> We are nature defending itself
It might interest you for use as a search query, there seems to be more to it than just a sign.
This was also a central theme in a lot of the late John Moriarty's work (although approached more obliquely and holistically than Abram imo). That mantle has been picked up by Martin Shaw. Both discuss how we, as a species, have domesticated ourselves out of our natural and profound connection the very ground of our being. See also philosopher and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emmisary.
https://faculty.washington.edu/timbillo/Readings%20and%20doc...
WHO draft treaties demote humans (including rights) to the same level as other animals and mandates global surveillance of interspecies zoonotic boundaries.
The TV series "Zoo", based on writing by James Patterson, includes 3 seasons of thought experiments.
Clear-cutting aside, the decline of one after another species of trees all over the world is something of a mystery to scientists: in each case, there seems to be a different proximate culprit — a beetle, a fungus, etc. But why have they become susceptible? Acid rain leaching free aluminum from soil silicates? Ground-level ozone damaging leaves? Drought stress caused by deforestation elsewhere? Heat stress due to climate change? Understory damage due to deer overpopulation due to predator extermination? Exogenous insect species? Insect population surges due to the decline of certain bird species?
Or is it all of the above? Perhaps underneath all of these vectors of forest decline and climate instability is a more general principle that is inescapable. Everything I have mentioned stems from a kind of derangement in our own society. All come from the perception of separation from nature and from each other, upon which all our systems of money, technology, industry, and so forth are built. Each of these projects itself onto our own psyches as well. The ideology of control says that if we can only identify the “cause,” we can control climate change. Fine, but what if the cause is everything? Economy, politics, emissions, agriculture, medicine … all the way to religion, psychology, our basic stories through which we apprehend the world? We face then the futility of control and the necessity for transformation.
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Thus I say that our revolution must go all the way to the bottom, all the way down to our basic understanding of self and world. We will not survive as a species through more of the same: better breeds of corn, better pesticides, the extension of control to the genetic and molecular level. We need to enter a fundamentally different story. That is why an activist will inevitably find herself working on the level of story. She will find that in addition to addressing immediate needs, even the most practical, hands-on actions are telling a story. They come from and contribute to a new Story of the World.
It is not something “out there” that surrounds us. It is the air we take in with every breath etc. we are one with it.
Poisoning or destroying it is the very act of poisoning and destroying ourselves.
She points out that perceiving the biosphere, the land, other living beings, and humans as resources - and especially resources tied to an economic system of infinite growth, causes us to destroy it all for the creation of illusory value.
We are dealing with normalized mental illness on planetary scale which causes humanity to actively destroy our biosphere.
-- Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age.
Kind of interesting timing given the mysterious sea fence that appeared recently [1].
Does that mean there's still some sort of hope...?
[1] https://en.tempo.co/read/1963072/after-much-protest-pantura-...
"Own" just means that we agree with other people that we have certain rights over some property - land, or whatever. That ownership is enforced to varying degrees by society. That's it.
I don’t see it helping conservation efforts either. If we’re part of nature, if we’re fundamentally not so different, then that implies we don’t need to worry too much about what we do. Dumping toxic waste is like a deer crapping on the ground. It doesn’t worry about where the stuff goes or what will clean it up, so why should we?
The answer is that we’re not part of nature, we don’t have robust ecosystems taking care of all those details. We should care because we still need nature for many things, and beyond that we still want it. And so we must act to preserve it, because we certainly are capable of acting to destroy it.
Or do we? Does a plant have a choice jumping from sea to land? Do we have a choice in greedily using the resources of the planet to "progress"? From the perspective of a pessimist it's beginning to seem, at least to me, that we do not.
I frame it to myself this way:
- We are one animal among many
- We are uniquely capable of large-scale destruction
- Technology must be carefully additive tools
- Designing tools is designing behavior
- Civilization is complication, nature is complexity
- Nature, undominated, is our home
Reject the law of noncontradiction.
Including polluting and destroying part of the system.
1) https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass 2) https://birdvenue.com/homegrown-flock/chickens/how-many-chic...
Would the earth itself be a horrific hellhole given it would be sustaining billions of deaths, each year?
I have never understood this argument against animal farming. I'm all for humane treatment of livestock, but we can't fool ourselves into believing that the corresponding biomass in a completely "wild" earth would be having a better time, or a better death, than our cows and chickens.
I like the idea of rewilding because it forces us to see ourselves as part of a large natural system - which is what we are - and helps grow appreciation for that system.
But until there is a way for recognition of that system to become more profitable than "othering" nature - polluting the environment, destroying parts of that system - or regulation prevents that othering, it can be depressingly isolating.