Seeking a Mature Relationship With the Natural World: Relational Ontology and Amalgam-Being

Abstract Fostering a relationship with the more-than-human world is understood to be crucial in wilding pedagogies. Yet for many, such a relationship is often developed in early life and is limited in complexity and nuance. In this paper, we propose to investigate what a mature relationship with the natural might look like. We do so in three parts. The first part introduces four moments of surprise or pause: “hunh?!” moments. These lead to four associated observations that suggest contemporary limitations on human relationship with place, and in one case, enhancement of it. They are: an idealisation of childhood relationship with the natural world, which is now kept in a separate category, rendering it inaccessible to the adult; an un-knowing of relationality with the natural world through cultural practices that deny or denigrate such a state; the myth of human autonomy, which comes with multiple cultural repercussions; and finally, what we are here calling natural imagination, which pulls in the opposite direction to the first three. An environmentally rooted Haudenosaunee model regards imagination as not simply the purview and possession of humans, but a shared space between people and the natural world. In response to these, in Parts 2 and 3, we propose that a relational ontology — one that enacts relationship between humans and the more-than-human — cannot be reached simply by progressing further in intent, sensitivity or theorising from the current assumed model of the psychological development. The abyss between current ontologies and an alternative must be hurdled, if it is to be crossed at all. This may be done by challenging presuppositions that underpin current ontologies and psychologies and moving from theorising to enacting an alternative model. Such a model, in part informed by the fungal research of Merlin Sheldrake, may lead to another way of being human, an enmeshing with the more-than-human, which we call amalgam-being.