I've been writing about the the meria‘, this supersheep that mediates between shepherd and flock in the Lebanese highlands. It's in progress but here are fragments of it, because the meria‘ once had lovers here, plus here I can put images next to the text. 1/n
It's the first time that I write about animals and let me tell you that if writing about humans is very difficult too, writing about animals is very difficult in a different way and feels very lonely... 2/n
Nov 24, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Bateson was always very interested and even troubled I'd say about the fact that in analog, animal communication, a "not" signal is not available. They can't straightforwardly send a message and transform it through "not"...
e.g. they can't straightforwardly say: "I will not fight you". This is how he once put it:
Nov 23, 2021 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
One wonderful thing about transhumant pastoralism is that it's a mode of animal husbandry which takes its principles of organization, most of them, from the tendencies or puissances internal to the animal themselves. "A thread." 1/n
One consequence of that is that when you try to understand how it works you find yourself jumping to another level, a larger context, from which what you thought you see appears to be in fact the opposite of what you thought you see. 2/n