The Ecopsychology discussion has been stuck on the question:
"What is Nature?" for a week now and it is driving me
nuts. They are off into spirituality and all kinds of
philosophical mumbo jumbo. So.. this is a rant tossed into
the wind...
Nature is the world as it might exist without the
addition of human creations from abstract reasoning.
Another viewpoint says humans are part of nature and thus all
our creations are part of nature. I find this definition
worthless because i still need a word to describe the
world as it might be if humans had not modified it.
Additional arguments say humans have always modified nature
and therefor pure nature has never existed. OK, we need an
additional words to describe this state.
It is a waste of time to argue about the definition of nature
because each person defines it differently. A much better
approach is to give our definition and proceed. These words
are just labels and concept of nature exists whether we can
agree on a word or not.
So... abstract reasoning such as math, symbolic logic, much
of science, building codes, most of culture, most of
economics, and just about everything which has absolutes is
not nature. We can say two plus two equals four and this is
an absolute "abstract" statement. It isn't part of nature.
Another way to approach this is to stand in a forest and
accept it as very close to a natural state. We can't
describe this particular forest to anyone in detail. Oh,
we can describe small pieces and big general concepts but,
most of the forest is beyond words. The forest changes,
the wind ebbs and flows, the temperature changes, life
forms come and go as one sits there thinking. This is
nature and the word "nature" will never be enough to
define it.
Now for the rant... Any group that spends a week trying to
define the word "nature" is lost in cultural immersion. They
can't separate language from the world around them. If
something can not be categorized and discussed it bothers
them. Humbug, there is much to life that is outside our
perceptions and crude tools of measurement. Our mountains of
data and philosophical ideas are all attempts to describe a
universe that is too vast for our best science. What we can
do is interact and experience nature. We can separate
cultural programming from direct experience and possibly our
life might make more sense. This understanding does not have
to be converted into language or be controlled by available
words.
In other words, culture is mostly conveyed by language and
we use it to create abstract worlds, stories, fantasies,
societies, structures, and these things need one foot back
in the natural world. Nature is what sustains us.
----
jeff owens, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.xprt.net/~jko
underground house, solar power, self-reliance, edible landscape
eco lifestyle discussion: subscribe ecopath -> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
