Living Worlds
‘We are much more than individualism allows’- Jürgen W. Kremer, PhD
We are holobionts, beings, and links made of diverse ecosystem relationships. Our valuable living, multi, and interspecies kinship make us cloud and river, caterpillar and flower, thunder and earthquake, wind and stone, stars and bone.
Ecological language is the language of the wild body and psyche, as vast as it is small. We are and become together.
In this diagram, adapted from Panu Pihkala’s work, we perceive the individual as profoundly interconnected and dependent (note how it feels to include this concept of dependence in the body) on dimensions and layers involving and ‘becoming together.’ Layers that spill over and influence each other in complex multidirectional systems:
Cosmic and Geological Living World — the vastness of the cosmic and geological ecology that directly influences all life. Through common environmental characteristics, such as climate patterns, geology, and the type of vegetation found in a given region.
Interspecies Living World — the complex and multiple relationships between living beings and with the elements of their context such as soil, water, the atmosphere...
Cultural Living-World — the variety of worldviews and cultural paradigms emerging from specific places and traveling in moving human bodies. Each culture, with its myths, stories, rites, symbols, and practices, adapted and responsive to its ecological context and seasonal and cataclysmic changes.
Individual Living World — from the biological body to the ecological Soul and the mythical Psyche, always in visceral relationship and direct contact with all the porous layers described above, whether through breathing or dreaming. As ecological links and never just one thing. Our existence and identity are radically relational and deeply ecological.
Cosmic-Chthonic Cartographies is becoming a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This page aims to have all the articles open to everyone. I welcome your paid subscription to help with my research work.