Idealist Individualism or Indigenous Cosmology; Finding Entanglement across Species and Strata

Abstract

Science and technology have been associated with modern Enlightenment, in a manner that elevated the rational mind over emotions and the body, a separation of the subjective mind from the object of observation, universal categories, objective observation, and linear causality. These assumptions, consolidated by Descartes and then Kant, have underpinned the philosophies of science, economics, policy, and political theory. They have shaped the modern world and enabled corporate freedom to exploit all ‘resources’ in the name of consumerism and global trade. Idealism has alienated subjective rationality from an idealised universal created world. In contrast, ancient indigenous ways of knowing are emerging as better exemplars of the interrelationship between individuals, communities, and organic and anorganic life forms. Celtic shapeshifters and praise poems forge an interwoven dance of geology, weather, plants, animals, and humanity with wisdom and politics. The Māori concept of whakapapa is the kin relations of everything, tied into complex claves as a taxonomy of familial ties. Animism was understood as pagan misidentification by modernity, but if the alienation set out by modern linear physics is severed, then the intra and inter-relationship of strata, atmosphere, ocean, and species are better relayed by indigenous philosophy than by outdated, colonial, modern assumptions. Celtic and Māori pantheism show us how entangled we are, and how special relationships are in place that last across generations.