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Summaries 4-13
English 220: Introduction to Writing about Literature
Nature and the Modern World
In her short essay Deep in Admiration, Ursula K. Le Guin discusses the relationships between science, poetry, humanity, and nature. Le Guin begins the essay by talking about how “the essence of modern high technology is to consider the world as disposable.” The natural resources around us are being used without much care to sustainability. She notes that instead, humanity looks to the next “technofix” – some new technique or device that will solve our problems instead. Le Guin wants humanity to instead learn “to use the world well” and for us to “relearn our being in it.” She wants us to see our relationships to every other being, “our fellowship as creatures with other creatures.” What she means by this is that she wants us to reclassify what we see as objects. She reasons that people in the past have seen dogs as machines, so “seeing plants as without feeling” is similarly arrogant. Le Guin wants humanity to class what we would call “natural resources” as fellow beings.
To make the mental shift from seeing natural resources as static objects to beings, Le Guin suggests the usage of poetry, for “poetry is the human language that can try to say what a tree or a rock or a river is…to speak humanly for it.” While science describes the external, poetry describes the internal. She notes that both have their purposes – science saves humanity from ignorance, while poetry saves humanity from irresponsibility. Le Guin’s last message is that of the relationship between poetry and religion. She seems to somewhat dislike religion, stating that “privileging humanity’s relationship with the divine, [encourages] arrogance,” yet the poetry found in religion will still exhibit the key trait of “language of compassionate fellowship with our fellow beings.”
Le Guin posits that people see “the technofix” as the solution to all problems. Modern technology allows us to use the world and then dispose of it. Le Guin claims that what really needs to be changed is our mindset: rather than seeing it as disposable, we need to use the world in a sustainable way, rather than wasting it. Le Guin posits that we need to see trees, rivers, or hills as fellow beings. Le Guin claims that awareness of our relationships and position in the world involves knowing that we, as humans, are creatures amongst other creatures in this world. Le Guin illustrates relationships as an “infinite network of connections” that involves everything: all beings, even those we consider objects, rather than beings. By seeing other beings through a subjective lens, with feelings and emotions attached, we stop seeing them as only “natural resources”.
Le Guin claims that a “great reach outward of the mind and imagination” will allow just to subjectify the universe. Le Guin, like Wordsworth, claims that poetry will allow us to further relate to rocks, and rivers, and trees by humanizing them, and relating our experience to theirs. Le Guin points out the objectivity of science, and that with the combination of science and poetry, we’re able to filter through “information” that leads to ignorance or irresponsibility. Science brings reality and replaces unfounded claims and acts as a compass for both morals and ethics, while poetry prevents misuse and exploitation of fellow beings by allowing us to feel a sense of fellowship.
Le Guin points out that the use of poetry in religion encourages arrogance by relating us to the divine, but that language is still one of compassion and fellowship. Le Guin includes part of a poem by Christian mystic Henry Vaughan and points out that when Vaughn said admiration, joy and delight were both things they understood to be its meaning. However, Vaughn meant reverence for “God’s sacred order of things,” and used the word in a religious context. On the other hand, Le Guin interprets admiration as reverence for “the infinite connectedness, the naturally sacred order of things,” and feels that it relates us to the stone, and the stone to us. By highlighting the differences in their interpretations of the word, and of the poem, Le Guin illustrates how religious poetry still inspires compassions towards other beings.
“Deep in Admiration” also includes several of Le Guin’s poems which talk about the world through different lenses, violence and war, time, the consequences of actions, and the experiences of other beings.
“Deep In Admiration” by Le Guin talks about how humans can be more mindful of what dependence on technology can be harmful to our natural world rather than just thinking about how technology helps only humans. She suggests that the best way to get humans to cut back on technology is to get them to realize that nature, such as trees and animals are to be a “kinship” between humans and nature, so to recognize them as related to us. Furthermore, Le Guin considers how poetry and science both humble us to that elemental aspect of our humanity and train us to be better caretakers of the natural world to which we belong. We need both poetry and science to come to a knowledgeable and emphatic conclusion, because science is about knowing the external facts and poetry is about knowing the internal feelings of a living or non-living thing. Moreover, Le Guin includes many different poems that are all similar to this topic. The poems cause the readers to both dive deep and to step outside of ourselves and our common narratives. For example, “The Story” is about two people in the forest helping rescue the insects and animals in it like helping a fox escape a trap, putting baby sparrows back in their nests and the ants in their ant-hill. By helping the living creatures in need, the creatures in return help the humans too. This poem shows that humans and animals can both help each other even though these animals can not speak a human language and the humans can not communicate to an animal either. Nonetheless, these poems let us into the voices of objects and animals to develop more of a connection to them on a deeper level, so that we as humans can better see why saving our natural world is so important, since we just make up a tiny part of the world.