Within Generous Entanglements
On human creatures as islands
Seemingly singular, isolated, complete bodies, islands are easily discovered to be immensely generous entanglements. Born of every layer of this planet, they host ecosystems, more-than-human evolutions, adaptations, and dissolutions, are hosted by the chemical arrangements of the universe, and are one version of the material results of time, energy, matter, and space.
Their edges edge below the surface of vast bodies of water, their above water selves offer up resting places for visiting birds, poop droppings, feathers. Particular volcanic eruptions or tectonic shifts meets particular chemical arrangements, meets particular environmental features, meets a certain location, meets a moment in time, and more; and voila, (just like that) an island exists.
Like islands, we human creatures can seem to be singular, isolated, complete bodies, but are easily discovered to be immensely generous entanglements too. Like islands, we too are irreparably entangled into the chemical and systemic arrangements of the universe, are biological and ecological mashups and hiccups and meetings. Like islands, we too host ecosystems and are intricately entangled in those we inhabit. Like islands, we are one version of the material results of time, energy, matter, and space.
Born from ancestral lines reaching back thousands of years, human creatures are also made of neighbourhoods, regions, ecosystems, social systems, histories, cultural stories, current events, myths, technologies, good stories (and bad ones), possible futures - and so much more.
We host - and are hosted by - a sea of worldviews and cosmologies so fluid and enveloping that I sometimes think we human creatures might be more story than cells. Like islands, we are living convergences of past, present, and possible futures. Cultural norms meets ancestral lines, meets environmental features, meets a moment in time, meets place, meets possible futures, and more; and voila, (just like that) a human creature exists.
The making of human creatures are such intricate and expansive weavings that it is impossible to trace the threads.
We human creatures seem to be islands, and what a wonder that is.
Image shared with this is Franklin Carmichael, Bay of Islands from Mt. Burke, 1931, oil on canvas, copyright public domain.
This made me think of the phrase "No man is an island", penned by John Donne in 1624.
This resonated for me 30 years ago, when doing research about the relationships between island tax havens in the Caribbean. You couldn't understand the Bahamas without considering Cayman, and vice-versa, in the wider ocean of global finance.
And it resonates still, in my explorations of complexity and the emergence of islands of coherence (and entanglement).
I hadn't known that the line from John Donne was in a poem called "devotions on emergent outcomes", which is a nice coincidence! Thanks for sharing your reflections Anne-Marie!