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Introduction This book is written from a concern for the planet. It is written for all the sensitive living beings and quieter non-living beings who are this planet’s flesh. It is written in the faith that philosophy doesn’t have to be an arcane endeavor, abstracted from the world and dealing with scholastic problems only scholars would care about. Philosophy should be written in a way that all citizens can encounter as a wake-up call. Philosophy should be the kind of thing that allows people to change their lives. We should not be self-defeatingly driven to professionals and experts to deal with problems we try to manage that are the result of misunderstanding what human beings are and misperceiving our relationship with the natural and social world. This happens because these core questions are never really examined, since philosophy has not made itself available to our neighbors. Philosophy can and should speak in understandable, even if unusual, ways. Philosophy should speak to the heart and not just to abstract intellects. Philosophy should be a work of imagination, fun, and excitement, dreaming new possible worlds by transforming the one we have always loved. There is a lot wrong with our planet that does require the help of experts among others, from the ecological crisis to people slaughtering each other in wars of hate to the breakdown of the community fabric,etc.,but I am concerned with a philosophical disability that is widespread. If we look at ourselves, others, and the natural world in a way that denies ourselves the abilities we have as embodied beings and distorts the nature of reality, then any solutions we devise to help us personally or collectively are doomed to failure or at least to short-lived makeshift success.I believe that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of what our bodies are in relation to the rest of the planet in the dominant Western culture for the last two and half millennia. If we were to understand who we are as embodied beings, I believe the ecological crisis would appear in a new light and the animosities among peoples who are different might become welcomed instead of feared. The experts deal with symptoms and these symptoms must be addressed,but we also need to get at the root of our disconnection from the planet. ix Inspired by the work of the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology to describe the rich ambiguity of how we experience being caught up in the world and in other people by hearkening to how we are bodies in ongoing flux—bodies that feel, sense, intuit, remember, dream, fantasize, and get caught up in emotions and passions—I have written as scholar for decades from a viewpoint at odds with the mainstream rational, detached, and compartmentalized philosophy of the profession. In this work, I seek to articulate these more scholarly insights in a way that dispenses with jargon and academic borders to engage the reader viscerally and directly with their experience. “Earthbodies” is a term I’ve coined to describe the way in which we have no body as a thing or substance. Embodiment is an ongoing process that never ceases. We are processes and not things. Our processes have driving rhythms that can give the illusion that they are just solid, stable blocks of being. However, like all processes that are open to other unfolding processes, they are fragile equilibria that can suddenly veer off into illness or death or disintegration of our personal or collective existences. We as individuals or as collectives can stay within a rhythm for such a long time we are deluded that we subsist as this identity, and then suddenly we shift into a new universe. Suddenly, the robust person struggles to use his or her limbs or the nation that had been a model of cooperation degenerates into terror and genocide or the perfectly conforming functionary becomes an outlaw or a homeless person or loses their mind. Then, we suddenly notice, perhaps, that all people, all things, all creatures are in a flux that incorporates myriad energies from disparate beings. I also believe that concepts mean nothing without being presented in the concrete circumstances which gives them vitality and importance. Discussing how in a film one of Anne Rice’s vampires can be worried or how it is that adolescent boys are drawn into school shootings or how Koko, the gorilla who has been taught English, gets on-line...

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