The Result of Being Unnatural
Created | Updated Oct 4, 2004
Allan: "Hey Fred, do you see that?"
Fred: (looking into the woods) "Yeah. It looks like some kind of rare parrot. It might be the irreplaceable New Zealand kakapo...or maybe even an echo parakeet, the rarest bird in the world."
Allan: "Well, get rid of it. It might go after my beef burger."
(Fred blows away the bird's head with a 12 caliber shot gun)
Fred: "Yup, I never miss. Not with my lucky Mountain Gorilla key chain."
Allan: "Isn't it kinda heavy lugging that thing around?"
Fred: "Hey, it's a status symbol."
Allan: "Yeah, but a whole gorilla?"
(nearby, minding its own business, an orb spider busily puts the finishing touches to its grand web network)
Fred: "You still want this beer?"
Allan: "Naah."
(Fred throws his beer can at the spider web creating a big hole. If one moved close enough, you could hear the eight-legged creature shrieking four-letter words and muttering under its breath about insurance premiums rising...)
Why are people, in general, neglectful of their environment? It may stem from the lack of a meaningful relationship with Nature. That's right, "a meaningful relationship." Not that we want to date Mother Nature or anything, all I'm saying is, we don't understand our natural environment. We are distant, separate from it. Nature for us is wood, bugs, fish, clouds and air. You say those words quick enough, and the image of an outdoor fishing trip flashes before your eyes.
We look at nature as a resource. We normally don't have much of a relationship with a resource. It's a thing. Useful and all, but hardly something we'd dress up for. We don't see Nature cry, we don't hear it complain. It hasn't formed a union so far. Nature for most of us is just some dumb non-entity whose main purpose for existing is to serve us.
It wasn't always like this. Back in the time when going around stark naked was still the fashion, we used to worship natural forces. We used to be afraid of it, respect it. It wasn't just a dead resource but a living thing.
This was because we found Nature mysterious, incomprehensible. It was too big and wild for our small brains. But then came the Greeks. The Ionian philosophers, Plato and Aristotle "who believed that human reason could show that Nature was sublimely orderly; it obeyed its own laws, rather than being subject to the caprice of the gods; it was made up of a small number of basic materials...it was regular in its operations" wrote Roy Porter in 'Man Masters Nature.'
This led to the beginning of Western science. "If Nature was rational, man could comprehend it" Porter further wrote (too bad women aren't more like Nature). And the body of Western science grew due to great brains like Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Niels Bohr, James Watson, Francis Crick, Albert Einstein and so on.
All these giant thinkers took away the mystery from Nature and revealed the hidden strings, the tricks behind Nature's magic. From the divine status of deity, Nature became just another entry in our school textbooks. Our contacts with it has been reduced to visits to the zoo and watching TV documentaries.
And thus our present viewpoint--that Nature is "out there"; that it is controllable and of little impact to our daily lives. And so, we've allowed, through our political and corporate leaders, the mass burning of forests, the dumping of pollutants into the seas and rivers, the wiping out of whole species of animals--and if ever there is any concern, it is superficial at best.
It's funny how we've let ourselves adopt this outlook without ever questioning it. It's accepted and taught to us by our parents and teachers. Any contrary viewpoints have been scoffed at--maybe because of how successful this viewpoint has been for us so far.
But now, we are asking, is it right? Is it even correct? Is Nature really "out there," and is it just fire wood? Are we not in fact part of Nature? And far from being just fire wood, Nature is actually alive, dynamic, unified, ever-changing?
Lao Tsu, the ancient Chinese Taoist philosopher, saw this clearly. He suggested that there was a harmony in the universe of which man was a part of. If you've ever seen the ink drawings made by ancient Taoist monks, you would see the common theme of a great landscape--majestic water falls cascading down massive mountains lined with spindly trees, and then, barely noticeably, usually at the bottom of the drawing, there would be lone man, a farmer or a fisherman, trudging along a narrow path around the mountain, seemingly part of the landscape. These drawings showed that man is a part of the natural order. He is not the god, nor is he a pawn--he is part of the natural order of things. And for the Taoists and Zen Buddhists (Zen, being a Buddhist sect that was influenced by Taoism), the way to living an orderly life, one that is joyful, serene and not destructive to oneself and one's environment, is to be in tune with the natural order, to be in harmony with it.
This kind of outlook does not mean giving up all the knowledge and technological advances we have gained, it just acts as a guide to the proper use of these advancements.
A man in sync with Nature would not order the mass rape of virgin forests just to set up a golf course. He would not give his genius and energy to the creation of chemical, biological and atomic weapons of destruction.
We are, underneath the morass of culture and conditioning, still a part of this natural order. Thus to "get back" in sync with it isn't about gaining something, but rather, the removal of that which prevents it from functioning: our blindness caused by "pride." We think we are superior to Nature, that we are somehow above it. But going back to that Taoist painting mentioned earlier, imagine how the picture would look like with the lone man at the bottom of mountain cut out with scissors? If we are not a part of Nature then where do we exist? But we are a part of Nature--Nature is in us and we are in Nature. Only when we realize this deeply, concretely, when it is as real to us as the hard asphalt we walk on will we be able to go back to the natural order of things: where there is a unity that embraces all--man, as well as his environment. As the Taoist put it,
"Man follows the heavens.
The heavens follow the Tao.
The Tao follows what is Natural."
Fred: (looking into the woods) "Yeah. It looks like some kind of rare parrot. It might be the irreplaceable New Zealand kakapo...or maybe even an echo parakeet, the rarest bird in the world."
Allan: "Well, get rid of it. It might go after my beef burger."
(Fred blows away the bird's head with a 12 caliber shot gun)
Fred: "Yup, I never miss. Not with my lucky Mountain Gorilla key chain."
Allan: "Isn't it kinda heavy lugging that thing around?"
Fred: "Hey, it's a status symbol."
Allan: "Yeah, but a whole gorilla?"
(nearby, minding its own business, an orb spider busily puts the finishing touches to its grand web network)
Fred: "You still want this beer?"
Allan: "Naah."
(Fred throws his beer can at the spider web creating a big hole. If one moved close enough, you could hear the eight-legged creature shrieking four-letter words and muttering under its breath about insurance premiums rising...)
Why are people, in general, neglectful of their environment? It may stem from the lack of a meaningful relationship with Nature. That's right, "a meaningful relationship." Not that we want to date Mother Nature or anything, all I'm saying is, we don't understand our natural environment. We are distant, separate from it. Nature for us is wood, bugs, fish, clouds and air. You say those words quick enough, and the image of an outdoor fishing trip flashes before your eyes.
We look at nature as a resource. We normally don't have much of a relationship with a resource. It's a thing. Useful and all, but hardly something we'd dress up for. We don't see Nature cry, we don't hear it complain. It hasn't formed a union so far. Nature for most of us is just some dumb non-entity whose main purpose for existing is to serve us.
It wasn't always like this. Back in the time when going around stark naked was still the fashion, we used to worship natural forces. We used to be afraid of it, respect it. It wasn't just a dead resource but a living thing.
This was because we found Nature mysterious, incomprehensible. It was too big and wild for our small brains. But then came the Greeks. The Ionian philosophers, Plato and Aristotle "who believed that human reason could show that Nature was sublimely orderly; it obeyed its own laws, rather than being subject to the caprice of the gods; it was made up of a small number of basic materials...it was regular in its operations" wrote Roy Porter in 'Man Masters Nature.'
This led to the beginning of Western science. "If Nature was rational, man could comprehend it" Porter further wrote (too bad women aren't more like Nature). And the body of Western science grew due to great brains like Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Niels Bohr, James Watson, Francis Crick, Albert Einstein and so on.
All these giant thinkers took away the mystery from Nature and revealed the hidden strings, the tricks behind Nature's magic. From the divine status of deity, Nature became just another entry in our school textbooks. Our contacts with it has been reduced to visits to the zoo and watching TV documentaries.
And thus our present viewpoint--that Nature is "out there"; that it is controllable and of little impact to our daily lives. And so, we've allowed, through our political and corporate leaders, the mass burning of forests, the dumping of pollutants into the seas and rivers, the wiping out of whole species of animals--and if ever there is any concern, it is superficial at best.
It's funny how we've let ourselves adopt this outlook without ever questioning it. It's accepted and taught to us by our parents and teachers. Any contrary viewpoints have been scoffed at--maybe because of how successful this viewpoint has been for us so far.
But now, we are asking, is it right? Is it even correct? Is Nature really "out there," and is it just fire wood? Are we not in fact part of Nature? And far from being just fire wood, Nature is actually alive, dynamic, unified, ever-changing?
Lao Tsu, the ancient Chinese Taoist philosopher, saw this clearly. He suggested that there was a harmony in the universe of which man was a part of. If you've ever seen the ink drawings made by ancient Taoist monks, you would see the common theme of a great landscape--majestic water falls cascading down massive mountains lined with spindly trees, and then, barely noticeably, usually at the bottom of the drawing, there would be lone man, a farmer or a fisherman, trudging along a narrow path around the mountain, seemingly part of the landscape. These drawings showed that man is a part of the natural order. He is not the god, nor is he a pawn--he is part of the natural order of things. And for the Taoists and Zen Buddhists (Zen, being a Buddhist sect that was influenced by Taoism), the way to living an orderly life, one that is joyful, serene and not destructive to oneself and one's environment, is to be in tune with the natural order, to be in harmony with it.
This kind of outlook does not mean giving up all the knowledge and technological advances we have gained, it just acts as a guide to the proper use of these advancements.
A man in sync with Nature would not order the mass rape of virgin forests just to set up a golf course. He would not give his genius and energy to the creation of chemical, biological and atomic weapons of destruction.
We are, underneath the morass of culture and conditioning, still a part of this natural order. Thus to "get back" in sync with it isn't about gaining something, but rather, the removal of that which prevents it from functioning: our blindness caused by "pride." We think we are superior to Nature, that we are somehow above it. But going back to that Taoist painting mentioned earlier, imagine how the picture would look like with the lone man at the bottom of mountain cut out with scissors? If we are not a part of Nature then where do we exist? But we are a part of Nature--Nature is in us and we are in Nature. Only when we realize this deeply, concretely, when it is as real to us as the hard asphalt we walk on will we be able to go back to the natural order of things: where there is a unity that embraces all--man, as well as his environment. As the Taoist put it,
"Man follows the heavens.
The heavens follow the Tao.
The Tao follows what is Natural."
