Thread by @AskYatharth

the number one rule of animism is start with what you can touch and see

if you're not living by the ocean, don't... start with the ocean. start with the phone you can see

because you can see it. touch it. this is what animism is. normative consciousness. it is not some thing over there

you have been in non-negotiable contact with objects and their forces your entire life. it's not been an option for your body to not be

don't imagine the ocean. look down at the water you drink. it is going to enter you, and come out as pee. that's animism

(to have a relationship to that water)

that's closer animism than singing about earth & fire & water in a campfire with people who're barely thinking about those words as they sing them. animism is most often ordinary

animism doesn't have a specific aesthetic

because it's participation in your reality

if you're in a yurt, trying to root into the earth, don't imagine an earth. you don't need to imagine anything. connect with the yurt first. you will become aware of the earth underneath you. the actual earth. not imagined

^ this borrowed from @relic_radiation sharing her experience. follow her. she's been on this path longer than me

whatever your mind experienced, it's not been an option for your body to not be animist

it's only when we think animism is some nature thing other cultures did, we run away

we imagine the earth below us. instead of notice the actual one, sitting below the actual concrete jungle floor

animism is not an aesthetic

it's a relationship to the world

because for most of human history, animism has not been an -ism

it's just been... the way things are

like that's just what direct experience of the world is like

animism is normative consciousness

"animism is normative consciousness" taken directly from a podcast episode from The Emerald of the same name
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

nothing needs to be done to have a relationship to animacy

but things can be done to deepen it, things our ancestors knew to do, part intuited, part inherited

offering feeding listening singing

what we might call "animism" then is just familiarity and skill navigating these experiential realities

it can be something like this

elena is not imagining the crows or singing to an ocean far away

she went outside

imagining crows & singing to oceans far away is also animacy

because thought & memory & imagination are animate

but in a world steeped in abstraction & devoid of sense memory, any attempt at it not grounded in the tangible & local first risks being abstraction, aestheticised

good point

"animism is normative consciousness" is kind of a pained phrase

but the gesture of it is... the world is already alive, just look

the world is already alive, look

one of those questions that sort of encapsulates the whole thing

>What does it mean to live in a profoundly alive world?

oh, and in case "phones" don't feel a topic for animists