The answer is that it's not binary, despite everyone's insistence on framing it as such. We are a part of nature, but we do have some degree of power and responsibility over it that other species don't. It's not absolute, it's murky and messy, defined by the relative magnitude of power and our estimates of it. I think this framing addresses both our relationship within our ecosystems, above our ecosystems, and in the distant future, beneath some larger cosmic ecosystem that may exist that we don't know about yet.
Other lifeforms have dramatically altered the planet in the (geologic) past. The Great Oxidation Event, when plants colonized land, etc. These events were far more catastrophic to the status quo of their time. Timelines, means, and modes differ, sure. If anything makes us qualitatively different it's that we have a choice.
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
For all we know there have been great civilizations in eons past. How would we know? 100 million years from now there might not be a trace of our own civilization left.
Re:Rewilding the Self
by bokoharambe on Sunday January 12, 2025 @01:53PM
(#42675803)
Humans both are a part of nature and are distinct from it at the same time. It is wrong to dissolve humanity into its natural constituents just as it is wrong to turn humanity into something totally Other or supernatural standing above nature. Both can be true.
Reject the law of noncontradiction.
But at the same time, accept it.
Re:Rewilding the Self
by bokoharambe on Sunday January 12, 2025 @02:22PM
(#42676075)
That's the spirit!
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.