of the family.” CBS ended its news show recently with a treacly report of how three siblings dealt with their mourning for a beloved family dog by holding a funeral for it, including a eulogy “celebrating his life.” God help us.

In a more sophisticated but no less disconcerting way, the writer and poet Robert Macfarlane exemplifies a growing fashion of anthropomorphizing nature when he says of his new book, “Are Rivers Alive?”:

“I want readers to imagine rivers as having lives, having deaths and even having rights – and to see what flows from that re-imagining in terms of law, culture and politics.”

Anthropocentrism “considers human beings as the most significant entity of the universe.” Why does according rights to nature remain anthropocentric?

Because rights and laws are human constructions, not emanations from nature, and extending rights and laws to nature projects the human mind, with its abstractions and formulations, onto nature. The idea of infusing nature with “rights” as human rights are being eroded around the world is ironically nonviable.

Macfarlane is correct in saying, “Everywhere now we see a war continuing to be waged between ‘anima,’ between life, and a power that seeks to mortify that life because it knows that the imaginative ‘deadening’ of land and water is the best step towards maximum extraction.”

However, by not first addressing the real human deadening that’s the source of maximum extraction, his prescription of imagining better stories is woefully insufficient.

Macfarlane reveals where he’s coming from when he says, “It is glaringly obvious to me that all thought is intersubjective. This book could not have been written by sitting still.”

To use a word that was only used in philosophy grad schools 20 years ago, let’s “unpack” that claim. First, there’s the assumption that thought is not only dominant in human life, but is the sole determinant of reality. Macfarlane disparages sitting still because apparently for him, thought never ceases its relentless chatter and production.

That’s confirmed when he says, “A great deal of my book was written in its first form either on rivers, by the banks of rivers, or within earshot of rivers.” And it becomes reductio ad absurdum when he adds, “I strongly felt at times that I was writing with the river, or even being written by it.”

Why is the author making a case against the imperative of completely quieting the mind in nature? Because the “intersubjective” idea of thought makes it glaringly obvious that he upholds the self, and that duality underlies his philosophy – the duality of the self and the river.

And by insisting on “intersubjectivity,” which means between subjective entities, he is maintaining the very separation of people and nature that he purports to end.

Perpetuating the inherent duality of thought, Macfarlane says, “The revolution my book calls for is a revolution of imagination.” But since imagination is a function of thought, that means no revolution at all.

A revolution in consciousness is not a revolution of the imagination. Half-measures such as telling better stories about the relationship between humans and nature, or imagining a different world than this one, are escapes from the tremendous challenge facing us as individuals and a species.

Underlying all idealistic worldviews is the unspoken premise that we don’t have to radically change, that new and better stories, along with concerted and collaborative activism, are sufficient to meet the crisis of man. They aren’t.

The crisis of man is the crisis of symbolic thought, which is the culmination in our time of the ancient motivations of self and deprivations of greed, leading to transnational capitalistic extraction of every “resource” on Earth.

The catastrophe of human consciousness cannot be resolved by reason and imagination, which are functions of the calamity that “higher thought” has become. Reason and imagination are necessary for doing science, making art, and building cities, but they are not and cannot be the basis for the revolution in consciousness essential to change the basic course of humankind.

With respect to activism, it simply doesn’t wash to cite indigenous people who proclaim that they see no distinction between their work as writers and as activists. Indigenous people preserving indigenous language, people and land is a good thing, but it’s not the way ahead for humanity. We cannot go back.

Macfarlane concludes by saying, “It feels as if that movement is presently stepping forwards very consequentially in terms of re-imagining and re-storying the law in order to strike at some of the deeply anthropocentric foundations of almost all nation-state jurisdictions.” But that isn’t so. And wishful thinking will not change anyone or anything.

It comes down to whether one believes, against overwhelming evidence, that activist movements are turning the tide of man’s destructiveness on Earth. There’s an almost desperate need to believe we are making a difference, but in fact the juggernaut of man’s rapaciousness is increasing, not decreasing its momentum.

Despite its fixed connotation, the root meaning of the word “foundation” is “to pour,” which is akin to the flowing rivers and streams that Macfarlane and I love.

And until enough people are pouring the foundation of insight every day through attentive stillness to the entire movement of thought, humans will continue to ravage the Earth.

Martin LeFevre

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Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Scoop Contributor

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.

His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

lefevremartin77@gmail