Gavin Van Horn: The practice of kinning as porous beings (ep359)
“Instead of being head over heels, be heels over head. Privilege your sense of touch. I think that shifts the weight of an overactive mind back into the body, [towards] our full body-mind experiences. ”
In this episode, we welcome Gavin Van Horn, Ph.D Executive Editor at the Center for Humans and Nature and leads the Book Series for the Center for Humans and Nature Press. He is the co-editor, with Robin Wall Kimmerer and John Hausdoerffer, of the five-volume series, Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations; and the author of The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds.
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Transcript:
Note: *Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Gavin Van Horn: I use the term orphanhood in the essay that I contribute to the Kinship volumes. It's in Vol. 2, which is about place. When I am speaking about orphanhood, I don't mean actual human family orphanhood, although that can be a part of it. What I'm getting at is more of an existential feeling of orphanhood.
We feel deeply this sense of separation, of disconnect or disjointedness. We know that something is amiss, that there's something not quite right about our relations, that we feel adrift in the world.
That can be a product of a lot of things. The hyper-individualism of Western culture, the way that we're taught to compete with one another rather than cooperate... I'm painting in broad strokes here, but [there are] some general tendencies of this worldview that many of us inherit, that we are apart from other creatures, that human beings are separate.
Usually, the implication is that we're superior in some way, that we are atop a hierarchy rather than within a circle or around a table, so to speak, [or] a big giant potluck. We are different to such a degree from other creatures that we are different in kind from them. That there is a firm wall of separation between ourselves and other creatures.
From that follows a sense of orphanhood that we've literally been uprooted, to use the title of one of your podcasts. Our land relationships, in my mind, are some of the most, if not the most fundamental relationships in our lives. So, if we feel connected and rooted in place, if our identity and a sense of belonging are established along with sharing our places with many, many different types of organisms in that place—which is in some way alive to us, and not only gives to us, which all places do in terms of our sustenance, [but also in] the breath we breathe—if we are in some way giving back and if we are in reciprocity with that place, then that sense of orphanhood dissipates, and we have in its place, a sense of belonging.
In my essay, I talk about the ways that orphanhood was somewhat prominent in my life, because I came from a settler-colonial background ancestrally, in the very recent founding of Oklahoma, which was a state that gained statehood in 1907—so very recent, just a little over 100 years ago. The final settlement of that state included a land grab essentially. During an event called the land run, people lined up, a gun was fired, and they ran and claimed a piece of land as though land could be owned, [as though] the land was mere property.
In some way, I am, by virtue of being born in Oklahoma, the inheritor of that settler-colonial worldview that thinks that land is a resource from which we can extract things that we don't have to be in reciprocity with.
It doesn't ask anything from us. It's not a gift-giving relationship. It's one of forcible seizure. That creates orphans, land orphans. So, there's that specific example and experience. But I think it can be more broadly generalized, as I said before, to a feeling that I think a lot of people have, that “What's wrong? Why do I feel so separate or why do I feel so adrift?”
A lot of times it can be traced back to that sense of having been uprooted or [having] participated in the uprooting of others—not just humans, but all kinds of creatures that have been displaced by this colonial obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Kamea Chayne: Part of the challenge is that some people do feel this sense of being disconnected and uprooted, but at the same time, they may be so disassociated that they don't even recognize, or can name, that sense of being uprooted. They don't even recognize that something is wrong, because they have been so disassociated that they cannot see that disconnection.
We've explored this briefly in a separate conversation for UPROOTED, but your invitation has been for us to understand kinning as a verb, perhaps in part to counter this feeling of orphanhood. At the core, what do you mean when you talk about kinship and what might listening more deeply, with our entire bodies and seeing ourselves not as individualized, separate entities, but more so as porous beings with our skin as membranes, interacting with these broader ecosystems, what could this look like, and lead us towards?
Gavin Van Horn: I'll start with what you began with there, which is this idea of kinning.
Being kin is not a static thing. It is an action. It is a practice. It is something we do when we engage with the world around us.
Something that's important to bear in mind is, it might be a common thing to walk out of our back doors, or front doors, or whatever, and see the world as though we were part of a play. As though everything is just a backdrop, like a painted scene that we were making our way through. And that can be reinforced to us in a strange way.
When I lived in Chicago, walking through downtown, there was a feeling sometimes of being in the midst of this chaos of human bodies. I saw so much humanity that if I didn't look up at the sky or down toward the cracks in the pavement or out toward the river, then it can begin to become a very self-reflexive thing, in a negative way, where [I would start to] feel like humans [were] the only species in town. But that's not the case, of course.
So, when we are out and about, it's important to remember that this isn't simply a monologue between ourselves, and our one-directional flow between ourselves and the world around us. That there is actually the potential for dialogue if we are receptive to it, and that involves not just venturing out into the world in a way that we're just grasping what we need, but being open.
As you said, maybe think of our own porosity, the way that our skin is simply a membrane—which is what it actually is, it keeps us bound together enough so that we can think of ourselves as individuals, but it's also a constant exchange of information between ourselves and the world around us.
Sometimes I think of it as a drumhead, that it's not where we end. It's the medium through which we can begin to receive, through which we can be played, if you will, by the world around us.
That just requires subtle shifts of perception, where we're allowing ourselves to shift into a feeling of not just what's going on between our ears, [or in] our own monkey mind… If we can let go of some of that need or that wild churning of mind and settle into a presence among others, then we can gift our attention to the world.
We say “in common” [as] a colloquialism that we give our attention to something. I think that underscores that reciprocal relationship that we are after. When we're talking about kinning, when we attend, we're giving of ourselves to others, we’re focusing in such a way we are being present to another being that's not so abstract.
You can think about that in any caring or intimate relationship that we're in with another human being. For it to truly grow and develop, and for us to deepen that relationship, we can't always simply be the ones who are speaking. We can't simply be the ones who are always demanding what we want.
To be present to another means in some ways, you're giving away part of yourself to that other, and you're both potentially growing or flourishing because of that.
Kamea Chayne: To make this feel even more tangible, you talk about this practice of attentive walking, and of course, everyone will have a different way of engaging more deeply with the world, but what do you specifically do, or what senses do you try to really tune into more deeply or amplify when you're striving to engage with this practice of kinning?
Gavin Van Horn: I do a lot of walking, and that's just a matter of slowing my pace down and being open. But I also will sometimes take my shoes off, if I can, and if it's safe to do so. Because there's something very special about the tactile sense of my skin against the Earth's skin and it forcibly slows me down. If I go too fast, then I'm likely to trip or cut my foot. The idea here is as I mentioned, a perception shift.
So rather than thinking my way into a relationship... I'm feeling my way into a relationship. Rather than it being a brain-based activity and starting at the top of my head, it starts at the bottom of my feet. It’s feeling the world as it responds to the pressure of my foot, of my touch. That touch is returned. There are few things that are more delightful than stepping onto a sandy beach and feeling cradled gently by that sand or stepping onto a field of grass, or even walking down the trail and just having your feet liberated.
Instead of being head over heels, be heels over head. Privilege your sense of touch. I think that shifts the weight of an overactive mind back into the body, [towards] our full body-mind experiences.
Kamea Chayne: We, of course, encourage everyone to experiment with how they can engage more deeply with the world around them as well, and take inspiration from some of the things that you've tried in practice yourself.
As we talk about this, what comes up for me is that I do know a lot of people who don't really have an inherent interest in spiritually connecting to place and listening to the land in this deeper way, who might feel content seeing and practicing, “connection” in the more superficial ways.
I feel that modern society encourages people to. Or maybe, as I mentioned earlier, the challenge is that some people are just so disassociated that they don't even recognize the state of having been uprooted or metaphorically orphaned. They are just living inside of this socially constructed reality, rather than seeing the matrix we've been placed into and having an interest in breaking free from it, to reconnect with what might be more real and meaningful and truly life-enhancing.
It just feels like a vicious cycle that we're in right now and that we need to break out of. But what do you think has been the cost of our collective capacities to listen (more deeply in this way) being compromised through a wide variety of ways that you touched on earlier?
Gavin Van Horn: It's pretty clear to see that the trajectory we're headed on is one that is—did you say life-enhancing? So, “life-depriving” would be, I guess the counterpart to that, or “life-destroying” even.
We see it in the way that we politically have dragged our feet on climate change. It's been known, the warnings have been shot up into the sky in bright fireworks for decades now. Some “progress”, if you will, has been made… some slow movement, but if we trust the IPCC and all the warning signs, not enough has been done. Because we still are living in such a way as a society, as nation-states, jeopardizing the future of our descendants.
We're still weighing the short term and immediate as more important. Whether it's the quarterly profits or the next political cycle, things seem to have sped up to such a degree that future values are discounted over what is immediately obtainable, and there are fewer checks for avarice and greed, and fewer incentives or rewards for cooperative behavior that would lead to mutual flourishing, that we need in our current systems of governance.
But it's hard to speak to your question of what if people feel so disassociated that they don't recognize it… Fish don't recognize the waters that they're swimming in. If the waters that they're swimming in are so polluted, they don't recognize the difference between health, wholeness, and what would be detrimental to their well-being.
The question is so dependent on so many factors. Who are the people in someone's life? When does a book reach them at a certain time, or a movie or when does the light bulb go on? I can't say for any individual what that is. But I'll go back to the phrase you use, which is “life-enhancing”.
There is probably a recognition of when you're working against your own interests, your own full flourishing as a person.
Probably there are moments when the sun breaks through the clouds and you see that you feel deeply in your bones. Something that is life-enhancing. You feel deeply connected. You feel that sense of belonging. You don't have to suddenly become Gandhi, or the Dalai Lama, or [any] wise guru. You just have to take whatever the next step is toward that feeling. It's hard to say what any particular remedy would be because it’s different for different folks, depending upon what their interest is, and where their sense of wonder is stoked.
But I think that it's one of those things that’s cumulative. I'm not the same person I was 30 years ago as I am now. I'm not the same person I will be in 20 years. A lot of this unfolding of the “folded lie,” so to speak, to borrow a phrase, of the social constructs that we see around us that have led to and are leading to a life-denying state of being. That takes some time for most of us to recognize those things end-to-end, to find a way to begin to look at them with some amount of credit, with a critical eye; and even longer to ask that question that you just asked, which is, “Okay, I recognize what is life-denying. So what? Where do I go from here?”
As I said before, that can be a number of things. That's why I find it most helpful to start with what's closest to us, which might be our next step. Walking might be our next breath, recognizing that we share reciprocity with trees who give us our oxygen when we, in turn, give them carbon dioxide.
But start with what's closest to home. I think it's most important because that's not something where we have to say, “Well, tomorrow I'm going to do everything differently and I'm going to make this huge life move to wherever because I need to go here and do that.” Sometimes those radical breaks are important. But I think it's probably more important that we find a daily practice that can reinforce these things, to reinforce that sense of kinning, sense of kinship, and build from those everyday practices.
Kamea Chayne: At the heart of all of this is really the understanding that our worldviews, and how we relate to one and one another and the world, really matter.
In our past conversation with Farmer Rishi, he brought up his perspective that even the very idea of nature itself reinforces a view of separation and the binary of human and nature, given especially that officially in the Oxford Dictionary, nature is defined pretty much as all forms of life other than humans and what humans create.
So as someone who leads the Center for Humans and Nature, you've probably had to think about this binary quite a bit. So where have you landed today in terms of how you view the duality of things like city and the wild, or natural and artificial, or nature and society, and so forth?
Gavin Van Horn:
Binaries can't help but be misrepresentative of reality.
[But] sometimes we need them as a place to start out, as a place to define our terms.
It's really interesting that you said the Oxford Dictionary continues to list nature as that which is non-human, because I think that's reflective of what we talked about at the beginning of the conversation, which is this idea that humans are somehow apart and oftentimes thought of metaphorically as “above” other types of life, which is patently false.
We're completely dependent, completely a vulnerable being, among other vulnerable beings that share this planet and have a shared evolutionary history. Those distinctions drawn between the natural and artificial, the wild and the urban, the male and female, all of these binaries… are in some ways spectrums. All of them have partaken in one another. So, when I think of humans in nature, then we can use those terms as just common words, understanding their limits as well and understanding what they disclose, as well as what they close off from our perception, when we use them.
Obviously, the organization that I work for is called the Center for Humans and Nature. We oftentimes have joked about how that sets up a false binary. Even though we all intuitively know what we're getting out there. We're talking about human relationships with the larger world, of which we are a part. Maybe that's the key: that we recognize that this is the world in which we are embedded. We are a part of it. Its health and well-being.
Or conversely, it's the unraveling that we see in some places around us.
We're intimately connected. In that sense, we are nature. To some degree, we shouldn't even conceive of ourselves as individuals, going back to the porosity. Wilson's phrase is that we are bacterial ecosystems and the preponderance of ourselves is bacterial in the human body. We consist of many kingdoms of life in one body that we oftentimes think of as simply on the end of the branch, of the leaf of the kingdom of Animalia. No, we're connected to all those other kingdoms, and we wouldn't be here without them. Not just historically, but right now we're desperately dependent on them for our continued existence and possible flourishing.
Kamea Chayne: [We have] to recognize that we are both at the same time: we are ecosystems and we also make up ecosystems.
To take all of this even deeper, you share that you no longer really use words such as natural and artificial, and you do see them as being more porous now. This reminds me of our past conversations with both Vanessa Andreotti and Bayo Akomolafe, in which we talked about how we often give too much weight to language. I'd be curious to hear how your relationship with language and with words has evolved over time, and particularly why you felt called to let go of naming and categorizing and using words to define and dictate how we relate to the world.
Gavin Van Horn: Bayo's incredible. He blows my mind when I hear him talk. Talk about a person that can talk about hybridity and amalgamations and all the different ways that things are mixed up and muddled together. Talk about muddying the waters in a very productive way. He does.
What we have to recognize is that words, human words, are only one type of communication.
They’re only one type of language. Most of us can't speak even multiple languages, and God bless the people who can. But [human words] limit our ways of seeing, our ways of interacting and engaging with the world. There needs to be a cautionary note that when we use words and names—we have to communicate with other people, and that enables us to do so, so it's a great blessing in that sense, and it can be a bridge to understanding, but—[those same] words can also just as easily be a barrier to understanding, and they can constrain and constrict and cut off what we are naturally, or that we might otherwise be able to, see or perceive, because we've looked at something, named it, and then let that define that other being to us.
The problem that we tried to raise in the Kinship book series was that the English language is such a noun-heavy language, that the tendency is to look at the world around us and think of it being comprised of objects. There are many different types of containers and things and inert matter around us because we have all these nouns to describe the world. Whereas in a lot of Indigenous languages, a lot of place-based languages, there are more verb-dependent or verb-enacted [phrasings], if you will.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, one of the coeditors, talks about the grammar of animals, that it emphasizes the active, animate characteristics of the world, the places of the creatures and the things. One easy way to see this reflected in our language usage is that in English it's still the convention to call other animals “it.” It's “it” [and we] use the pronoun “it.” For example, “Oh, look at it, run, look at it, fly, look at it wrap itself around that tree or sit upon that stone.” By using that type of pronoun language, we essentially have characterized the world as full of objects, and not subjects.
[These objects] are simply like building blocks within our path that we can choose to use or not use. We can choose to exploit or not exploit [them], but they [by virtue of the way we term them] don't call for anything from us, in terms of a relationship that would be anything approaching a two-way or reciprocal relationship; whereas there are more complicated verb-based names for other creatures, beings, and rivers, mountains, and stones in various Indigenous languages that remind us that we don't have to frame the world that way.
Language reflects our worldview oftentimes, but it can also just reinforce it.
If we can look at the ways in which we’re using languages and understand their limitations, we can actively work to revise those languages, the ways that we speak about the world, and the way we speak it into existence.
In my life, it's been very helpful to acknowledge that the first stage of a relationship might be naming in the language. [For example,] you might be learning the Latin binomial for other creatures, if that's helpful.
It might be learning their common names, which are often quite interesting. There's a flower nearby called Tiny Tips that I ran into the other day that is the most beautiful little daisy-like flower. There was another flower called the fairy lantern on the path that I was on the other day. I thought, “Well, they really got that one right. It looks like a little lantern lighting up the path to what will be a magical place down the road.” That's a good name right there.
If we don't have names for anything, then everything can look just like a big mishmash. We don't distinguish anything around us. We don't recognize that there are different ways of being and thriving. Different and incredible. Just to stick with plants, [there are] so many different ways to be a plant person, all the different ways that they utilize the sun for food, the different geometries, the way they attract insects, and all those things. It can be helpful because we can look at the landscape and it's not just undifferentiated to us, when we have names for these things.
And that's how we get to know things. If I met you at a conference, let's say, that we were at and I didn't know your name, you might not stand out to me in the crowd, but if I said, “Oh, that's how I met her, at lunch then I'm out of the crowd.” You would stand out to me. Naming can be helpful in that sense. It can direct our attention to what we give our attention to.
But then I think there is a point where it's helpful as an exercise to sometimes leave the names behind, to walk into a place or a landscape and not try to name [things].
Because sometimes to name can lead to acting as though we know the fullness of that thing, that creature, or that being.
Sometimes naming can lead to simply, “Oh, I've seen that before. I'm familiar with that. I don't need to know that. That's just a background.” It can be a helpful thing, I think, to also walk in and to let go of some of the naming that we might do and to, again, just be present in a new or different way than we might be used to. That can be a powerful way of relating, where we don't think that we have exhausted the possibilities of another being because we know it—its, theirs, or hers, or his name.
Kamea Chayne: I think this is a “yes, and” scenario in which we both recognize the value of language as a tool and at the same time recognize its limitations as merely a tool. Because I do think having a more dynamic and loose relationship with language is critical because we often forget that we use language, categories, and words in an attempt to understand a complex and dynamic world that cannot properly be reduced into human language and concepts. Yet we often base our entire realities and societal rules on that limiting language that we use to try to make sense of the more complex and dynamic world.
So, we can, broadly speaking, tend to feel at any moment very strongly about something. But hearing such incredible minds and souls as yourself and other people we've had on the show before having a more porous relationship with language and allowing your perspectives on things to evolve over time really invites us to become more humble and to be okay with feeling rooted in something right now, in particular stances and viewpoints, and at the same time realizing that the world is complex and the grounds we're rooted in are still constantly shifting and moving.
All of this leads me to consider this challenge that we seem to be in right now, that those with perhaps the strongest human ego and sense of supremacy and desire to dominate and control and those with the most, I feel, disoriented and disassociated life values seem to be the ones who have been most interested in accumulating capital and oppressive power and control and resources. Those with perhaps healthier and more connected and humble relationships with community and with the land are the ones who haven't been that interested in accumulating these reductive forms of resources and things that may be life-compromising.
In this socially constructed world, which values the more reductive forms of value over others, a lot of people who maybe have healthier relationships with community and with the land tend to have less “power.” I'm curious, what comes up for you as you think about this difficult place we seem to be stuck in right now?
Gavin Van Horn: You've hit on the crux of our social dysfunction. Right now the most underpaid people are in some ways the most valuable to the health of our society. I'm thinking of teachers. I'm thinking of social workers, healthcare people, and people willing to fight for social and environmental justice. They're often compensated the least. The people that are willing and able to accumulate the most are often pathologically rewarded for their behavior.
That's the short and sorry answer that I have. I don't know what the social mechanisms would be that would best inhibit the proclivity to reward bad behavior—behavior that undermines the social and ecological fabric of our world. It's a perennial human problem.
I just think that some cultures and societies did it much better than the one we live in currently in the United States. Taking those who might be prone to egoistic, pathological behavior and bringing them back into community, having things that would reintegrate them into loving community relationships, or giving them a way to channel their energies in ways that were healthy for society as a whole.
I don't have great answers for you and as you know, I'm working through the questions myself. I don't have any. I wish I did, but I don't have a big, nice tidy bow on the way that we get there, get to that place where we're looking out for the collective interests rather than whoever dies with the most toys wins.
Kamea Chayne: Certainly, no silver bullet answers. These are hard questions that I think we all need to slow down and sit with in order to have the consciousness and awareness shifts that perhaps the Earth is calling us into.
We are nearing the end of our conversation, but whether related to what we just talked about or anything else we talked about today, or otherwise what else do you feel called to share at this moment that I didn't get to ask you about?
Gavin Van Horn: A little practice to take out into the world might counter the individualism and individualistic thinking you might be prone to.
That's something that I've been thinking about lately as I walk. Rather than thinking that I'm walking, I think, “We walk, we laugh, we hum.” All these things, what we're doing as we move through a landscape is actually a collective one. Thinking with that language can be a good way to shift perception.
Beyond that, I would just say to whoever is listening…
Follow the mystery, the magic, and the wonder. That will steer you in the right direction.
*** CLOSING ***
Kamea Chayne: What's an impactful publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?
Gavin Van Horn: The thing that pops to mind most recently is a book I read by geologist Marsha Bjornerud called Timefulness about how to pay attention to deep time, earth time, and to know that the past is embedded in our present. It's really helpful to think in those large, earthen scales because it's humbling, but also it can be potentially an incredible way to make you feel a part of the larger earthen story.
I want to add one other book that I read a couple of years ago: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, about mycorrhizal networks and all those things being discovered about the ways that fungi communicate with trees and one another. The takeaway message of that book was it really dissolved my sense of being an individual and [that] really blew my mind.
Kamea Chayne: What are some personal mottos, mantras, or practices you engage with to stay grounded?
Gavin Van Horn: We already mentioned walking. How we might better think of ourselves as earthlings as “we” instead of “I.”
Another helpful practice for us as human beings, we rely a lot upon our sense of sight, but sight can be reaching out into the world and grasping the world in a way. I think it's really helpful to shift, if we can, to other sensory experiences, what the smell of the air is around you or what the touch, the feel of the wind is across your cheek or across your palms of your hands.
We raised that idea of being porous and also the idea of the body, the skin, being a drumhead. I think that's a good way too since that is to try to set aside vision in favor of receptivity through other senses. I think it's really a great way to shift the perception and awareness of our multi-level relationships with the world.
Kamea Chayne: What are your greatest sources of inspiration right now?
Gavin Van Horn: My biggest inspiration is being where I am. I think because I moved with my family in July last year to the central coast of California and I am almost daily overwhelmed with being here.
Just like when I moved to Chicago, there are new non-human neighbors to get to know. There's definitely this getting to know you period where I'm just reveling in all the different [beings] from the sea otters and pelicans and sand crabs and curlews on the shoreline to these hills, from tarantulas to sycamore trees to all the flowers that are blooming right now.
So just getting to know this place has been my biggest source of inspiration at the moment, a reminder of these concepts I share with all of these different beings. As I said, it's a getting to know you period. I'm hoping that that'll start to shift into a more mutual [relationship] where I can give something back, where it can be a deeper relationship with this place.
Kamea Chayne: Gavin, thank you so much for sharing your wealth of knowledge with us here and for all the thought evolution and perspective shifts that you've personally made. What final words of wisdom do you have for us here as green dreamers as we wrap up?
Gavin Van Horn: I think I may have said it before, but kinship is as close as your next footfall. It's as close as your next breath. It's an affirmation of your belonging to your place and to this planet.
