Is the River Wye Alive?
Rivers are not small single entities, like humans or horses, but living systems. Water is the causal agent of life.
Water came to earth 4.5 billion years ago, enabling life to begin. Water sustains all life. No animal or plant on earth can survive long without water. Life is a process not a substance. No organisms exist separate to their environment, constant inputs of air, food and water and outputs are essential. So where does the body of an organism stop and the environment begin?
The modern scientific understanding of life, describes all existence as intimately interwoven together. Life is a dynamic, adaptive, continuous flow - held within cooperative, collectives of beings, which are simultaneously whole in themselves, as well as a part of a larger whole.
This modern perspective reflects the ancient indigenous Animist spirituality found all over the world.
Animists understand all parts of the natural world; rivers, trees, lakes, mountains, thunderstorms, to be alive, with their own intentions and intelligence. Many animist traditions regard features of the environment to be non-human relatives or ancestors and use kinship terms to describe members of the natural world. “Grandfather” refers to one who is wise, who deserves to be listened to and has lived longer than the human lifespan. Humans are acknowledged to exist within dependent relationships with natural forces and other creatures, and animists use a range of practices to maintain and develop deeper, social relationships with the living world.
Until relatively recent times, various forms of animism were the dominant religions across all human societies, yet today, animistic beliefs are largely unknown or misunderstood. Essentially the animist’s worldview is from one living thing to another living thing, in contrast to the “I-It” way of relating to the world which is common today. Philosophers William James and Martin Buber describe this as an “I-Thou” relationship, and explain “The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou”. Other philosophers go further, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, suggest the mechanistic worldview, which deadens the universe, is the cause of widespread depression, loneliness and disenchantment. They contend that this disenchantment can be cured by taking up an animistic perspective.
Animism is a transformative perspective; if you perceive the River Wye to be alive, with her own purpose and intelligence, your actions will be very different than if you percieve the Wye to be merely a resource for human’s to use as they choose.
Celebrated writer Robert Macfarlane's book "Is a River Alive" is reminding people of this ancient perspective on the world and the growing national and international movement on the Rights of Nature is seeking to encourage recognition of the natural world in both everyday action and law.
Rivers are ancient, they experienced the time when humans had this animistic perspective; the thousands of years we lived by their banks and the waters were clean enough to drink, when we celebrated on the banks of the Wye as we watched the return of millions of Salmon, when we still recognised the sacred living nature of the natural world and knew our place within it.
