The work of the Dwelling is unique in that it provides readers with the opportunity to look at their own lives differently. With the help of her book, Linda Hogan tried to show how people look at each other and ignore those things that seem insignificant. The author introduces her concept for readers to help compare one person’s life with the rest of the living world. This approach to analyzing one’s views is expressed through language, animals, knowledge, and history. Hogan’s work in the direction of language and communication between people clarifies a person’s place in this world. Language is just one of the forms by which readers can explore themselves and find a new way of communicating with the outside world.
One of the important qualities of this book is the conclusion that different parts of nature use their language as a means of communication and a way of survival in the environment. However, the author notes that people use their language incorrectly, and because of this, they cannot determine their place in the world (Hogan 40). The next important feature is that people deliberately neglect the knowledge that animals have a language that helps them interact with each other. According to the author, this factor prevents society from learning about the environment and the things that affect them (Hogan 62). The lack of interest in language as a tool for communicating with the living world significantly impacts the misunderstanding of the processes the author is talking about.
The author explains how people use language to describe nature as something inhuman. People are willing to use “less than” to show their connection with other forms of nature and people. However, in this case, we cannot understand why a language is a tool that has led to the understanding and categorization of nature-it is an idea that has led to our broader understanding of the values of the natural hierarchy. The author also used language to study the coexistence of people, nature, and language. And this is not surprising – after all, people use language to view animals as helpless, so they seem less significant in the world. However, this makes it difficult for us to coexist with animals and learn about their role in the world.
A similar meaning is reflected in the work of David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, which deals with how people portray themselves as a unique mind with a special ability to communicate with other people. Abram emphasizes the idea mentioned above that people deny the rights of their non-human relatives. They forget the practical and spiritual lessons that once connected societies with nature, which leads to the rejection of cooperation. Denying the lessons of past communications with wildlife, is not easy to conduct an environmental policy because a person tries to speak his language with other living beings and is refused.
Another work, titled The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be, written by J.B. MacKinnon, emphasizes that every generation of people believes that nature has always been the way they see it now. Without reading books about how flora and fauna have changed over the centuries and not studying ecological history, it isn’t easy to imagine how much a person has changed the environment for generations. The author of this work tries to convey that people living in cities are isolated from the biodiversity of nature reserves, which makes it difficult for him to interact with living beings. However, the author emphasizes that society stands for a wilder world than it is now, where people, animals, and plants speak the same language.
Work Cited
Hogan, Linda. Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2007.