As long as I can remember I have disliked the word “anthropomorphize”. I remember being maybe ten when I learned the word, and being deeply annoyed that my descriptions of the natural world had to be categorized in this way. My understanding, if I could have articulated it then, was that by describing nonhuman life, with the same words I used to describe my own behavior, that I could at best be poetic and at worst would be foolish or naïve. It seemed to me that there was just the one world, and our words—however imperfect—were our way to describe it. Yet I followed along and for many years was careful not to grant too much to the non-human, or more-than-human world.
Thirty years later I’ve circled back to my original understanding. Language is one of our primary ways to share our view of the world. Words reveal how we segregate or bring together. I want to be in relationship with the natural world and I can’t do that if I am holding my humanity apart.
Anthropomorphize
Attributing human characteristics to non-humans,
Natural as it may be, is perpetually disparaged.
Tenets say we must reserve these traits to be
Held by us alone. Science insists we deny
Revelations that cannot be measured. Is it not
Obvious that facts alone cannot help us
Perceive all there is to know? So called
Objective reality reigns over the land, while
Myth’s bounty is abandoned to childhood;
Ocean mothers, sage trees, and warrior stars,
Removed from today’s dominate wisdom.
Perhaps we need to gift what we call
Humanity back to nature; make it our essential,
Inevitable duty to describe the universe
Zealously embellished by our human understanding,
Especially since no one asked us to be gods.