Black Swans and Umwelts
In celebration of today being the launch of a mini series podcast “How to Disagree” by Jared Byas, I’m sharing some thoughts from Jared’s book on black swans and a scientific term called umwelt.
Jared Byas is a co-host for the podcast “The Bible For Normal People” (which I will write more about in the near future), but he is also an author of a book called “Love Matters More: how fighting to be right keeps us from loving like Jesus.” Today marks the first episode release of a mini-podcast series that Jared is doing called “How to Disagree”.
If any of you have also struggled to connect with people who you disagree with but are hoping for a better way forward, this book is for you—and so is this podcast!
In the first chapter of Love Matters More, Jared describes how each animal in our world experiences the universe in vastly different ways— from the high decibels a dolphin hears to the extremely keen eye sight of a buzzard. Scientists who study animal behavior have labeled this difference UMWELT (pronounced oom-velt).
“The world as it’s seen, heard, and felt by a buzzard is it’s unwelt, and the world as it’s experienced by a dolphin is it’s unwelt. In other words, there’s the world as it really exists out there (what we might call reality), and then there is the world as someone or something experiences it (what we call an umwelt). —Jerad Byas
To further expand this idea of umwelt, there is a phrase from a poem dated back between 100-127 CE. In this poem is a phrase: “A prodigy as rare upon the earth as a black swan.” Later this phrase was shortened to something like “when pigs fly” or “a cold day in hell”, Basically conveying the impossibility of things as we know it. Before 1697, swans were only known to be white until a Dutch explorer discovered a black swan in Australia and “the impossible became possible.” Jared writes that this idea of our umwelts and black swans is “so important for us to understand that we are limited. In other words, we are not able to grasp absolute truth or reality as it really is. Yet in certain parts of Christianity we have made absolute truth an idol, and God has been replaced. We are deply afraid of what it means for us if humans do not have access to absolute truth. And that fear comes out in hurtful ways.”
So what that means is that as we learn and discover new things our umwelt is expanded! Just like everyone thought they “knew” that only white swans existed, once black swans were discovered what we once thought was true was false. Our umwelt grew!
“No matter how much we expand our own experience of the world, we will never know everything. There will always be more black swans.”-Jared Byas
I’ve never really liked Paul in the Bible. He’s always come across as arrogant and proud to me—like he knows everything! But Jared points out that Paul admitted to not knowing everything in 1 Corinthians 13;12. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” Wow! So Saul’s trip to Damascus revealed his “black swan” moment when his umwelt was expanded and he changed his mind. He went from violently trying to show people he was right, to living a life of loving others with even a different name!
Full disclosure here: I haven’t even finished the first chapter of this book and it’s making me stop and think and contemplate the black swans in my life that have grown my umwelt! This idea of not knowing absolute truth and being more certain of Who we know rather than what we know is intriging to me. Join me in following along not only in reading this book, but also with Jared as he continues to expand on these ideas in the book through his “How to Disagree” podcast.
I’d love to hear from you. What are your black swans? In what ways has your umwelt expanded? Leave a comment below or shoot me an email. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
