Back to Nature #1 December 1, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Environment, Human Ecology , trackbackBack to Nature:
Exploring Humans’ Relationship to the Natural World
Modern humans have an uneasy relationship with the “natural world”: there is a sense of separation, of loss, but also an ambivalence and uncertainty in knowing how to relate to Nature.
What we even mean by “the Natural World” or “Nature” is unclear. Some might say, for example, that since culture has emerged from nature, it must in some ways still be governed by the forces of nature.
In what ways can it be said that we are still a part of nature? In what ways, if any, have we escaped the confines of natural processes with our tools and technologies, medicines and machines? And if human society is still governed primarily by the laws and limitations of the natural world, what does this mean for a future of diminishing natural resources and energy after Peak Oil?
This is the first of a series essays in which I want to explore some different approaches to the question of human’s relationship to nature.
Removed from the Source
At the core of the environmental crisis lies an unresolved unease in the human relationship with the natural world.
While most of our existence as humans has involved an intimate, immediate relationship on the environment from which we have gained all we needed to survive, in the modern world there are millions of people who have scarcely any contact with nature outside walking the dog in the park.
Removed from nature as a source of food, materials and medicines, attitudes towards the natural world have changed drastically.
As people first moved away from tribal hunter-gathering and learned to domesticate plants and animals, there may have been a relief, a sense of progress even, that the food stores that are one of the features of farming- as opposed to hunting- provided a cushion for the uncertainties and dangers of daily life.
This attitude of “nature raw in tooth and claw” –nature as something that needs to be tamed and even escaped from- presided over, controlled- can be observed still, for example in modern Ireland amongst some of the older people, the memories of the hardship of the famine apparently still fresh in the cultural memory.
The modern age was marked, then, by a progressive “taming” of wild nature, and a consequent removal from it. As we moved on from farming into the industrial age, more and more of our needs were met one step further removed from their source. The emergence of service and finance sectors created a whole new class of the privileged who were not personally tending the fields of managing any other natural resource either.
With the advent of machines and a global transport and trade system, and as whole sections of people in the industrial world no longer needed to have any real contact with nature other than for recreational purposes, any sense of intimate understanding of nature was lost.
Increasingly, the natural world was plundered wholesale for human comfort, but as more and more of it was destroyed, degraded or completely annihilated by the burgeoning growth of the completely artificial environment of the city and its lengthy supply lines, a sense of alienation began to creep into the modern psyche.
In banishing the fierce wild animals still lurking, perhaps, in the collective consciousness by clearing entirely the dark forests that were their lair, humans began to feel they had also lost part of themselves. By achieving the supreme evolutionary “success” of complete domination over nature and out-competing by far practically every other species on the planet, humanity found it was left with a hole in its soul.
The Romantic Return
Since the 1960s, this relationship began to change and the pendulum began to swing back towards nature: the natural world was in danger, and the danger was us. Not only did we need to defend the environment because we depended on it for resources, but it was also the source of our joy, inspiration for our art, solace for our troubles and metaphor for our own inner world.
Part of this change has been prompted by a sense of alienation, of loss, a grieving for a past innocence that was our birthright but has been replaced by a sanitised life, soulless, secure but empty. And therein lays one of the pitfalls of the Return: turning back to the natural world from the perspective of the industrial, consumer world has resulted in a distorted view of the very “Nature” that impulse was intended to preserve.
This distorted view of nature- from the point of view of the romantic, of the urban consumer and the bureaucrat, but also of many aspects of the environmental movement, lays as the very heart the dilemma humans face as a species as we reach the peak of our energy and resource base and threaten the biosphere in a way not seen for millions of years on account of climate change.
The new Ecological World view has developed in two broad strands:
On the one hand, the New Sciences of ecology, followed by climate science in particular, along with Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, gave credibility and influence politically.
A new political movement- the broad sash of Green from Earth First! to influential political parties- was born, and the egalitarian and justice movements had a new companion as equal rights were to be extended in law to all of nature, all living beings. An international network of nature preserves and protected species became established.
The Natural World had a new generation as its spokesperson: the Baby Boomers, beneficiaries of the wealth generated by the machine age that had dispensed with Nature other than as a resource, and with a passionate and committed agenda to fight for the earth, to save the planet and create sustainable communities.
The second strand was carried by many in this generation, and was to do with a new sense of self, a caring, sensitive self that was open to exploring feelings that had been suppressed during the age of the machine. Alongside a new affinity with nature came a new readiness to open to and explore our own Inner nature, our Feminine Side, and this gave birth to a whole plethora of workshops exploring spirituality, psychology and religion in all its guises from Reiki to Buddhism, Yoga to Angel cards, Astrology to Ecospychology, meditation and hallucinogenic drugs.
On a deeper level perhaps there was a yearning to bring back a new Golden Age of Innocence in the Garden.
This inner exploration provided new forms of ideologies concerning our place in nature
In the next post, I want to consider one of the ideologies, Deep Ecology, -and consider its contribution to our understanding.
Comments»
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p>Jules Pretty’s ‘Agri-culture’ is highly recommended reading on the connection between people and nature.
As the human mind has evolved it has become more separated from the body in which it resides. The human body is essentially the same thing as nature. Putting words to things, as “body” or “nature,” itself puts us one step removed from whatever is named. This has been a very useful tool. The phenonema has evolved into what I see as madness. The exagerated dominance of the individual ego, (which when you think about it, is a chimera, a virtual thing, fleeting, without substance, a tool, a small spirit with a window on a larger one), has left us deluded, out of touch with reality and context, unbalanced.