The way we treat nature

 It is hard to express how much it distresses me to see the way people treat the nature around them. Within the white European dominated world, I blame religion. The Judeo-Christian "fill the world and subdue it" is not a good attitude toward the source of all life. The Jewish and Christian holy books are filled with examples of the attitude that nature is other; i.e. we are not a part of nature; and wilderness is bad. This is the reason that I blame religion at least for the unacceptable behavior in places dominated or significantly influenced by Judaism and Christianity. For most of the religions in Asia and pre-invasion North America (Native American), the wilderness is where you went for enlightenment. It would seem to me that you can not have the attitude that nature is somehow contradictory to your religion; that being in the wilderness is bad and that you have some sort of divine command to fill the world and subdue nature; and be a good citizen of planet Earth and good participant in its nature. It is thus hard for me to conceive of one being able to say I'm a Christian and I love nature. Which are you betraying?

Even before the advent of quantum physics, naturalists (i) believed in the oneness of all things. While willing to include the entire universe, naturalists didn't have any connectors to make the argument. Quantum physics has provided those connectors and it is not at all difficult to see the oneness described by quantum physics as the oneness we experience as naturalists.

The oneness of all life on earth is actually quite evident if you don't allow yourself to be blinded by religion or some other anthropocentric philosophy. What is rather amusing is how we humans consider ourselves the most important thing on the planet, when the reality is that we're probably the least important. The extinction of the homo sapiens would be the only extinction that would not have some negative impact upon nature. In fact, the extinction of the homo sapiens would be a boon for nature. That means that we're not only not the most important, we're problematic.

Someone is surely going to point out our power and technological prowess. That's power, not importance. That's only impressive to us. The world would be a lot better off without it. So we can build a bomb that will destroy most life on earth. Firstly, that has no positive or beneficial application and we need many other aspects of nature to build it. Absolutely everything we can make is dependent upon us using and/or abusing other parts of nature. Our importance is only self-importance. Taking the world's view point, we're a nasty invasive species. We're overpopulated. We consume beyond our needs and return nothing. That's not a very good citizen.

Take some serious time to consider the rest of nature. I say 'rest of nature' because, whether nature likes it or not, we are a part of nature. For a long time we labeled all carnivores evil. I find that ludicrous. We kill for fun and we call an animal that kills for food evil? How many times have we observed situations where we have killed an entire carnivorous species and watched that area start to die. The animals on which the carnivore fed begin to over-populate and so the vegetation begins to die. That causes migratory species to avoid the area which has its negative impact. Vegetation loss effects soil, water quality, flooding, etc. It is an ecological domino effect. An environmental nightmare. When the carnivore returns to the area we see health return.

We participate in this type of destructive activity countless times every day. Urban and suburban sprawl, farming, putting up fences along interstate highways, mining, drilling, building reservoirs, and building stupid politician's walls, are just a few of our daily destructive activities.

While nature has no choice but accept that we are a part of nature, we have no choice but realize that we are totally dependent upon nature for our life. We can not make air, water, or food without nature. Absolutely everything we have is dependent upon nature. We are locked into a universal oneness with nature, so if we kill and destroy nature, guess who we are also killing.

Capitalists, who are perhaps the greatest destroyers of nature, are going to tell you that you need them to survive and live well. That is the biggest lie ever told. You do not need capitalism. Capitalism needs you and the nature of which you are a part. We must, at the least, control them.

Nature is our true hope for life and happiness. Despite our behavior. Despite our destruction, nature continues to provide us with all that we need to be truly happy. For 93.7% of our existence on this planet we lived in harmony with the rest of nature. We weren't slaves to capitalism or any other economic system. Our average work week was around fourteen hours! There is reason that many anthropologists called those who lived then the original affluent society. We have given all that up, . . . and for what?

We have been unbelievably abusive to nature yet it is our only hope. We have treated it like something inferior, when it is only by the grace of nature that we still survive.

There are those who believe that we can return to a right relationship with nature. I'm a pessimist. I don't think humans can do it. I think we will continue to be a greedy invasive species and will die a horrible and painful death because of our greed and destructive nature. I would like to be proven wrong! Don't just spout protective rationalization at me to drown out the truth I speak. Get out there and do something.

FOOTNOTES.

(i) The debate over the definition of "naturalist" continues unabated. The "scientific naturalist", who like to call themselves "strict" naturalist, believe that everything must be able to be observed by strict scientific method. No feelings or spirit. The opposite end of the spectrum are those who believe that nature is the manifestation of the sacred; a divinity. I'm an ontological naturalist. That's somewhere in the middle; definitely no deity but not strictly scientific. Some call our group metaphysical naturalists.