Bernie's Blog

It only takes a cursory glance at the deepening climate crisis to see that individualistic thinking does not sustain life. When reductionist, self-serving analysis eclipses embodied collective wisdom, we falter in our role as stewards of the land, and harm the symbiosis present in ecosystems and communities. What if we’ve mistaken thinking for knowing, and in doing so, dulled a more vital intelligence?

Aboriginal scholar Tyson Yunkaporta reminds us that we have a second brain: the gut, which processes not with logic but with feeling. Since the Enlightenment, we’ve favored a division between intellect and emotion, operating from the siloes of our minds and quelling the knowledge conveyed by our bellies’ intuition to disastrous effect—for it is the gut that “governs terrestrial relations and is in constant communication with land and all our human and nonhuman kin.” Our cerebral intelligence, which Tyson likens to lightning—quick, sparking, and solitary—needs grounding more than ever in the regenerative and relational “fire” of our bellies. It’s only when we each tend to this fire in connection with those of our relations, giving space to the flow and full expression of our gut feeling, that the dyad of brain and belly can interact as a sentient system that allows us to respond to the needs of land and cosmos.

This essay is the second in a series of four we are sharing in partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature.”

https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/fire-in-the-belly/

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