Ursula Le Guin’s essay collection The Language of the Night is full of interesting and thought-provoking material about science fiction and fantasy. But the last time I read it, the passage that really jumped out at me did so because it strikes me as having real theological significance:
We are subjects, and whoever among us treats us as objects is acting inhumanly, wrongly, against nature. And with us, nature, the great Object, its tirelessly burning suns, its turning galaxies and planets, its rocks, seas, fish and ferns and fir trees and little furry animals, all have become, also, subjects. As we are part of them, so they are part of us. Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. We are their consciousness. If we stop looking, the world goes blind. If we cease to speak and listen, the world goes deaf and dumb. If we stop thinking, there is no thought. If we destroy ourselves, we destroy consciousness. (Language of the Night, p. 100)
For me, this comes close to expressing what is meant in Genesis when it speaks of human dominion over the rest of creation. I could imagine finding these words in a text interpreting Maximus the Confessor’s idea of the mediatorial role of humans in the created order. I certainly did not expect to find them in an essay by a woman who once described herself as an inconsistent Taoist and a consistent unChristian!
No comments:
Post a Comment