The human food system is the main physical driver of life’s devastation. For starters, this is because of food production’s scope. Agriculture occupies 40 percent of the planet’s ice-free land, and continues to gobble up territory; it consumes some 80 percent of the freshwater people take; and it contributes heftily to greenhouse emissions. Yet this is the tip of the iceberg.

When I was a kid, I used to play a mind game. I would try to imagine that there was only nothing: the negation of existence. After trying to feel into this for a while, it would push me into a state of experiencing “the uncanny.”

The othering of animals marks a watershed in the invention of “the human” qua superior, entitled, and invested with absolute power over nonhumans. Human supremacy did not so much need to pit itself against trees, rivers, or mushrooms. Above all, it needed to define itself against the nonhumans who have faces and voices. It had to raise the human above the animal realm, which also required pushing animals down.

Occasionally grace comes as an unexpected experience, turn of fate, good word, even a glance. The most recent arrival of grace for me was watching the documentary My Octopus Teacher, then watching it again. It was not grace directed at me but received by diver and filmmaker Craig Foster, who let its nectar flow to us all. As grace is rare, My Octopus Teacher is doubly so.