Attention to ecology is reciprocal and literally sustains both human and plant survival

Evidence

The sweetgrass study suggests that the plants were dying from none other than a lack of attention. And in a world where our survival is absolutely bound up with the survival of the ecologies in which we are embedded, it becomes clear that reciprocal attention is what ensures our survival as well. While this kind of attention to the living world certainly involves reverence, it’s something very different from fawning over cuteness or beauty or appreciating nonhuman entities as intelligent or even sentient. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 500

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens what Odell means by attention here — a functional, survival-linked reciprocity, explicitly NOT aesthetic appreciation.
• XREF: connects to: Food plants and humans shape each other’s evolution toward mutual thriving — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 431; Plants who take care of us provide models humans adopt for survival — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 823