Against Our Nature

When did Man decide that he is separate from Nature? Was it when he ceased to exist as a hunter/gatherer and began to farm the land rather than accept what was offered? At some point, it obviously occurred to his burgeoning ego that if he could choose what to grow, then he must be in control of and thus separate from—perhaps even superior to—Nature.

He mistook the earth’s willingness to work with him as something less than cooperation and more like mindless servitude. He lost his respect for the natural world and began to exert his formidable will over it, flooding arable valleys and redirecting rivers, overplanting the soil, overfishing the oceans, and sucking out the oil buried beneath the planet’s skin. He perceived flaws in the fields and orchards and began to tinker in the name of perfection, and now we have genetically modified Frankenveggies designed to… what? Last longer on the supermarket shelves? It can’t be for our nutritional benefit, else fish genes would have been evident in prehistoric tomatoes.

And don’t get me started on the biological misconceptions; that because we can think analytically we must be smarter, thus better, than the other animals. Have you ever watched a crow crack into a discarded Starbucks cup? That takes some ingenuity.

You know what makes us different? Our ego. Our arrogance. Our intellect. In fact, the most unpleasant facets of humanity are pretty well responsible for the present discord between Man and Nature. Of course the planet exists to serve, but so do we, and in believing ourselves separate from it, we have failed to nurture the resources meant to nurture us.

Abuse can only be endured for so long before the tables turn on the abuser. A planet once eager to embrace us is now fighting to save itself, and if we’re caught in the upheaval … oh, well.

We are not separate from Nature. We never have been. We are born of the same stuff as the rocks and trees and birds and rain and stars. We are a vital part of a greater whole comprised of other vital parts, each subject to the same law as the others. We are all alive. Living, breathing, adapting, we are all beings responding to the energy of intention. To cut ourselves off from this wondrous collaboration of particles is truly the means to our end.

The tide is turning, slowly. More and more people—the unlucky inheritors of a world we’ll leave to them—are reawakening to the relationship we have with the rest of creation. Many of us are trying to mend the broken ties and reconnect to the wonders of the world around us. Nature may lack the intellect, but forgiveness and compassion are universal traits. It might be too late … but it’s never too late.

With love,