Mechanizing Our Minds
Disassociating from Awe
Possessing the power to start or stop hearts, Foxglove is one of the most glamorous and dangerous plants. Its chemical components have been isolated and synthetically simulated into the pharmaceutical drug digoxin that keeps thousands of hearts ticking today. Folklore says the sly fox wears the flowers to silence her steps—thus the name Foxglove. Because it looks like purple fingers, the Latins named it Digitalis Purpura.
English physician William Withering “discovered” the plant's miracles in 1775. Legend says he heard of an old hag in Shropshire who practiced folk medicine. A patient with severe edema due to heart failure, which Withering thought to be terminal, was unanticipatedly cured by the peasant. In the old bag’s purse of seemingly useless weeds, Withering expertly identified Foxglove as the gangbuster. I’ll bet the wrinkled battleaxe had warts, a hunched back, a toothless smile, a shrill voice, and possibly even green skin. According to Withering, sheer luck allowed her to dispense a remedy that actually worked. She didn’t know what she was doing. She got lucky. Good thing he figured it out! For a decade, he conducted precise experiments to determine the proper dosage of this “new” amazing “drug” he “discovered.”
Obviously, Withering didn’t actually “discover” the medicinal power of Foxglove. The wise woman who cured the patient probably learned of its curative powers from her mother, who learned it from hers. Or perhaps it was just instinct. Foxglove isn’t “new.” It’s been used since at least the 13th century. Probably longer. Nor is it a “drug;” it is a plant. Contrary to modern science, plants don’t need to be synthesized into pharmaceutical form to be effective. I’d imagine that the peasant administered the life-saving medicine as tea.
We’ve been schooled to export our intelligence to Science—that the commoner doesn’t really have much brain power. They’re too unscientific (although every now and again, they can get lucky). In modern times, it is the people of Science—decked in starched white coats, gazing through cutting-edge microscopes, and wielding plastic pipettes in sterilized laboratories—who are the ones forging the uncharted, burning edges of knowledge to “discover” extraordinary “new” phenomena! The Ecclesiastic would disagree, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
In my schooling, I was taught to understand the universe through a disassembling mechanistic lens. I filled out worksheets on the Krebs cycle, wrote lab reports, and learned to label, classify, and define the biological world. In my graduate studies, it was beaten into my head to always follow the Science (with a capital S). Any inquiry I had was answered with “What does the Science say?” And when my professors said: “The Science says…” it sounded more like: “God says….”
Science is merely a method of inquiry (and not the only one; mulling things over is another). It is a tool—like a potato peeler. To say “The Science says…” makes as much sense as saying, “The Potato Peeler says…” What science has mutated into is the Religion of Scientism, where Science is an All-Knowing Deity.
Scientism sees the Universe not as a Living Entity to respect but as a Machine to dismantle. It mechanizes the minds of its adherents. Its priests are called scientists. Its doctrine says there is one singular way of knowing, and that is through Science. The heretics who don’t adhere to its dogma are derisively labeled as “uneducated,” “unscientific,” and maybe even “childish.”
I wasn’t actually trained to think “scientifically,” which is to wonder, observe, and then seek answers. I was schooled to think scientistically: to analyze, compartmentalize, and dissect the world into disassociated parts via autopsy while suppressing emotion, common sense, empathy, and even awe.
At the beginning of my graduate studies, I was introduced to scientistic thinking through Pavlov’s experiment. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov ran an experiment demonstrating that dogs experience stimuli (in his case, the sound of a bell) with a specific action (receiving food). He hypothesized that dogs would salivate in response to food in front of them. He learned that the dogs salivate in response to the idea of getting food. They’d salivate when the bell rang before the food was even in front of them.
Well, duh.
Just ask literally anyone who has a dog.
When I asked why a study had to be done to know something so obvious, I was told: “We may think we know something, but we can only be sure if Science tells us so.”
Maybe the common person wouldn’t install a saliva sensor into their dog’s mouth before they went out to the garage to get his food to confirm this. The reason is not because they hesitate to complete a complex experiment or because they aren’t interested in knowing; it’s because they already know—from intuition. Gosh. I wonder if there is any possible way to know if dogs get excited by the word “walk.” The scientistic mindset outsources intelligence to science alone and, in the process, disassociates us from our own observations such that we suppress the intuition to know that members of the most food-motivated species on the planet salivate at the idea of food.
Scientistic thinking not only disassociates us from intuition but promotes a subtle dehumanization. In clinical note-writing, the word “patient” is utilized instead of someone’s name or even the word “person.” Ironically, we consider ourselves compassionate because we now use the word “participant” instead of “subject” to describe people who agree to be studied.
One day, a woman with a dreadful and rare disease called primary lateral sclerosis shared her story with us. Unable to walk, she relied on her service dog, whom she talked about with deep affection. He retrieved clothes from the dryer, fetched her phone when it rang, and gave her immeasurable companionship and love. She grieved the loss of her once functioning legs, saying she terribly missed cresting the crags of our young mountains. When it came time to ask questions, our dissecting minds inquired:
“What were your first symptoms?”
“And when did they occur?”
“Mmm.”
“Do you have a family history of neurological illness?”
And on it went.
One classmate who had somehow retained some humanity asked, “Have you found any wheelchair-accessible trails?” She then proceeded to tell the afflicted woman about some paved trails along one of the rivers.
I was perceiving a suffering human person as if she were just an interesting phenomenon in a petri dish! To my shame, I had dehumanized her and disassociated her from empathy. And I didn’t even realize it! By adhering to Scientism, not only had my mind mechanized, but my very heart had hardened.
This epiphany disturbed me. I didn’t start out like this.
But disassociation is one of the fruits of Scientism.
Science can be useful when answering questions that can’t be answered by observation or common sense. But scientists are just people. People with financial obligations and jobs they would like to keep. I suspect the reason for frivolous scientific studies is to keep the Scientistic Machine operating. Like, does wearing socks over shoes prevent slipping on ice? We could answer it by using our common sense. Instead, a randomized control trial was conducted to know this on a level of absolute certainty that only Scientism can offer. Universities have actually spent money confirming that Spider-Man doesn’t exist. Surprisingly, non-adhesive bodies can’t scale walls. Much of what passes for research, as Page Smith wrote, is “essentially worthless…busy-work on a vast almost incomprehensible scale.”
Scientism normalizes a disassociated mentation and then deifies it. It assumes that what cannot be objectively measured is unimportant. Not only are we disassociated from our own observations, emotions, intuition, and empathy, but also from our innate sense of awe. To a mechanized mind, the world is dead—ready to be autopsied.
It is the dissociative objectification of the living earth that is the cause of its destruction.
This view of nature (as something other than what nurtures us) is what dams up the rivers, kills the salmon, soils the skies, ribbons the oceans with plastic, exterminates the passenger pigeons, melts the glaciers,
and robs us of our innate sense of awe.
Our first bond upon entering this world is with our mother. Upon birth, we collapse onto her warm chest, exhausted from the arduous journey. We are cocooned in her glowing gaze and nurturing smell as we snuggle up in her cozy arms, lulled to sleep by her beating heart. Instinctively, we know we are kin. When we suckle, her milk flows into our body and grows us. The bond grows also—to our father, brothers, cousins, neighbors, and pets. It stretches further—to the earth as we begin to crawl.
Like a creature, we pitapat along, feeling the ground with our palms. We nibble at the earth, putting grass, dirt, rocks, and twigs into our mouths. We inhale the invigorating sights, sounds, and smells of our new home while the family Labrador trots past, licking our bald head. As we mature into two-legged creatures, we wonder in sheer joy at Creation—pointing at and yelping out sounds of recognition: “wawa!” for water, “kah!” for cat, and “moo” for moon or cow. We toddle into the kitchen, take an onion, and squeal, “ball!” as we give it to Sister.
As the creature grows up, the instinctive earthly bond blossoms. She plays in the woods, pretending the trees are her house, while engrossed in the most interesting conversations with them. She makes mud soup out of soil, sticks, water, and leaves. She gathers caterpillars in a jar—feeding them leaves and grass. She lies in the grass, watching the shape-shifting clouds. She plays dress-up with the cat, naps with the dog, and begs her parents for a pony. Like most kids, when she grows up, she wants to be a vet.
Yet, the mechanization creeps in. She watches educational TV shows, does her homework, goes to soccer practice, plays Minecraft, and memorizes her multiplication facts while the nearby wild places are paved to extend her neighborhood subdivision. Slowly, imperceptibly, she begins to disassociate from her divine bond to a living earth. She stops climbing trees. And quits picking flowers. She pays no attention to the sky. She stops hearing the birds. She doesn’t marvel at the mountains. What was once so alive slowly deadens. As the relationship decays, so does her wonder.
The severance from our instinctive creatureliness, I believe, comes from a culture steeped in mechanistic thinking, which promotes the fetishization of its mechanizing education. This comes at grievous costs; it disfigures the very things that enliven and beautify our lives. Externally, it leads to species extinction, ecosystem destruction, and earth desecration. Internally, our intuition, emotional depth, empathy, and awe dim.
Environmental lawyer James Gustave Speth has said:
“I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address these problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we scientists don't know how to do that.”
Scientists often have good intentions, but few perceive that their mechanistic lens lies at the root of the ecological crisis that many of them are trying to fix. We can’t science our way out of this. We can’t use technology to solve the ecological crisis, which is, at its core, a spiritual sickness.
Because the earth is not a machine. It is a Living Entity. The ancients knew this. Many indigenous people still do.
The ancients did not perceive the universe as a machine that they had the capacity to understand through dismemberment, dissection, abstractions, assessment, and analysis. The ancients perceived in the Cosmos intelligence, quickening, soul, inner depth, and a centripetal beating heart at its core—theirs was a humble and honoring approach saturated in awe.
Much of the Bible, particularly the Book of Psalms, exemplifies this perception: “Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!” (Psalm 33:8).
When Jesus instructs his disciples to “consider the lilies,” he does not go on to describe them reductively like Wikipedia does today: “They form naked or tunicless scaly underground bulbs which are their organs of perennation.” No, he encourages his disciples to marvel at “how they grow: they neither toil nor spin” (Matthew 6:28-29).
The ancients didn’t human-splain things like volcanic activity—using technical words like pyroclastic or basalt. Instead, they gazed in awe-struck wonder, saying, “The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth” (Psalm 97:5).
The Holy Spirit was meaningfully encountered in dreams. Joseph dreamed his brothers bow down to him, and then the sun and moon do, too. An angel came to Mary in a dream. Daniel interpreted the king’s dreams. Today, it’s unusual to interpret dreams through the lens of prophetic mystery. What is more common is to interpret dreams as either meaningless or via psychological reduction—maybe they reveal some childhood trauma that needs to be therapized.
As recently as the 1800s, around what is now Los Osos California, the Cahuilla people and the now-extinct California grizzly bear coexisted peacefully in the same territory. In those days, it was common to see 60 bears in a day! As someone who has encountered a grizzly bear while in the wilderness, it would be awfully remarkable to encounter a whole herd. When a Cahuilla encountered a mighty grizzly, he would talk to him, saying something like: “Like you, I am only looking for my food. You are my brother. You understand me. Take my word and go away.” The bears understood and moved along.
The ancients were so interconnected with the living world that they could communicate with non-human members of Creation. Balaam’s donkey inquires as to why he is getting unjustly beaten. Eve converses with a snake. Moses hears the voice of God in a plant. And there are the instructions in Job 12:7-9 that say, “But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.”
In past centuries, it would not have been strange to be visited by an angel or ancestor in a dream. It would not have been fanciful to touch the garment of a holy man and instantaneously be cured of chronic illness. It would not have been magical thinking to experience animals or plants communicating to humans, offering input on which decision they should make. It would not have been absurd if a sick person went into the forest in supplication and heard a specific plant respond in service to his health. Indeed, such people who received guidance and healing would have been considered fortunate and blessed.
But today, using our now normalized lens of intellectual imperialism, it is presumed that our ancestors who gazed upon the world with such a perception were uneducated, unscientific, ignorant, and woefully misinformed about the nature of the universe.
And yet…our lives are evidence of their “unscientific” means of survival. Perhaps they had a wisdom that our mechanized minds can barely grasp—a wisdom summoned from the Heavens. After all, they had the power to restart stopped hearts with Foxglove. The scientistic mind would say they got lucky. But, if you were to ask them how they knew which plant to use, they wouldn’t say, “Oh, I picked the plant at random. Got lucky!” With all sincerity, they’d say: “The plant told me.” Maybe a plant came to them in a dream, or they prayed on it and heard a voice coming from the plant saying: “Pick me!” With the faith of little children, they followed this divine guidance, taking seriously the instructions in Job, and a person, who seemed to have no hope of health, was miraculously cured.
Jesus says: "Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). To begin the work of healing our suffering world, a new—or rather, ancient—perception is needed. A perception we were equipped with at birth. Deep within all of us is this divine bond—the capacity to sense the earth as alive, to walk in awe, and experience miracles. The fruits of this bond are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—qualities that act as a balm soothing our groaning planet.
O God, stop the mechanization of our minds. Soften our hearts so that we may turn away from greed, apathy, and selfishness. Return to us our divinely given intuition, emotion, empathy, and awe. May we embody the fruits of the Spirit and become like little children. In sheer joy may we enter the luminous kingdom of heaven. Amen.
Divine Nature is intended to heal, inspire, and cultivate hope—thus, it is given freely. Essays are published about every six weeks, or less. Please subscribe knowing your inbox will not be inundated.
Beautiful, thank you for writing this and sharing. It was so helpful!
One of the most truly remarkable essays I have ever read. So so thought-provoking and necessary. Thank you.