Witches just love to toss “eye of newt” into their bubbling cauldrons, but the docile critters did nothing do deserve such a sinister association. For me, newts have opened a window of appreciation into the broader community of life.

I find solace in asking a newt what it thinks of our politics, our technology, our schemes. The act of asking such questions out loud in the presence of a newt is as silly as it sounds, but only because the subject matter is silly. Conversing with a newt is just basic politeness. The newt is a genius in that it doesn’t waste a single moment caught up in such trivialities. The newt is fully engaged in Life, which is incomprehensibly more amazing, rich, complex, and bad-ass than anything humans have ever—or could ever—create.

In this post, I will explore what a newt’s-eye view can tell us about ourselves and our obsessions.

Politics

Last week’s post was on the familiar left–right political spectrum, and how I find myself so far outside of this spectrum that left-wing and right-wing politics become almost indistinguishable to me. Both are so far in the wrong where it really counts.

In this sense, I have already shared something close to a newt’s-eye view. The newt can’t tell Karl Marx from Ayn Rand. Or is it Ayn Marx and Karl Rand? Both are primarily concerned with how best to organize production and exploitation of “resources” for some twisted goal of transforming the world away from its ecological happy place. Neither used their most passionate voices for the Love of Life, or to question our place in ecological terms. Both were focused on human concerns, human relations, human organization—in service of atrocity. It’s the Human Reich.

For contrast, consider the models of human organization practiced by hunter-gatherers. Small tribes work together as a type of collective organism, intimately connected to the landscape and careful not to inflict permanent damage on their source of life. Their cultural norms do not sanction irreversible devastation: the practices in which they engage are time-tested to preserve essential features of their community of life for the long haul. Newts can easily tell the difference: wetlands “forever” vs. drained, filled, then covered by parking lots and shopping malls.

Cars

Consider high-end cars from makers like Maserati, McLaren, or Ferrari (disclosure: I don’t know a thing about high-end cars, except an impression from Silicon Valley that the way the doors swing is vitally important). Now compare to a beat-up and rusting 1966 Chevrolet pickup truck with enough miles to have taken it to the moon and an unpleasant odor that never went away after smashing a skunk. Market value indicates a world of difference between these classes of vehicles: essentially zero resale value for the truck.

What does the newt see? Literally, a newt sees for both cases a black treaded tire heading for it and then no more. If luckier than that, the newt sees a frightening hunk of metal barreling down the road guided by a human driver. The newt sees and experiences this alien strip of asphalt that exudes unpleasant oils and chemicals, is laced with ecologically harmful molecules from tire wear, gets hotter than Hades in the sun, and creates habitat barriers. And the newt is not wrong.

Now compare this mode of transportation to walking (e.g., along a forest path). How does the newt consider such a behavior? Well, it’s marginally dangerous to be a tiny critter who might get stepped on. But humans tend to watch their footfalls in ways that they surely don’t for tires. If nothing else, the speed makes a tremendous difference. Newts evolved with larger creatures walking around, and would not still be here if this hazard were too much to bear. They definitely did not evolve with fast metal boxes careening down the highway. Most roadkill victims would fare remarkably better in walking encounters!

Religion

Whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hundu, or Buddhist, the major religions of the world are built on the notion of personal salvation. All are “new” to the world, emerging in reaction to the suffering that followed the inevitable ills of totalitarian agriculture. All are anthropocentric, some explicitly promoting human dominion over all life on Earth.

The newt compares these religions to animism, which is the opposite of anthropocentric: situating humans deep within a mysterious web of life, animated by relationships we may only barely apprehend. The ethos is one of humility in relation to any form of life. All know how to do things that we can’t come close to achieving ourselves. All are kin. All can be teachers if we know how to listen. All know how to live on this planet. It is a spirit of awe, of belonging, of gratitude.

Next to animism, which explicitly welcomes, reveres, and includes the newt, the others look all the same—despite our cultural tendency to amplify their differences.

Energy

Modernity’s energy menu is large and ever-growing: hydroelectricity, coal, petroleum, gas, nuclear fission, wind, geothermal, solar, tidal, ocean currents, waves, and we could go on. Which does the newt see as best? None of the above. They are all essentially the same—because more important to the newt than the form of energy is what we do with it.

We use energy to clear forests, mine materials, manufacture a bunch of junk, pump out pollutants, dispose of “obsolete” junk, fragment habitat, grow monocrops, make fertilizer, produce oceanic dead zones, dam rivers, drain wetlands, build concrete jungles, pave road after road after road, zoom along those roads in the aforementioned metal boxes also made via this energy, and again we could go on. What good does the newt see coming out of any source of modernity-powering energy?

The newt, of course, is not alone. Millions of species are in decline: struggling to just hang on in this world-turned-upside-down. Population decline is a somber march toward extinction, and the animals must know it shouldn’t be this hard. Something is definitely not right.

As an alternative, consider muscle. The newt understands this. It’s how everything gets done. Humans have muscles, too, and for a few million years this was a primary energy resource deriving from food in an ecologically vetted way. It’s how all animals lived. It is true that humans supplemented with fire for much of our time on Earth. The newt isn’t sure what to make of that: not a fan. But fire is not unknown to the planet. Fires existed everywhere on Earth before humans arrived, and many plants are specifically adapted to rely on its occasional appearance—plants that are much older than humans. Still, the newt has reason to be circumspect on this issue, even while knowing for sure that the list in the first paragraph of this section is no good: not of this (ecological) world.

Paper or Plastic?

This question may come up less frequently in stores than it did a few years back. Far more important than the bag material is what the hell you’re putting into a bag in the first place. But the paper/plastic question might stand in for a lot of choices we make as consumers. Which detergent is better? Which television? Which phone? Which house?

The newt can’t identify with any of these choices, nor can any other animal on the planet. Most in our culture interpret this difference as proof of our greatness, but step outside the anthropocentric zone for a moment and ask if the community of life is of the same opinion. Does the more-than-human world benefit in any way from our choices, or is it a loss no matter which way? Which species would vote for our choices? When the vote is 10 million to 1, consider the unpopular notion that maybe our culture is doing something wrong, and thus not “great” in a positive way.

Such material choices might be fine in the absence of context, which is where colossal ignorance allows us to pretend we live. If humans were not of this planet, separately created, given the planet to treat as we wish, not dependent on ecological health or biodiversity, masters of all, and could engineer every need without any connection to the living world, then perhaps our behaviors might be at least logical if not still dastardly. Of course, the context isn’t gone just because we’re largely oblivious to it.

The newt would suggest “neither” as the best answer to most of the choices we weigh, because usually both are unambiguously part of the predicament. If a newt can do without them, what makes us such utter wimps that we need any of those things?

Lots More

I suspect I don’t need to go on. The pattern is clear. Pick almost any element of modernity, and the spectrum of choices we consider along each (where to live and in what sort of house/dwelling; what career; what major in college; which diet) may seem diverse to us, and do carry discernible differences. But to a newt (deer; tortoise; chickadee; butterfly) they all look pretty much the same. Embedded in modernity, all engage in planetary destruction the likes of which few species ever have or ever could endure. All have alternatives so far off the limited modernity spectrum that we don’t even consider them. The lifestyle resulting from exercising these much different choices would be utterly different, but that’s the point, right?

This all reminds me of the way Dennis Meadows framed an analogy. If a man is rushing at you with a hammer, intent to do you harm, the particular weapon wielded is of secondary concern to you. It could be a knife, club, gun, rock, or wine bottle. The real problem of primary concern is his intent to do you harm. The intent behind all these “choices” within the modernity tent are like supporting tent poles af anthropocentrism, human-supremacism, ecological ignorance, non-reciprocity, entitlement, and abuse. All add up to an unsustainable lifestyle that will collapse one way or another.

In the meantime, please ask yourself when making choices what your favorite wild animal would make of your selection, and if your considered spectrum is broad enough to include a more acceptable option. I’m not saying you can wave a wand, click your heels three times, wink and nod, or any such quick remedy to pop yourself out of modernity. It may take generations, and I’m plenty guilty myself. But it’s time to start considering other ways of being—through the eyes of a newt.

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