INKTOBER DAY 24: SHALLOW

24. Oktober 2023  •  2 Minuten

Your phone buzzing is a shallow echo of a past with a rich vibratory landscape sacrificed in the name of conquest.

Between 30 and 60 million bison once roamed North America in groups that were thousands strong, but European colonists slaughtered them in a bid to also exterminate the Indigenous people who depended on them. Now just 500,000 bison remain, and most are confined to private lands. Imagine how much quieter the ground is now without all those hooves and paws. Six continents that once would have thundered with the footsteps of titans now reverberate with sparse gurgles.

Can humans, the cause of that seismic silencing, even feel the loss? Western societies have largely cut themselves off from the ground beneath their feet and shoes, seats and floors. If they spent more time sitting upon instead of standing above the ground, what might they sense? Luther Standing Bear, an Oglala Lakota chief and author, offered a clue. “The Lakota…loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age,” he wrote in 1933. “The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power…. This is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he ca nsee more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. The earth was full of sounds which the old-time Indian could hear, sometimes putting his ear to it so as to hear more clearly.”

That direct connection to the natural vibratory world may be in decline, but a different vibroscape has arisen. Modern cellphones buzz against your skin and fingertips, alerting us of breaking news, upcoming events, and social attention. Our devices use vibrations to connect us to the world beyond our bodies, extending our Umwelt beyond the reach of our anatomy.

— Ed Yong, An Immense World

(→ Inktober drawing challenge 2023)