By Marc Bekoff, Ph.D., excerpted from Psychology Today

An ‘Erotic Ecology’ is an art of living, of caring for the biosphere and of creating satisfying relationships inspired by the Eros of life — the power which makes everything in our reality yearn for connection and transformation. – Andreas Weber

A few months ago I read a book called Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology by biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber. I’m a fan of one of his previous books titled Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science, in which he develops an idea called “poetic ecology” that clearly shows that we are not alone — indeed, we are one of the gang — and must not behave as if we are the only show in town. The Biology of Wonder is a wonderfully eclectic and wide-ranging work which clearly shows that all beings and landscapes on our fascinating and magnificent planet are deeply interconnected, and I was taken in by the development of what Dr. Weber calls “erotic ecology” in Matter & Desire, which argues that being alive is an erotic process constantly transforming the self through contact with others, desiring ever more life.

I wanted to learn more, so I asked Dr. Weber if he could answer a few questions, and he gladly said, “Yes.” Here’s what he had to say.

Why did you write Matter & Desire?

I wrote the book in order to understand ecology as a love process. I wanted to show that the world is neither a neutral stage, devoid of any feeling, nor an “only material” setting. My aim was to show that the material world is at the same time an “outside” and a meaningful inside — an experience of inwardness. In living beings, this inwardness becomes an experience. That is what we know on our “inside” — that we exist as selves to whom everything we encounter has a meaning.

To my eyes, we need to rediscover love as a biological principle. As bodies, every living being participates in a live-giving exchange with others, led by the desire to nourish the self through intimate reciprocity with others, through touch and metabolic exchange. An “Erotic Ecology” is an art of living, of caring for the biosphere and of creating satisfying relationships inspired by the Eros of life — the power which makes everything in our reality yearn for connection and transformation.

In The Biology of Wonder, I argued that every organism experiences the world as inwardness. In Matter & Desire, I try to show that feeling and experience are features of the whole reality which in living beings becomes tangible and expressive. Organisms realize a deep quality of reality. We, as organisms, are matter, and we experience being matter from the inside. We know what it means to be matter. In the book, I particularly wanted to show that every experience, all knowledge actually, is related to having a body, to being matter. It is matter which constantly desires to meet other matter and to be intimately touched and transformed by it.

Becoming a feeling self by intimately connecting to others through touch and transformation — that is a definition of love. In Matter & Desire, I try to show that reality follows the desire to lovingly enfold otherness through the touch of matter.

Love — the impulse to establish connections, to intermingle, to weave our existence poetically together with that of other beings — is a foundational principle of reality. Love is the active search for the other, the yearning to be transformed by the other, to enter into connection in order to give life. Love is actually the practice to give life. The need to exercise this practice manifests as desire.

How does Matter & Desire follow up on previous works, including your outstanding book The Biology of Wonder and some of my ideas about personal rewilding?

Matter & Desire enlarges the other book’s core idea that living beings are not objects, but feeling selves. They are embodied processes of desire. This desire means to yearn for individuality and connection at the same time, or rather: all beings long for individuality-through-connection. Not by chance this is the same as what we try to achieve in our personal development and relationships. Individuality-through-connection is actually the definition of any fruitful relationship. And fruitful relationships is what “wild” in depth is about.

I love the term “personal rewilding.” I assume that is precisely what I am after in Matter & Desire when I propose to be as “real” and authentic in our needs as nonhuman organism are. “Wild” in the terms of Matter & Desire means to give in to becoming self through constantly incorporating otherness, to let go of the drive to control a fixed identity and yield to the true and real needs one has, even though they might include something difficult. Wild is a profound truth, not as a particular essence or resource, but as adherence to what is real and to that which needs to be done in order to keep up with reality.

Wild is not about being self-made (organic) against human-made (technological). It is about being oneself, making oneself from the powers of the flesh that yearns for unfolding, against not being oneself, enclosed by powers who tell me what to do, how to behave, what to feel, until I have completely forgotten what my powers are. Wild means to follow the yearning for blossoming. And to blossom means to be totally self through being totally in connection.

This is an excerpt from a longer feature in Psychology Today. Read the full feature here.

Receive a signed copy of Andreas Weber’s book, Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology when you join Kosmos as a Jubilant Member.

More from Andreas Weber in Kosmos Journal:

The Enlivenment Manifesto: Politics and Poetics in the Anthropocene

The Biology of Wonder | Finding the Human in Nature

Enlivenment: A New Bios for our Relation to the Natural World and to Ourselves

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Episode 9 – Andreas Weber, On Matter and Desire

(image) Dr. Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher, and nature writer.  He holds degrees in Marine Biology and Cultural Studies and is the author of nine non-fiction books and dozens of magazine features and is highly respected for his work in the fields of popular science and environmental sustainability. Andreas explores new understandings of life-as-meaning or ‘biopoetics’ and ‘biosemiotics’ in science and in the arts, and his work has been translated into several languages and published around the globe.

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