Cosponsored by the Charlotte Library and Conservation Commission, Sustainable Charlotte is pleased to host a book discussion of How to be Animal, by Melanie Challenger, weekly for 4 weeks starting Wednesday, February 12 through March 5 via zoom. Registration is required to get the link. Register here. Following up on the film, Becoming Animal, shown in November, this should be a challenging and exciting discussion.

How to be Animal argues that at the heart of our existence is a profound struggle with being animal. As well as picking together the mystery of how this mindset evolved, Melanie Challenger examines the wide reaching way in which it affects our lives. Blending nature writing, history, and moral philosophy, the book is both a fascinating reappraisal of what it means to be human and a robust defense of all that is rich and rewarding about being an animal.

From “The Scotsman” see full review here.

This is a provocative, incisive and worried book, carried off with no small degree of élan. It is multi-disciplinary, taking in ecology, philosophy, law, futurology, psychology, palaeontology and anthropology. Its basic argument against “human exceptionalism” can be broadly sketched as covering three areas. All stem from one contention: that humans have, in some rather unexplained fashion and by unfathomable processes, decided that we are disconnected or apart from the natural world. The consequences of this “othering” of the natural and the dislocated nature of the human – between the beasts and the angels, if one wants to phrase it theologically – is that our relationship with other living things on the planet is out of kilter and destructive; that it has a perceptible diminution in the physical and mental well being of humans; and that in our quest to distance ourselves yet further from the natural we may be unleashing horrors as yet unforeseen or imaginable.

The library will have copies. After you register, you’ll get the information about what chapters will be discussed each week. Register here.