Anamorphosis – Using Communication to Create Definition

Whilst we thoroughly prescribe to being human, we are incredibly distant from our animalistic identity. We know that biologically we belong to the category of mammals but this does not hit home for us. In our minds we are uniquely seperate from all other forms of life on this planet, even the apes that we evolved from. This is likely to do with the fact that, throughout the centuries, the great minds who have set to the task of defining human existence have usually attempted to do it by separating it from other creatures. We have built our societies this way also. Within our modern urban landscape there is very little room for animals to co-habit with us. This distinction that we have made divulges the creation of our identities and how we use communication to do so.

Recently the BBC has come out with Planet Earth 2, the sequel to their global hit Planet Earth back in 2006. Great lengths have been taken within this revision of the original to bring the viewer closer to the animals. Drones and complex mechanics have been used to painstakingly follow the lives of animals as they are and bring us into their point of view (I suggest Vox’s video on the BBCs work, its brilliant)… but why? In recent human history we have confined animals to being the objects of human view, but not viewers themselves. Their interpretation of the world we were indifferent to. We put them in zoos, keep them as pets, and grow them as livestock; we have turned their existences into objects of our consumption. So why now are we attempting to reconnect? Why are creations like Planet Earth so popular? What do they give us?

To understand our relationship with animals we must reflect on our relationship with ourselves. Philosophical greats like Aristotle and Descartes are champions of the field of human existence and both were fascinated with animals. Descartes was famous for suggesting the difference between man and beast is the existence of the soul. He asserted that animals were without soul and could therefor not feel emotion or sensation. He even threw a cat out a window to make this point. But with modern science bringing our DNA startlingly close to many of our animal counterparts, such a stark assertion seems rather brazen.

It seems as though our process of socialisation, religion and reform has led us to distance ourselves from animals. What could no doubt be taken from Descartes’ words were that human-beings are civil and complex with the ability to create and connect. There is a potential that we see in ourselves and others that we refuse to see in animals, and yet as we have civilised, so have they. We have created pets who live like us, isolated with processed food and little exercise; livestock that so perfectly resemble our workforce. It seems that no matter how we attempt to define ourselves from the world around us, we cannot escape it… and… perhaps it is because we don’t truly want to.

Linguistic identity relies on opposition. What I mean by this is that a thing can only be said thing by defining it as not being something else. We define ourselves by the people we are not, by the actions we do not take, by the things we don’t think. The creation of our human identity has been strongly upheld by what we see as different from the world around us, animals being the major constituent of this… but this comes with negative consequences. My favourite book of all time would have to be An Imaginary Life by David Malouf, in which the (fictional) narrative follows the poet Ovid after his banishment from Rome. A man who’s livelihood was build on linguistic feats, who thrived in an ordered and socialised society was thrown into a ‘savage’ community whos mother tongue was foreign to him. In the short book Ovid meets a boy in the forest across the grasslands and this meeting defines his evaluation of how he has created himself:

“We are moving in opposite directions, I and the child, though on the same path. He has not yet captured his individual soul out of the universe about him. His self is outside him, its energy distributed among the beasts and birds whose life he shares, among leaves, water, grasses, clouds, thunder-whose existence he can be at home in because they hold, each of them, some particle of his spirit. He has no notion of the otherness of things”

This child represents a complete lack of civilisation and communication. Ovid is the first other human-being he has ever attempted to connect with and so he never had any social necessity to define himself as something seperate and different from the forest in which he resided. He had no purpose for the concept of other. This notion fascinated Ovid and, upon bonding with the boy, he meditated on how the world he was from used language and connection to define each facet of the world in which they reside.

“I try to precipitate myself into his consciousness of the world but fail. My mind cannot contain him. I try to imagine the sky with all its constellations, the Dog, the Bear, the Dragon and so on, as an extension of myself, as part of my further being. But my knowing that it is sky, that the stars have names and a history, prevents my being the sky. It rains and I say, it rains. It thunders and I say, it thunders. The child is otherwise. I try to think as he must: I am raining, I am thundering, and am immediately struck with panic, as if, in losing hold of my seperate and individual soul, in shaking the last of it off from the tip of my little finger, I might find myself lost out there in the multiplicity of things, and never return“

This fear that Malouf so perfectly encapsulates is the reason for our definition of animals as the ‘other’. As we organise the world around us through our connections with each other, through the language we use, we can create ourselves perfectly, develop our own importance, and define our existence. But such an existence is a lonely and equally fearful one. It is by no coincidence that the recent election in the United States, that saw voters more divided than ever, was the election that the media is most credited with spearheading. The communication business, by its very nature, creates division, as language relies on the mental separation of the worlds attributes, and communication relies (primarily) on language.

I believe that our fascination with animals can be linked to our curiosity as to who we would be without the social world we live in. Animals most definitely communicate, but they do not have complex systems of language like we do: most are based around to most basic of emotive expressions. Animals reveal to us our basic nature. Throughout history we have used animalistic metaphor and allegory to express basic human instinct and desire. Whilst we have found safety within defining ourselves from the world around us, we have been isolated from it.

There exists an undeniable pull to return to the world we have built ourselves away from, and the animals we have defined ourselves against. Communicating stories to one another have allowed us to see the world as something bigger than ourselves, but I think our communication process is somewhat  flawed in our need to create definite and resounding separation. As we seperate we will long to reunite and we all go through Ovid’s journey of testing the limits of our existence; of attempting to brave the world and let go of our fear of being lost in the multiplicity of things. We must evolve our communication process and take caution to communicate with the intent not to divide, but to connect.

We must not fear being lost,

we must not cling to our return,

we must rain,

we must thunder.