The suffocating pandemic of militant certainty
“Stop claiming to know or understand everything, and start talking about your longing.”
On a wildlife tracker Facebook group I’m part of, someone posted a photo of an animal that looked like they could have been a young wolf or a coyote, wondering who people thought they were. The comment thread went kinda nuclear. The amount of militant certainty was pretty cringe. People are really bad at embracing uncertainty especially when it comes to things that activate their amygdala / ancestral trauma and such in certain ways. And I’m not saying this in a detached way—I get it, I’ve been there! But in an era of 'apocalyptic ecology,' militant certainty is Just..Not...the Way....
Many people were absolutely certain the animal was a coyote. They were too lanky and puny to be a wolf. Look how big Gray Wolves, the “Vitruvian Man” of canids, are! they argued. (psst… Gray wolves are merely one type of wolf among many that exist on this planet). Hey, look at this photo of a hunter holding a dead wolf! See how big and monstrous they are? This scrawny thing (which looked to some like a juvenile wolf in their summer coat), couldn’t possibly be one. Must be a coyote, and who cares about them right?
Let me put it this way: if as many people were certain of this often difficult distinction as claim to be, then why, whenever there’s a news report about an illegally killed wolf, does the hunter claim he “just thought it was a coyote?”
The question of whether someone is a wolf or a coyote right now is SO politically charged. It’s charged because of the controversial protections on wolves in many U.S. states, which don’t apply to coyotes—their close relatives who not only can be hunted, but don’t even have their own designated season because they are considered ‘pests.’ It’s charged because of the (racially-coded) villification of coyotes on the character level as malicious or freeloading (alongside the simultaneous claim by anti-animists that animals are not persons) and undervaluing of their ecological role. It’s charged because of toxic lore about “hybrids,” and it’s charged because of imperial scientists who should know better not valuing hybridity’s role in healing fractured ecosystems. This truly deserves its own essay. So yeah, people are getting triggered by a photo of an ambiguous animal—that’s where we are at!
The amount of militant certainty I see with regard to wolf morphology in particular, not just among “trackers” but among random people who watch Game of Thrones or something, is fascinating given the fact that many of our ancestors nearly extirpated wolves on this continent long before we were all born and most of our body-minds are far from conditioned to make these discernments. There is some serious trauma there. A devastating meme would contain an image of Romulus and Remus (the legendary founders of Rome) nursing on the fabled Capitoline she-wolf, next to a contemporary photograph of a line of dead gray wolves killed by a white hunter. Talk about biting the paw that feeds you. But oh “Molon Labe” and SPARTAAAA, right bros?! My fellow folks of European descent are fiercely confused about our relationship to our lupine siblings. Therein lies the disorganized attachment to our own domestication & civilization…
Tracking as a way of knowing (a hermeneutics) is so important for these times! Discovery through listening & observation, long-term relationship/kinship building, inter-species humility, changing our culturally-bound notions of what even counts as information in the first place, not jumping to conclusions, enchantment and awe as doorways to ecological guardianship, de-centering (but never forgetting) the human or certain parts of the self in order to learn about Others... And I’m not talking about complacency or hesitancy either, if what you heard in that was “listening and never acting.” If all our ancestors (adjusted for widely varying time scales) who were expert trackers couldn’t discern when to act, we wouldn’t be here! So tracking is also about knowing when to act (and when we do act, we don’t have to make a big deal about it).
Militant certainty in many realms of discourse continues to sadden and puzzle me. It’s really getting in the way of so much potential connection to life and mystery. Even when some people seem to be approaching mystery, they somehow make it militant again (like with certain conspiracy theories) and it can become toxic. One notion I worked on a lot this past winter (that is reflected in the now-published essay Eco-Mysticism for Apocalyptic Times) was the notion of building toward a more secure relationship with Mystery—this was influenced by my own past studies of theology and religion, but also by the eco-psychological/somatic/trauma perspective that I started learning more about after meeting Pınar seven years ago (who introduced me to many awesome authors and thinkers). How do we work toward a relationship with Mystery that is life-giving to our multi-species relations (and doesn’t cause harmful forms of spiritual bypassing). There is so much erosion of trust these days, much of which is valid. But we must hold on to a type of trust I think, a chthonic trust in the body of this planet.
Moreover, Mystery as a dwelling place of Beloved—and that notion isn’t new. I spent a lot of my adult life so far studying the mystical, the framing of the unknown and marginal, the apocalyptic. I dont say that to claim that I know anything about that stuff lol, but I say it because I’m committed to *questions* about those topics. I’m deeply invested in that curiosity. Often, it feels pretty lonely. But I get the sense that people are out there, wondering, too...
We find ourselves in a pandemic of militant certainty amidst times of deep eco-social change and literal uncertainty, often reflecting toxic & traumatized relationships to the unknown or to groups of people we don’t understand (as is often shown in fascist & extremist politics or some types of conspiracy theorizing rampant right now). Many people claim to have the answers, to know the secret cabals and the cryptic structures behind things. To have taken the red pill or the blue pill (and oh, the irony of the Matrix as a text of trans ecology). Many people claim to know “what’s wrong with the world.” Scapegoated often are the marginal—one common critique is that people on the margins are self-absorbed, as if our “identity politics” have the power to destroy rivers, deny people healthcare, or make Daddy America neglect straight white people (scarcity mindset). The irony barely feels funny, it just feels sad at this point.
I want to conspire to open myself to unknowing alongside others while still being heard in what I do know about myself so far: I want something that I am calling apophatic solidarity (apophatic is a cool theological word to know about—basically means coming to “know” something, usually the divine, by knowing what it isn’t—it’s a position that to me centers humility)… I want us to stop fearing the unknown in ourselves, because it’s killing the world. I want animism as activism and soulwork as social justice. Queer was supposed to be a cipher for the mystical—for the fact that every person is a mystery—a push back against me labeling myself with an identity that discloses to strangers who I have sex with. There has to be a way to re-animate this word. A politics that is both enchanted and accountable is possible.
This is mostly directed at people who don’t fight for their survival or humanity daily (including those parts of me that reflect that), but sometimes I think we have to stop trying to (performatively) try to know or understand everything, and instead try to talk about our longing. If we did that I think our social spheres would be smaller. And I think that’s okay. I think that’s part of the discernment and renunciation that has to happen amid climate chaos in these times.
