In February 1985, Val Plumwood was having a lovely time
canoeing by herself in Australia’s Kakadu National Park. The ranger had assured her that the saltwater
crocodiles, notorious man-eaters, never attacked canoes. It was a perfect day, gliding across the
water in a beautiful land, no worries.
She was a scholar and writer who focused on feminism and
environmental philosophy. The Earth
Crisis was pounding the planet, and it was obvious to eco-thinkers that this
was caused by a severely dysfunctional philosophy. Her book, The Eye of the Crocodile, is
a fascinating voyage into the realm of ethics, values, and beliefs.
Plumwood understood that the ancient culture of the
Aborigines was the opposite of insane, and she had tremendous respect for
it. It presented a time-proven example
of an ethic that had enabled a healthy and stable way of life for more than 12,000
years. Australia was blessed with a
bipolar climate that often swung between drought and deluge, making low-tech
agriculture impractical. The land escaped
the curse of cities until you-know-who washed up on shore. (As her canoe gently drifted, a floating
stick slowly moved closer.)
Plumwood grew up in a rural area. She was home schooled, and enjoyed a fairy
tale childhood outdoors, delighted by the “sensuous richness” of the forest. She was unlike most of her generation,
because “I acquired an unquenchable thirst for life, for the wisdom of the
land.” Thus, her appreciation of the
Aboriginal culture was not merely intellectual — it was real and deep. Unlike most of her generation, she enjoyed a
spiritual connection to the land. (The
floating stick had two beautiful eyes.)
The stick with two eyes was a crocodile, nearly as big as the
canoe, and it was five minutes to lunchtime.
Suddenly, the reptile began ramming her canoe. She rushed toward shore, but the crocodile
leaped and grabbed her between the legs.
Three times it pulled her underwater, trying to drown her. Miraculously, she managed to escape, severely
injured, and survived.
It was a mind-blowing life changing experience. Intellectually, she had understood food
chains, predators, and prey. But this
was the first time in her life that she was nothing more than a big juicy
meatball — impossible! She was far more
than food! The crocodile strongly
disagreed. Its sharp teeth drove home
the message that she was not outside of nature.
She was a part of the ecosystem, an animal, and nourishing meat — no
more significant than a moth or mouse.
She wrote, “In the vivid intensity of those last moments,
when great, toothed jaws descend upon you, it can hit you like a
thunderclap that you were completely wrong about it all — not only about
what your own personal life meant, but about what life and death themselves
actually mean.”
She was blindsided by the realization that an entire highly
educated civilization could be wrong about subjects so basic — animality, food,
and the dance of life and death. The
crocodile painfully drove home the point that the entire modern culture was
living in a fantasy. Our highly
contagious culture was ravaging the planet, and we didn’t understand why. Each new generation was trained to live and think
like imperial space aliens.
Plumwood was educated by the space alien culture, but the
crocodile was a powerful teacher from the real world, the ecosystem. Darwin revealed that humans are animals, but
this essential truth harmlessly bounced off a long tradition of human
supremacist illusions. It was easy to
see that those who were demolishing the planet were radicalized space aliens
who believed that human society was completely outside of nature, and far above
it.
The Aboriginal people inhabited the real world. They were wild two-legged animals who had
learned the wisdom of voluntary self-restraint.
For them, the entire land was alive, intelligent, and sacred; even the
plants, streams, and rocks — everything.
Nobody owned it. Mindfully
inhabiting a sacred place required a profound sense of respect.
Space aliens drove them crazy. Colonists in spandex jogged mindlessly across
sacred land, listening to electronic pop music.
Reverence was absent. They did
not belong to the land, and were unaware of its incredible power. Some of the traditional folks wanted to ban
these disrespectful intrusions. The
colonial era had been a disaster.
The colonial worldview had many layers of hierarchy. At the summit were the elites. Below them were women, peasants, slaves, and
the colonized. Beneath the humans were
animals. Some critters, like dogs, cats,
and horses, had special status. If they obediently
submitted to human domination, they were not meat. Below them were meat class animals that had no
consciousness. Especially despised were
man-eating animals, and critters that molested human property. They were mercilessly exterminated. Beneath animals was the plant world, a far
older realm.
The foundation of the dominant worldview was human supremacy,
and this mode of thinking had been the driving force behind a growing tsunami
of ecological devastation. Plumwood saw
two alternatives to supremacist thinking.
(1) Ecological animalism was the realm of
crocodiles, Aborigines, our wild ancestors, and the rest of the natural
world. All life was food, including
humans. In an ecosystem, “we live the
other’s death, die the other’s life.”
Our bodies belonged to the ecosystem, not to ourselves. The spirits of animate and inanimate beings
had equal significance.
(2) Ontological veganism did not believe in using
animals or eating animal foods. This
ethic was an offshoot of human supremacy.
It did not condemn the dogma of human/nature dualism. It denied that humans were meat, despite the
fact that a number of large predators have been dining on us for countless
centuries. It believed that animals were
worthy of moral consideration, but the plant people were not.
Ontological veganism was queasy about predation; it would
prefer a predator-free world. It believed
that human hunting was cultural (animal abuse), while animal predation was
natural (instinctive). But every newborn
human has a body carefully designed by evolution for a life of hunting. We are capable of smoothly running for hours
on two legs, and we have hands, arms, and shoulders that are fine-tuned for
accurately throwing projectiles in a forceful manner. What you see in the mirror is a hunter.
Plumwood was a vegetarian because she believed that the
production of meat on factory farms was ethically wrong. She had no problems with Aborigines hunting
for dinner. All of the world’s sustainable
wild cultures consumed animal foods. She
was well aware that her plant food diet was not ecologically harmless.
Cultures rooted in human supremacy have achieved remarkable
success at rubbishing entire ecosystems.
This is not about flawed genes.
It’s about a bunch of screwy ideas that we’ve been taught. Sustainable cultures perceive reality in a
radically different way. Luckily, software
is editable. Plumwood recommended that
creative communicators bring new ideas to our dying culture; stories that help
us find our way home to the family of life.
This is an enormous challenge.
Plumwood also wrote an essay, Prey
to a Crocodile, which is not in the book.
It provides a detailed discussion of the attack. The rangers wanted to go back the next day,
and kill the crocodile. She strongly
objected. The crocodile had done nothing
wrong. Predation is normal and
healthy. She had been an intruder.
A free PDF of the entire contents of The Eye
of the Crocodile is available online.
It’s just 111 pages. A paperback
edition is still in print.
Plumwood, Val, The Eye of the Crocodile, Australian
National University Press, Canberra, 2012, ed. Lorraine Shannon.
