Separation from Nature

Throughout Becoming Animal, the author argues that the contemporary culture's precedence on human superiority has detached the individual from the mystery, beauty, and animacy of the natural world. Abram introduces this notion in his introduction “Between the Body and the Breathing Earth” saying, "In recent centuries, an abundance of discoveries and remarkable invents have transformed this culture's general conception of things—and yet the basic disparagement of sensuous reality remains" (3). Because modern science, religion, and technology has established a strict hierarchy in which the human is superior, such revolutionary inventions threaten the individual's relationship with nature, rather than improve it. The modern human now only understands "the directly sensed world" via obstructive references "to realms hidden beyond our immediate experience" (5). Therefore, Abram argues, the human no longer knows how to engage with her natural surroundings, nor the other animals who inhabit them. Abram expounds upon this...