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- Graham Harvey: That's the difficult bit, is definitely listening, because we're not good at that, we're not good at listening to other humans, and we're definitely not good at listening to trees and rocks, and giving them time to say OK, is this human worth engaging with? Should I share any knowledge with them? And indigenous cultures they usually have very careful processes of bringing up children to learn how to engage respectfully with other than human persons and they bring them up slowly.
- So again, there was an allegation that Animism is childlike or childish even, you know, children saying 'Naughty table hurt me'. But that's not what Animism is like. The elders in most indigenous communities are more Animist than the children, because you need to learn how to appropriately approach a tree or a rock or an eagle or whatever, in a way that will be respectful and will be reciprocated.
- Rachael Kohn: That sounds like Animism is really a way of breaking down a hierarchy of worth that we carry around with us, that we are more worthwhile than animals or snails or worms or plants.
- Graham Harvey: Definitely. The Western culture has got this hierarchy that also depends on a separation, as if humanity was not part of the world. We talk about humans and nature, we talk about our environment as if it's somehow separate to us, and we're not part of it and we can draw on its resources to make stuff and to build our economy and so on.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2006/1683888.htm
Harvey's book: http://www.animism.org.uk/