A daughter's loving film portrait of one of the 20th century's most influential…
Becoming Animal
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
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An inspired collaboration between filmmakers Emma Davie (The Oil Machine) and Peter Mettler (The End of Time) and radical writer and philosopher David Abram ("The Spell of the Sensuous"), Becoming Animal is an urgent and immersive audiovisual quest, forging a path into the places where humans and other animals meet, where we pry open our senses to witness the so-called natural world—which in turn witnesses us, prompting us to reflect on the very essence of what it means to inhabit our animal bodies.
Shot in and around Grand Teton National Park, with its dizzying diversity of wildlife, trails of curious humans in RV’s and billion-year-old geology, the film is a geyser of provocative ideas and heightened sensations related to the sublime circuitry that connects us to our ever-shifting surroundings. A snail’s body becomes an immense landscape as the soundscape immerses us in shivering leaves, rushing rivers and the weird spacey pitch of elk bugling at night. Becoming Animal embraces the sensory tools of cinema to trace how the written word and technology has affected how we see.
Driven by wonder, curiosity and a desire for balance between ecological and technological imperatives, Becoming Animal is an invitation to explore our relationship with this “more than human" world and recognize it for what it is: an exquisitely intricate system in which everything is alive and expressive, humans, animals and landscapes are inextricably interdependent, and there is no such thing as empty space.
Bill McKibben | Environmentalist, Author, Educator, Journalist, Founder of Third Act
"Truly amazing. The separation between people and the rest of creation is one of the saddest facts of our day, but as Becoming Animal makes clear, it is not an unbridgeable gulf, not where there is sympathy, good humor, and a willingness to try. David Abram is one of the most remarkable of all Americans."
Marc Bekoff | Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Author, Rewilding Our Hearts and The Emotional Lives of Animals
"Becoming Animal will get you out to 'rewild your heart' and (re)connect with nature by opening your senses to what surrounds you and to the magnificent terrain in which you're immersed. My humble suggestion, and it's a simple ask, is to carefully watch and feel this film, share it with friends, and get outdoors as much as possible. Not only will this improve your own well-being but it also will help to protect our magnificent world from further and irreversible destruction. Because we are animals, "becoming animal" simply means we need to do what should come naturally and enjoy the feelings that arise and absorb us. If we remain alienated from nature, there will be a high price to pay for future generations."
Daniel T. Blumstein | Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles
"An artful and spiritual romp through the Grand Tetons that illustrates the sometimes strange ways that humans and wildlife coexist. It will stimulate discussions about the meaning of nature and wilderness in the Anthropocene as well as our drive to experience them."
Christopher Preston | Professor of Philosophy, University of Montana, Author, Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries that Change How We Think About Animals
"As Native people know, a landscape is not just a repository of animals, trees, and mountains. It is a source of wisdom on how to live well. Becoming Animal serves as a persuasive meditation on how to unlock that wisdom for those ensnared in the modern world."
EFE Verde | Environmental Dissemination (Spain)
"When you see people looking for animals, trying to record nature through photographs you ask if this experience makes them connect with nature or, on the contrary, isolates it as an object."
David Farrier | University of Edinburgh (Scotland)
"In light of all this planetary turmoil, David Abram's question—how do we become more attentive to what is transpiring in the body's world—arrives with a particular urgency. Emma Davie and Peter Mettler's beautiful, elliptical film presents us with a series of counter-intuitive responses: stillness and wonder in the face of acceleration and despair; sensuality in the face of emergency; quest in place of conquest."
Dominic Schmid, Filmexplorer (Germany)
"A cinematic experience that is both intellectual and sensual."
Dörthe Gromes, Player (Germany)
"So BECOMING ANIMAL is not only an intense visual and intellectual stimulation, but above all a passionate plea for the conscious perception of our world, in which human standards alone should not apply."
Guido Kalberer, Tages-Anzeiger (Germany)
"Becoming Animal makes us... aware of how distant and alien nature has become to us - despite or precisely because of romantic exaggeration and idealization."
Thomas Bodmer, Züritipp (Germany)
"Becoming Animal is mind-expanding: we not only perceive the nature shown differently, but also ourselves."
Brigitte Häring, srf.ch (Germany)
"Becoming Animal is a total work of art: an essay film, an image and sound collage, a philosophy seminar, a humorous film about filmmaking. Everything together."
Silvia Hallensleben, epd film (Germany)
"Nature writing... has a long literary tradition in the Anglo-Saxon world. Davies and Mettler's cinematic interpretation fits perfectly into a time in which humanity necessarily has to readjust its relationship to other species."
Esther Buss, film service (Germany)
"(David Abrams's) commentary on the mediation between the perceptions of humans and animals rubs shoulders with impressive photographs of nature and forms... fascinating connections with them."
film-rezensionen.de (Germany)
"As the film progresses, the brilliant shots develop an ever-increasing pull."
Philipp Stadelmaier, Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)
"A soothing, sensitizing, inspiring film."
Citation
Main credits
Davie, Emma (film director)
Mettler, Peter (film director)
Abram, David (on-screen participant)
Seitler, Cornelia (film producer)
Other credits
Cinematography, Peter Mettler; editing, Emma Davie, Peter Mettler.
Distributor subjects
No distributor subjects provided.Keywords
00:02:47.542 --> 00:02:50.959
So I was definitely hearing some
off in that direction.
00:02:56.292 --> 00:02:58.999
How about your ears?
Which direction?
00:02:59.334 --> 00:03:00.667
Over there.
00:03:07.792 --> 00:03:10.959
You can feel your ears to be listening
in their highest register.
00:03:27.167 --> 00:03:35.083
Listen for the sound of antlers clacking,
as the male bulls face off.
00:03:41.334 --> 00:03:46.334
That particular bull elk has a voice
so rich in overtoned it's amazing.
00:04:10.667 --> 00:04:12.375
- Did you hear those Peter?
- Yeah.
00:04:12.959 --> 00:04:14.000
- Beautiful eh?
- Yeah.
00:04:14.834 --> 00:04:16.334
It's a very high register.
00:04:17.751 --> 00:04:18.959
Sounds like whales.
00:05:11.999 --> 00:05:20.042
Somewhere we're listening to one of the
most evocative, plaintive sounds...
00:05:20.959 --> 00:05:25.250
...in all of this more than human world...
00:05:26.834 --> 00:05:33.083
...which is the sound of male elk bugling.
00:05:37.542 --> 00:05:39.334
It's a sound that...
00:05:41.292 --> 00:05:50.542
...arpeggios up and up into these high
overtones and then above....
00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:07.792
...and as you just heard it drops down
into the most full throated grunting.
00:06:08.459 --> 00:06:12.918
And so it seems to really...
00:06:14.626 --> 00:06:20.459
...set the context for all of our human
music making....
00:06:21.709 --> 00:06:24.417
...cause it reaches the height of
an ecstasy...
00:06:26.083 --> 00:06:33.584
...and drops into the depths of visceral
anguish and yearning.
00:06:40.584 --> 00:06:43.667
It's so good to be here,
it's so good to be out.
00:06:45.999 --> 00:06:48.542
So many things come awake at night...
00:06:49.876 --> 00:06:52.167
...when us two-legged usually
go to sleep.
00:07:37.834 --> 00:07:40.334
We have to keep our eyes peeled
like bananas.
00:07:42.584 --> 00:07:45.751
Is this animal territory where
we've been?
00:07:47.626 --> 00:07:50.667
We're coming into it, it's more
than where we've been.
00:07:52.500 --> 00:07:53.500
It's midnight.
00:07:54.709 --> 00:07:57.959
I'm in the Gran Teton Park with
fellow filmmaker Peter Mettler...
00:07:59.292 --> 00:08:02.125
...and David Abram, who's a
philosopher and writer.
00:08:11.375 --> 00:08:13.626
We move so fast
it's hard to see the land.
00:08:15.709 --> 00:08:21.083
In the dark I think I see aspen,
Douglas fir, Spruce.
00:08:23.167 --> 00:08:25.375
I name things to try
to connect with them.
00:08:52.125 --> 00:08:55.000
I can't seem to get into my telephone.
00:09:38.417 --> 00:09:42.459
I had this idea that we could somehow
engage with nature more fully...
00:09:42.834 --> 00:09:44.999
...through coming here
and making a film.
00:09:51.542 --> 00:09:53.292
Nature is a tricky word...
00:09:56.167 --> 00:09:59.000
...one that seems to separate us from it.
00:10:39.292 --> 00:10:41.292
How can I see this mountain
more clearly?
00:10:48.500 --> 00:10:51.918
Somehow by bringing David's words
and Peter's vision together....
00:10:53.959 --> 00:10:55.292
...I thought we could find a clue.
00:11:04.500 --> 00:11:07.250
Right now, I'm just thinking
about bears....
00:11:13.042 --> 00:11:14.584
...and eyes other than our own.
00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:27.834
- Peter, will we start from here?
- Probably, let me check it.
00:11:42.542 --> 00:11:43.834
Did you hear that growl?
00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:46.542
- Did you hear that Peter?
- No.
00:11:46.999 --> 00:11:51.334
I'm not joking it was a growl,
you heard it Jordon?
00:11:52.626 --> 00:11:55.500
- Okay we're ready to go.
- It was a very clear growl.
00:11:58.959 --> 00:12:01.167
David, did you make a growling sound?
00:12:10.626 --> 00:12:11.667
Okay David.
00:12:32.375 --> 00:12:36.584
If I notice a raven soaring overhead...
00:12:41.375 --> 00:12:43.834
...I allow my gaze...
00:12:45.667 --> 00:12:49.500
...to be fixed on that feathered body
for more than a few moments.
00:12:51.417 --> 00:12:57.459
Following it with my focus as the bird
swoops and dives...
00:12:58.918 --> 00:13:04.167
...then sometimes I will feel in my
muscles something of that glide.
00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:14.000
I mean, if I were just a little mind
housed inside my head...
00:13:14.834 --> 00:13:21.792
...it would be impossible to know about
the experience of another animal.
00:13:24.125 --> 00:13:30.334
But what if this awareness I call me is
distributed through my entire organism?
00:13:33.876 --> 00:13:41.834
And isn't this even more true for
animals who are more active that us?
00:13:42.834 --> 00:13:47.584
Aren't they thinking with the whole
of their bodies?
00:14:40.542 --> 00:14:43.792
When I gaze at another creature,
watching as it moves...
00:14:44.500 --> 00:14:49.209
...my nervous system is snapsed through
my senses to its nervous system.
00:14:57.834 --> 00:15:01.626
And so my awareness is in direct
contact with its awareness.
00:15:20.584 --> 00:15:26.792
Perception is an on going improvisation
between myself an other beings.
00:16:37.292 --> 00:16:40.584
This hand is a thoroughly
tangible entity.
00:16:41.792 --> 00:16:45.000
It has it's own smooth
and textured surface...
00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:50.125
...and so it's entirely a part of the
tacticle field that it explores.
00:16:51.584 --> 00:16:54.334
When I reach to touch this tree...
00:16:55.792 --> 00:17:01.959
...I can feel it's smooth surface under
my fingertimes and it's coolness.
00:17:02.918 --> 00:17:08.250
But there's also this other sensation,
I can feel the tree touching me.
00:17:09.375 --> 00:17:11.584
Sampling the chemsitry of my skin.
00:17:39.083 --> 00:17:42.751
These eyes which explore the visible
world...
00:17:43.542 --> 00:17:46.999
...have their own colours,
their own shiny surface.
00:17:48.542 --> 00:17:52.042
They are entirely a part of the visibile
field.
00:17:55.834 --> 00:18:01.834
When I gaze out at these trees, I'm not
just seeing their trunks and branches...
00:18:02.500 --> 00:18:07.000
...I'm also feeling myself seen from
their perspective.
00:18:12.209 --> 00:18:17.500
Trees after all are responding to light
and shadow all of the time...
00:18:17.709 --> 00:18:20.042
...they are highly photoreceptive beings.
00:18:37.751 --> 00:18:43.667
We might just as well say that the land
is perceiving itself through us.
00:19:11.083 --> 00:19:15.751
When I listen or see what's around,
with animals eyes or ears...
00:19:17.125 --> 00:19:18.417
...nothing is passive.
00:19:22.834 --> 00:19:26.751
I feel my senses are part of a huge
network of communication.
00:19:27.542 --> 00:19:29.209
Like tree roots reaching out.
00:19:37.042 --> 00:19:39.375
How can our filmmaking be part of this?
00:19:52.626 --> 00:19:54.459
There are big clouds coming.
00:19:55.584 --> 00:19:57.375
Okay I'm going to grab this shot then,
00:19:58.792 --> 00:20:01.584
- Which way?
- From here, I won't move the tripod.
00:20:04.626 --> 00:20:07.042
- Do you want us to move the stuff?
- Yeah.
00:20:16.542 --> 00:20:19.709
- Is my microphone in the picture?
- Yes.
00:20:20.042 --> 00:20:21.042
The stand?
00:20:23.999 --> 00:20:25.250
For the last few years...
00:20:25.834 --> 00:20:29.334
...I've been so happy just pointing
my cameras at the natural world.
00:20:36.918 --> 00:20:39.375
Strangely, it is an affirmation of the
moment...
00:20:41.334 --> 00:20:42.667
...of being in the present.
00:20:51.125 --> 00:20:53.042
But the animal in me is mistrustful.
00:20:55.834 --> 00:20:58.959
How can technology possibly help us
connect...
00:20:59.751 --> 00:21:01.876
...with this vibrant life that surrounds us?
00:22:41.542 --> 00:22:44.999
My different senses continually
diverge from my body...
00:22:45.751 --> 00:22:50.334
...and yet they continually converge and
flow together in the things I percieve.
00:22:56.083 --> 00:23:01.584
Which enables me to experience each
other being as a conjuction of forces.
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:17.542
My body's an open circuit that completes
itself on other beings I focus on...
00:23:18.834 --> 00:23:24.375
...and so I exprience my own coherance
only by entering into relation with others.
00:23:30.500 --> 00:23:34.250
In touching things, I feel touched
by those things...
00:23:34.542 --> 00:23:38.792
...in gazing out at the world,
I feel seen by that world.
00:23:46.292 --> 00:23:49.334
Isn't this what anthropologists call
anamism?
00:23:53.500 --> 00:23:57.667
It seems to me that sensory perception
is inherently animistic.
00:24:02.083 --> 00:24:05.459
It's not just this sense that everything
is alive...
00:24:06.250 --> 00:24:09.417
...but also that everything is expressive.
00:28:05.876 --> 00:28:09.417
We can think of language as a
representation of the world...
00:28:10.542 --> 00:28:13.500
...but language is also a bodily thing.
00:28:14.542 --> 00:28:17.709
It's a sensuous activity, speaking.
00:28:18.417 --> 00:28:22.042
An exchange between our body
and the other bodies around us.
00:28:25.209 --> 00:28:29.959
Gush. Wash. Splash. Rush.
00:28:31.375 --> 00:28:37.167
The sound that unites those words is
the sound that water itself speaks.
00:28:39.542 --> 00:28:41.375
"Shhhhhh"
00:28:50.209 --> 00:28:56.292
So, doesn't our langauge belong to the
animate landscape as much as to us?
00:31:27.083 --> 00:31:30.542
Writing arises from out interaction with
the ainimate earth.
00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:37.542
The terrain around us is shot through
with suggestive crawls and traces.
00:31:40.334 --> 00:31:42.375
From the calligraphy of rivers...
00:31:43.083 --> 00:31:46.918
...to the black slash burned by lightning
into the trunk of an old tree.
00:32:06.167 --> 00:32:07.792
Our impulse to read...
00:32:08.667 --> 00:32:15.709
...dervies from our hunting ancestors
who read the tracks of other animals.
00:32:16.667 --> 00:32:22.500
Soon we learned to make our own
tracks on cave walls and rock faces.
00:32:28.334 --> 00:32:34.792
These petroglyphs were themselves
traces of elk, rain clouds, bison.
00:32:46.918 --> 00:32:50.209
With the emergence of formal
writing systems...
00:32:50.876 --> 00:32:56.000
...among the written characters of
hieroglyphic or idiographic scripts...
00:32:59.999 --> 00:33:03.792
...were stylised images of sunrise,
of mountain.
00:33:07.667 --> 00:33:13.999
Such glyphs functioned as windows
opening onto a land that speaks.
00:33:21.042 --> 00:33:25.459
Human language began to abstract
itself from the land.
00:33:31.709 --> 00:33:34.709
A powerful new magic
began to emerge...
00:33:36.584 --> 00:33:37.584
...the alphabet.
00:33:42.584 --> 00:33:44.751
With the advent of the phonetic
alphabet...
00:33:45.042 --> 00:33:50.042
...the characters no longer imaged
anything in the sensuous surroundings.
00:33:54.626 --> 00:33:59.542
Each letter now referred us only to a
gesture made by the human mouth.
00:34:04.417 --> 00:34:09.417
We see a G and we go "guh",
we see an M and we go "mmm".
00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:17.125
Letters no longer fuction as windows
onto a more than human landscape...
00:34:17.667 --> 00:34:22.250
...but solely as mirrors reflecting the
human face back onto itself.
00:34:42.209 --> 00:34:44.459
As people learn their ABCs...
00:34:44.876 --> 00:34:49.000
...their sensorium is gradually closed
within a hall of mirrors.
00:34:50.959 --> 00:34:56.667
Counsciousness or awareness now
seems the property of humans alone.
00:35:20.667 --> 00:35:24.292
It's said that other animals are not really
conscious.
00:35:26.667 --> 00:35:29.042
Plants are certainly not awake
and aware...
00:35:31.584 --> 00:35:35.375
...much less the river, or the wind,
or the thunderclouds.
00:36:05.459 --> 00:36:10.876
Alphabetic literacy is a new and very
concentrated form of anamism.
00:36:13.876 --> 00:36:18.876
The supposedly inert or inanimate
letters now speak to us, vividly.
00:36:19.167 --> 00:36:22.459
Much as rocks and spiders
once spoke to us.
00:38:22.709 --> 00:38:25.459
Once we begin writing down...
00:38:28.876 --> 00:38:32.500
...for the first time in human experience
there's this...
00:38:33.542 --> 00:38:38.751
...dawning sense of time as a linear
progression of events...
00:38:40.999 --> 00:38:45.834
...that is something distinct from space.
00:38:48.500 --> 00:38:55.334
Space is the world of nature, the plants,
the happenings of other animals.
00:38:57.500 --> 00:39:02.584
It doesn't exist as a sense of time that
comes from a distant past...
00:39:02.709 --> 00:39:08.209
...going towards a distant future, that's
a notion for us two-leggeds.
00:39:24.792 --> 00:39:32.375
With the peoples of the book comes this
very new sense of human history...
00:39:33.667 --> 00:39:40.125
...that began somewhere, but is going
somewhere else.
00:40:08.500 --> 00:40:16.292
Nature, the other animals, the plants,
begin to fall away from our awareness.
00:40:19.459 --> 00:40:26.584
The real stuff of import is human.
00:42:38.250 --> 00:42:46.876
Everybody is caught up in this
fascination with recording things.
00:42:48.125 --> 00:42:51.999
There's even a sense that...
00:42:53.834 --> 00:42:59.626
...an event, an encounter is not really
real unless it's recorded.
00:43:04.834 --> 00:43:14.459
I sometimes wonder if we humans, like
other animals of this world are sliding...
00:43:15.999 --> 00:43:21.584
...rapidly into a time of such difficulty.
00:43:23.459 --> 00:43:30.209
Are we recording so much because of
some instictive urge to make a record...
00:43:31.500 --> 00:43:38.834
...of how we are living in this era of
profligate spending...
00:43:40.709 --> 00:43:49.876
...because those in the future will want
to know what happened to those people?
00:43:51.334 --> 00:43:52.584
Who were they?
00:45:14.500 --> 00:45:16.417
I should get that before it disappears.
00:49:35.125 --> 00:49:38.375
- Do you remember where to go?
- Yeah, you just stay on this road.
00:49:39.459 --> 00:49:45.292
- What about our nice coffee place?
- I think after.
00:50:01.542 --> 00:50:02.751
It's quite nerve-wracking.
00:50:20.709 --> 00:50:25.083
It's kind of great, not being here
in the middle of summer...
00:50:26.500 --> 00:50:29.999
...when there are so many cars
on these roads.
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:45.918
Some people say they notice how
people come to look like their pets.
00:50:46.083 --> 00:50:48.792
I find people come to look like their cars.
00:50:50.083 --> 00:50:53.167
Their faces look like the grill on them.
00:50:58.125 --> 00:50:59.834
My car's name is moonshine...
00:51:01.500 --> 00:51:05.918
...because it's kind of silver, and it just
seemed a great name for it.
00:51:08.209 --> 00:51:12.876
It's always felt to me like once one can
find the right...
00:51:14.417 --> 00:51:16.834
...name for ones vehicle...
00:51:21.042 --> 00:51:26.167
...suddenly you begin taking better care,
of the car...
00:51:27.959 --> 00:51:32.209
...and noticing just what good care
it takes of you.
00:51:34.417 --> 00:51:36.167
Is there a river down there you can see?
00:51:38.000 --> 00:51:39.334
I'm just going to take a quick peek.
00:52:08.125 --> 00:52:15.667
It's kind of wild, witnessing this
outrageous proliferation of technology.
00:52:16.709 --> 00:52:21.751
Right at the same moment that there's
such a fraying and fragmentation...
00:52:22.209 --> 00:52:26.626
...within the earth's various ecosystems.
00:52:36.584 --> 00:52:43.792
It's weird to listen to so many of the
inventors in Silicon Valley.
00:52:45.334 --> 00:52:53.209
Their, image of this future, where
human consciousness is finally able to...
00:52:53.626 --> 00:52:59.042
...download itself from this problematic
body into better hardware...
00:53:00.250 --> 00:53:05.459
...that will enable an immortality to the
human species.
00:53:20.999 --> 00:53:27.042
As we are spending more and more
time entranced by our artefacts...
00:53:29.542 --> 00:53:36.209
...it enables us not to notice what's
going on in the bodies' world...
00:53:43.334 --> 00:53:44.751
...which is really the earth.
00:55:01.250 --> 00:55:11.125
In engaging with our technologies,
we are reflected back to ourselves.
00:55:11.667 --> 00:55:16.918
That is, the technologies intervene
between our...
00:55:18.375 --> 00:55:23.209
...sensing bodies and the
sensuous earth...
00:55:25.417 --> 00:55:31.459
...in such a way, that we begin
interacting with the technology...
00:55:32.083 --> 00:55:37.459
...and forgetting that there is a wider,
more than human world.
00:55:42.959 --> 00:55:50.250
And yet the technologies originate
as tools...
00:55:50.876 --> 00:55:56.751
...helping us to make contact with or
engage that wider than human world.
00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:12.334
We are yearning to feel what it's like to
live in a world filled with intelligence.
00:56:16.999 --> 00:56:22.751
And so our way of trying to get there,
to recreate that experience...
00:56:23.459 --> 00:56:31.250
...involves outfitting digital interfaces
into every built item of our world.
00:56:36.667 --> 00:56:39.125
Ubiquitous, computing.
00:56:39.999 --> 00:56:43.959
Imagine you have zero cookies and you
split them evenly among zero friends.
00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:49.417
Natural language user interfaces
programmed to talk back to us.
00:57:08.459 --> 00:57:17.417
Sometimes it does seem as though, our
technologies are just trying to mimic...
00:57:18.876 --> 00:57:24.792
...that ancient, oral, animistic cosmos
we once inhabited.
01:02:23.375 --> 01:02:27.709
We are flying, and I've almost forgotten
to notice.
01:02:34.250 --> 01:02:39.834
As I sense the plane around me,
has my body grown wings?
01:02:55.375 --> 01:02:59.042
We are carried carefully,
miraculously through space...
01:03:01.999 --> 01:03:06.250
...by the very technology which risks
eclipsing us from it's source...
01:03:08.250 --> 01:03:10.584
...relegating us to a
purely human world.
01:03:26.584 --> 01:03:30.375
And I remember that in the skeleton
of this plane...
01:03:31.334 --> 01:03:33.250
...is the bird that taught us to fly.
01:07:41.709 --> 01:07:47.542
The origins of many of our common
words seem to suggest...
01:07:48.500 --> 01:07:54.042
...an ancient affinity between the mind
and the atmosphere.
01:07:59.709 --> 01:08:06.292
Like our word 'spirit', which shares the
same origin as the word 'respiration'.
01:08:08.042 --> 01:08:10.292
They are both from the Latin word,
'Spiritus'...
01:08:10.542 --> 01:08:13.250
...which means 'a breath'
or a 'gust of wind'.
01:08:16.626 --> 01:08:21.125
Or the word 'Psyche', from which we get
'psychology' or 'psychiatry'.
01:08:22.042 --> 01:08:25.542
It comes from this ancient
Greek term, 'Psykhe'...
01:08:25.999 --> 01:08:29.417
...which originally mean 'a breath' or
'a gust of wind'.
01:08:33.292 --> 01:08:40.167
It would seem that this affinity between
mind and wind...
01:08:40.417 --> 01:08:43.667
...is one of the oldest and most
common intuitions.
01:08:45.459 --> 01:08:47.459
As though the air itself was aware.
01:09:12.792 --> 01:09:14.876
Because we are bodily immersed...
01:09:16.584 --> 01:09:22.083
...along with all the other animals and
the plants, inside a mind that isn't ours...
01:09:23.292 --> 01:09:24.959
...but is rather the earths.
01:09:55.334 --> 01:10:03.167
Among the Inuit, the name is 'Sila',
wind mind of the world...
01:10:03.876 --> 01:10:06.083
...which gives all beings breath
and awareness.
01:10:07.083 --> 01:10:13.375
In Hebrew, the word is 'Ruach',
sometimes transladed as 'rushing spirit'.
01:10:14.959 --> 01:10:16.792
It's the wind which is the spirit.
01:10:23.709 --> 01:10:27.500
Modern civilisation has long taken
the air for granted.
01:10:28.584 --> 01:10:32.083
We don't speak of the air beween
oneself and a nearby tree...
01:10:32.209 --> 01:10:34.709
...we just speak of the empty space
between us.
01:10:36.292 --> 01:10:38.999
It's empty, a void.
01:10:40.375 --> 01:10:44.542
And hence a perfect place to dump
bi-products of our industries.
01:10:59.167 --> 01:11:06.292
For our oral ancestors, that which
dissipates and dissolves into the air...
01:11:07.584 --> 01:11:11.209
...is by that very movent entering
into the mind.
01:11:14.918 --> 01:11:17.459
For mind is not a human property.
01:11:19.792 --> 01:11:22.292
It's a property of the biosphere itself.
Distributor: Bullfrog Films
Length: 79 minutes
Date: 2018
Genre: Expository
Language: English
Grade: 10-12, College, Adults
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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