A means to The End, or the amber ambrosia of articulated artifice.
I was walking home from a long day of study, or to be honest, study and avoidance of study, and I noticed something that made me stop. The thin, new spring leaves on a young tree were glowing bright green as they caught the orange light from the streetlight above. The effect was damn cool, maybe my brain was all addled from too much reading, but it made me think about a comment someone had made weeks ago in a park.
"I can't believe people come to these botanical gardens to see nature. This isn't natural at all."
The idea was that because the trees and other plants in the gardens had been planted intentionally, and the paths and lawns around them maintained, and that most of the species were imported, meant that the botanic gardens were artificial. The people who went there and thought they were visiting nature were being duped, they were fooling themselves. The real nature was out there, beyond the reach of the city and suburbs. It had biting insects, it was untouched, you had to hike for a long ways to get to real nature.
I used to agree with that point of view. I used to think that all the streets and lights of the city were directly at odds with nature, with what was natural. It was a easy enough assumption to make, because roads and dams are destructive, you have to pave over grass and trees to make a road. I had watched the suburbs where I grew up slowly pave over and develop all the fields and forests, putting houses and malls in their place.
An easy dichotomy develops from that kind of thinking, natural vs. man-made. Chemicals and cement versus vegetables and forests. I don't want to sound like a wuss, but knowing I was a part of it all made me really sad at times. I would shake my head at the new housing developments cropping up everywhere, and say "What a bunch of crap, a bunch of houses exactly the same, with no back yards.", or I would see pictures of japanese whaling ships floating in blood, or see the diagrams of how much rainforest was being burned, or the giant list of extinct species due to pollution, or poaching, the list goes on. I felt bad about being part of the problem. But it is an ignorant way of thinking, civilization and nature are not at odds, it is an easy mistake to make, but it is still a mistake.
It leads to the idea that we should go back to the way things used to be, before the industrial revolution, maybe even before cities, maybe even before agriculture. To live off the land, to live with the land, in harmony with it like all these current anarchistic or hippie versions of the noble savage story. Regression to being hunter gatherers or what have you is the philosophical equivalent of the desire to have a kitten that never grows into a cat. You can kill the cat and get another kitten, but it will always grow into a cat. Likewise, you can tear down civilization and start fresh, but what reason do you have to think we won't be back where we are now in a couple hundred or thousand years?
I have a lot of sympathy for the view that civilization is destructive, it is true, it is. But that doesn't mean that it isn't natural, or that it isn't beautiful. A volcano is incredibly destructive, poisoning streams and rivers, burning forests, and if it is big enough, blotting out the sun with ash and cooling the world climate.
Destruction is necessary and natural. The idea of the ying and yang has long been championed by the hippie/vegan/green/lefty movement, hopefully the implications of the symbol will eventually sink in. The sustainable living, zero environmental impact scheme comes straight from the impossible dream of immortality. "For the human race to survive, we must learn to live with nature, we must coexist"
The human race will not survive forever, what begins must end, and we won't ever coexist with nature, because we are never apart from nature in the first place.
The city is natural, global warming is natural, mad cow disease is natural, war, starvation, famine, crime, pollution, corruption, destruction, prozac and starbucks, sport utility vehicles and housing developments, skyscrapers and landfills, nuclear reactors and coal burners, are all natural, are just as much a part of nature as a waterfall or an oak tree.
Am I just arguing semantics? I don't think so. You might think I am just watering down the meaning of 'natural', maybe so much so that it just means something like "everything" now. Maybe. Am I wrong?
"I can't believe people come to these botanical gardens to see nature. This isn't natural at all."
The idea was that because the trees and other plants in the gardens had been planted intentionally, and the paths and lawns around them maintained, and that most of the species were imported, meant that the botanic gardens were artificial. The people who went there and thought they were visiting nature were being duped, they were fooling themselves. The real nature was out there, beyond the reach of the city and suburbs. It had biting insects, it was untouched, you had to hike for a long ways to get to real nature.
I used to agree with that point of view. I used to think that all the streets and lights of the city were directly at odds with nature, with what was natural. It was a easy enough assumption to make, because roads and dams are destructive, you have to pave over grass and trees to make a road. I had watched the suburbs where I grew up slowly pave over and develop all the fields and forests, putting houses and malls in their place.
An easy dichotomy develops from that kind of thinking, natural vs. man-made. Chemicals and cement versus vegetables and forests. I don't want to sound like a wuss, but knowing I was a part of it all made me really sad at times. I would shake my head at the new housing developments cropping up everywhere, and say "What a bunch of crap, a bunch of houses exactly the same, with no back yards.", or I would see pictures of japanese whaling ships floating in blood, or see the diagrams of how much rainforest was being burned, or the giant list of extinct species due to pollution, or poaching, the list goes on. I felt bad about being part of the problem. But it is an ignorant way of thinking, civilization and nature are not at odds, it is an easy mistake to make, but it is still a mistake.
It leads to the idea that we should go back to the way things used to be, before the industrial revolution, maybe even before cities, maybe even before agriculture. To live off the land, to live with the land, in harmony with it like all these current anarchistic or hippie versions of the noble savage story. Regression to being hunter gatherers or what have you is the philosophical equivalent of the desire to have a kitten that never grows into a cat. You can kill the cat and get another kitten, but it will always grow into a cat. Likewise, you can tear down civilization and start fresh, but what reason do you have to think we won't be back where we are now in a couple hundred or thousand years?
I have a lot of sympathy for the view that civilization is destructive, it is true, it is. But that doesn't mean that it isn't natural, or that it isn't beautiful. A volcano is incredibly destructive, poisoning streams and rivers, burning forests, and if it is big enough, blotting out the sun with ash and cooling the world climate.
Destruction is necessary and natural. The idea of the ying and yang has long been championed by the hippie/vegan/green/lefty movement, hopefully the implications of the symbol will eventually sink in. The sustainable living, zero environmental impact scheme comes straight from the impossible dream of immortality. "For the human race to survive, we must learn to live with nature, we must coexist"
The human race will not survive forever, what begins must end, and we won't ever coexist with nature, because we are never apart from nature in the first place.
The city is natural, global warming is natural, mad cow disease is natural, war, starvation, famine, crime, pollution, corruption, destruction, prozac and starbucks, sport utility vehicles and housing developments, skyscrapers and landfills, nuclear reactors and coal burners, are all natural, are just as much a part of nature as a waterfall or an oak tree.
Am I just arguing semantics? I don't think so. You might think I am just watering down the meaning of 'natural', maybe so much so that it just means something like "everything" now. Maybe. Am I wrong?