Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth — our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves o ff from these other voices, to continue by ... See more

We might not be able to escape the sociopolitical systems that structure the world at large, but by knowing they exist, we can be more intentional about how we move through and beyond them.

The things we call intelligence have transformed us from small, slow, physically weak apes to the solar system’s most lethal apex predators. However, when we ask whether other animals are intelligent, we’re not usually asking what capacities or kinds of bodies were advantageous in their evolutionary past. We’re really asking whether they do things ... See more

Intelligence is not central to the success of most life on Earth. Consider the grasses: they’ve flourished across incredibly diverse global environments, without planning or debating a single step. Planarian worms regrow any part of their body and are functionally immortal, a trick we can manage only in science fiction. And a microscopic virus effe... See more

Instead of a measurable, quantifiable thing that exists independently out in the world, we suggest that intelligence is a label, pinned by humanity onto a bag stuffed with a jumble of independent traits that helped our ancestors thrive.

Work, in fact, is interfering with my work,

and I want to work less so that I can have more time to work.

I need another word.

— Eula Biss, Having and Being Had

In a world that is completely without rituals and wholly profane, all that is left are consumption and the satisfaction of needs.