Listening to plants with Monica Gagliano
“I imagine a society that is
not so afraid, you know,
we are so afraid. that’s why
we need to control
everything.”
Dr Monica Gagliano, is not your typical scientist. In many ways she considers that ‘Science’ is merely verifying the truths and the stories that we have always known to be true. She is now focused on gaining recognition for voices that have struggled to be heard, by validating them with scientific research. These voices just so happen to be the voices of plants. A Research Associate Professor in Evolutionary Ecology, Dr Gagliano’s work is demonstrating for the first time, that plants emit their own ‘voices’ and detect and respond to the sounds of their environments.
She is also reclaiming heresy, as an expression of thinking outside the box, and pinning her hopes on this concept as a way of solving the global ecological crisis that we are facing.
Orchideae by Ernst Haeckel
“That kind of solution and innovation does not come from the orthodoxy, they do not come from those very well-manicured landscapes of the expected. They come from the unexpected, they come from the not knowing and in my own career I learnt that to be invited into this garden of not knowing you have to surrender to not knowing and be okay with that.
And in this process I learnt a few important things: I learn that animals, plants, and everyone, are listening to the sounds around us and responding to them, and that information from those sounds can be shared for generations to facilitate adaptation and buffer against conditions.”
You made impressive findings; that plants can talk basically and emit sounds and can have intelligence even without a brain. Can you expand on this?
The findings that you're describing, which are so ‘incredible’ and ‘amazing’ are actually a no-brainer because we all knew that already. And this is part of the brokenness of how we're doing things in science. Who said that a plant can only be considered intelligent or able to learn and remember, if a scientist demonstrated it?
The plants don't care, they have been doing that regardless of whether we demonstrate that or not. And for humans for millennia and many still here with us across the indigenous context, all of these ideas are nothing new. There is nothing amazing, nothing spectacular about any of my research really.
You’ve given a Ted talk about heresy and how “heretical” science revealed the intelligence of Nature which has a lot to do with following our human intuition. How is the journey for you as a scientist? And how do you advise other creators that come from a more rational point of view to be more open to other ways of discovering?
Ultimately, I'm just curious to know who we are. Isn't that ultimately what we all want to know? What is this thing we call life? I think, for most of us, we cannot get the answer through a rational or logical argument. We get there through feeling and that's not the job of the mind.
The job of the mind is to give words or structures to those experiences so that they can be shared. But those experiences need to come first and those experiences have to be our own personal experience; you can't borrow someone else’s. So, the only way to do this is for us to go and chase our experiences. In our society, as it is now, at least in the Western countries, this attitude doesn't fit with what we are required to do.
You mentioned that if we are guided by feelings, society will be very different. How do you imagine that society then?
Certainly, it wouldn't be as destructive, at least in the West, as it is now. I imagine a society that is not so afraid, you know, we are so afraid. That's why we need to control everything. And eventually we just suffocate people. I mean, the suicidal rates in youth at the moment are so high. And this impact just shows us how deeply social and interconnected we need to feel to be healthy, literally in our bodies, but also in our hearts and in our minds. So that level of interconnectedness that we need to feel, which is the love that I'm talking about, really is what our society refuses to acknowledge. We are more interconnected because we have all of these abilities with social media and internet to communicate but we're not actually that connected. We are made of bones and flesh and blood and those things need the human touch, the real touch, the connection that is, you know, come and let's have a cup of tea together and share the space of being together. We have decided that this society is going to be guided by values that actually don't fit with who we are as humans and animals, even just at the basic level. They're not healthy for us and that's why we are dying.
Hepaticae by Ernst Haeckel
Muscinae by Ernst Haeckel
How do you connect plant blindness with the current climate crisis?
The blindness is a bad habit and that's all. There've been plenty of other times in our human history where we were not blind at all and actually it was essential to know and connect with those others, especially women, in most traditions and in most cultures. The wounding that has occurred primarily, first and foremost here in Europe and then been exported everywhere else, is a wound of this severance of this connection. And so we're not blind. It's just that we have inflicted a very deep wound in our relationship with the world, with nature, with the earth and everyone else is in it. The ‘blindness’ is not the disease, it's a symptom of what's really under the surface.
Climate change is not fixable in a superficial way. We need to get to the bottom of the story, to the wound at the base and I think stories can be medicines for those wounds. Everyone knows what is required but we're not doing it because we've got bad habits and bad ideas that keep telling us that it is not necessary, and that at the end it doesn't matter, but it does matter. Obviously the stories that we are telling ourselves are not serving us right now.
How do we find the stories that we do need right now?
I suspect that we are lacking role models, as the models that we have are all the same. I mean, there are amazing people doing amazing work, but the stories that we hear tend to be just of those who are very successful in this world because they fit perfectly with the picture. I'm interested in listening and sharing with all of those who are not successful because the measure of success in this world is not what we need. I'm just looking for those and feel inspired by them so that I might be able to inspire in response
We need to shut up and listen.
You’ve spent some time with indigenous communities. What have you learned from them?
That we need to shut up and listen. We have a tendency of talking. In most indigenous contexts that I have experienced, the key was to just be quiet and listen; even if nobody is talking, keep listening and allowing the space for other voices, not just the human voices.
Can you explain what you mean by ‘playing midwives’?
Well, first of all, the midwife is a very feminine role, obviously. And I think we need more femininity. I'm not talking about women but I'm talking about the feminine principle which is one that gives space and listens, which creates in a very quiet way and doesn't overtake. In that sense, we need to support this birthing process of our world, which is different from the earth. The earth doesn't need us to birth her. She's birthing us all the time. But the world, which is the space that we inhabit, needs birthing.
The midwife is a very important character in the birthing story because she is the one that does everything in her abilities to make sure that the baby comes out alive. So this is our role now, I think, to support each other and not to judge and remember to find compassion when things don't go the way in which we were hoping.
How can we honour our relationship with plants?
If we are consuming plants without knowing where they are coming from, we might well be ingesting colonialism. It’s really important to inform yourself and connect with the people that are helping to grow the plants. It's the same with all food. If you have a garden or if someone gives you something from their garden, it just tastes better because what you're tasting is the love that is behind it - you know, to get a plant that gifted a fruit or a leaf.
And what about if we were to respect and honour this relationship by growing them without ingesting them? We can only grow plants if we give enough love; to bear water, give our time, our care, our attention.
You have also mentioned before that all plants are psychedelic. Can you elaborate on that?
Yes, all plants are psychedelics or in a way endogenous because they connect us to God or the essence that we are. They're all psycho psychedelic in the sense that they all are shifting and changing our physiology; you know, I'm drinking tea right now. There are so many plants in there and they are certainly changing how I'm feeling right now and how awake or how responsive or open I am. And every single thing we eat does that. It's like the food that we eat is medicine. All of the plants that we eat are medicine. And so they are all in that sense, sacred.
What have plants taught you about humans?
To be compassionate.
Follow Monica’s work on monicagagliano.com.