Blog 15

David Abram makes some very interesting points in the selections from his book, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, read in class. He challenges the commonly held Cartesian beliefs regarding intelligence and their place next to the imperceptible wall known as the species barrier. In his chapter regarding birds, Abram shows how animal and human intelligence differ, but then relates these intelligences to the roles that each play in the lives of the human and animal - showing one is not superior to the other. "We spend much of our time deploying a very rarefied form of intelligence, manipulating abstract symbols while our muscled body is mostly inert. Hence, thinking, for us, seems to have little bearing on our carnal life; it often seems entirely independent of our body and our bodily relation to the biosphere...Other animals in contrast...think with the whole of their bodies. A nuanced necessary to orient and forage in a world of ever-changing forces" (Abram, 189). With this quote Abram shows that animals think just as much as humans, only differently to fit their own needs - the needs of one forced to survive in the forests and skies of the earth. Next, Abram focuses on speech, another trait specifically held as strictly human. Through a demonstration of the various calls and songs of the birds, he shows them as not only a thinking species, but also a vocal one - using language to warn the other creatures of the forest about possible danger. "The alarm call is uttered whenever danger is sensed...and it usually varies in volume with the degree of sensed danger...Upon hearing an alarm call, even birds form other, neighboring species halt whatever they're up to...Other animals, too, commonly stop and take notice" (Abram, 194). With his demonstration of bird "language," Abram shows that animals are just as capable of humans to express fear and emotion, speaking as part of "...an enigmatic cosmos that already spoke (speaks) to us in a myriad of tongues" (Abram, 4). In the selections from his book, Abram works to show that the species barrier is not nearly as dense as once imagined. The traits once considered strictly human, speech and thought, surround the earth in every aspect of its being - among the animals, through the trees, as a living biosphere.