Human Benthos

The benthos is a world between worlds. It is the living layer beneath the waters of ocean, rivers and lakes. Benthic communities are a blanket of rooted, burrowing, slippery, scuttling, wiggling things that make up the vibrant interface between water and the quiet, dark place where mystery unfolds out of sight.

Benthos is a word I instantly loved. The feel of it in my mouth contains the entirety of knowledge and time: the B is propulsive; the n is contemplative; the th is a whisper; the lingering s glides toward the future, towing the strands of mystery. Its sound reminds me of pathos, of the ache I feel at all this destruction of beauty.

Benthic life is hugely varied, what some scientists call a widely embracing concept at three liquid depths: along shorelines, at the continental shelf, and in the dark abyss of undersea canyons and trenches. Benthic communities provide essential nourishment; they filter and purify; they protect against droughts and floods; they provide homes and safe haven. Benthic organisms absorb pollutants and sometimes bioaccumulate them, including our pollution-borne illnesses, forever chemicals and plastic debris.

Along the ocean shore, benthic communities comprise coral, seagrass, kelp and silt. In tropical wetlands, the benthos is a place of warmth and decay where mangrove leaves rot and drift down to dissolve into sediments that feed life. Their intertwined roots provide protection for crustaceans to breed, for fish to lay eggs, and refuge for hatchlings. Benthic communities include the life we see as well as the invisible, enigmatic creatures that somehow thrive without sunlight.

We, too, belong to the living layer between worlds: humans inhabit the benthic skin between Earth and Sky. Like our underwater kin, we are being pushed to the edge of ruin, and the place where ruin and possibility meet – yet another benthos. But benthic communities are more than a jumble of species. Their composition is defined by the interactions within and between the community’s constituents. The same is true for us. By interacting differently we can step into a story of repair. This is our assignment in these times.

In Nature, edges are where the action is. Think of pristine forests and biodiversity hotspots that are suddenly isolated. They, too, are benthic, at the interface between core and periphery, intactness and fragmentation. As in Nature, among humans, edges are places of rich interaction. Imagine a map of the world: as you trace the squiggly lines of borders, remember that these are the places where refugees gather; where long distance truckers bring goods and news from afar; where prostitutes hear secrets and old men sip tea in the shade. Marginalized communities and individuals have a unique perspective. Their wisdom is urgent. Benthic worlds are everywhere.

In Nature, healing moves from the edge toward the center: picture the membrane of a cell, where waste is released and nutrients enter. Think of a scab as it shrinks inward and falls away, leaving tender, new skin underneath. Think of governments toppled when citizens turn their gaze away from society’s centers of power to the unfettered power of its edges. Understanding that healing begins at the edge invites us to shift our attention.

The stories we tell ourselves are also benthic: they are the narrative layer between experience and wisdom, between future and past. They mediate our experiences in ways that reflect what we call reality. Headline news has a magnetic pull that keeps us on edge, but it’s the wrong edge, because it’s an edge that seeks to attain both perspective and profit. So long as those goals are comingled, we will be fed stories that keep us stirred up and distracted, and stories that please advertisers, governments and funders. This means that talk of the Natural World will always stop short of calling attention to Earth’s intelligence. It means that talk of the Natural World will always emphasize that humans are in control.

Stories that recognize Nature’s sentience and agency are too risky, because these stories topple us from our false pedestal. Any perspective that questions human supremacy in favor of humble alliance with beyond-human Selves will remake this culture. This is exactly what needs to occur in order to avoid extinction. This is exactly what threatens the world order that apportions power according to the accumulation of weapons and money, and the tyranny of data selectively deployed.

These dilemmas require us to explore the edges that challenge our assumptions and our fears and especially the edges that call forth our gifts. A viable future includes the whole range of Selves with whom we share life. More accurately, it includes all the countless expressions of life interacting with itself: the beyond human and the denizens of unseen realms; the dead and the unborn; those who disagree with us and those who hate us; those that destroy the world and do not care.

As we find the edge that calls us, we will find the edge-vessels to pour ourselves into. Some of us will work from the visible world along the shore. Some of us will find ourselves in the trenches of deep contemplation. Others will drift down and down into the abyss, learning to see in the dark and thrive in the cold, and await the eventual, inevitable upwelling of wisdom that circles the globe. The benthos is a fertile place.

Our bodies bear the traces of hard-won transformation: stretch marks after pregnancy; the ragged lines of wounds and incisions; wrinkles as we age; and the scars from our assault on Earth’s beautiful skin. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, Life requires us to go all-in. To use ourselves up and honor our scars. Life lived at the edge leaves its mark.

When the planet’s future is secure, we will wear our scars with pride. We will sing the praises of all the places and Selves that made it through and the ones that were lost in the fray. We will name the ones that went extinct and the ones that returned from extinction. Our scars will become lines in the poem of repair so we have words to remember these times, and the ways that our love for Earth and each other restored a thriving world.

Ours is the benthic epoch between calamity and connection. How does that recognition transform us? How does it reshape our lives?