-- *Mar*Certainly. Here’s a *response essay* to *YM Sarma’s “Nature in Subjecting and Predicating.”*
I’ve written it in a reflective–academic style, suitable for publication, classroom discussion, or philosophical dialogue. ------------------------------ *Response Essay: Nature as Subject and the Recovery of Participation* *Introduction* YM Sarma’s *“Nature in Subjecting and Predicating”* is both a metaphysical reflection and a moral warning. It invites us to reimagine our relationship with nature not as external observers or exploiters, but as *participants in nature’s own grammar of being.* Sarma’s essay is neither ecological science nor romantic pastoralism; it is a philosophical anthropology—a vision of what humanity would become if it once again lived, thought, and spoke *as nature itself.* His work calls for a profound linguistic, ontological, and educational revolution. In his view, the very structure of human consciousness and language has been distorted by technological and economic alienation. To heal, we must rediscover the biosphere as the living subject of which we are only expressions, predicates, and verbs. ------------------------------ *Nature as Subject: The Ontology of Participation* At the heart of Sarma’s philosophy is a radical shift in subjecthood. In the modern world, the “I” has become an isolated center of will, acting upon a passive “nature.” For Sarma, this is the primal error from which technological disease and ecological crisis emerge. He reverses the grammar: *Nature is the true subject*, and human beings are among its many predicates—moments of its unfolding syntax. In this vision, the human sentence is never self-contained. Every act, perception, or word occurs *through* the biosphere, not against it. The verbs of existence—the life processes—belong to the planet, not to the ego. Our individuality, then, is not an autonomous essence but a temporary articulation within nature’s ongoing discourse. This vision resonates with both Eastern metaphysics and contemporary ecological philosophy. Like Vedantic thought, Sarma denies the ultimate reality of separateness. Like deep ecology, he asserts the intrinsic value and selfhood of the biosphere. His innovation lies in merging these perspectives with a linguistic insight: *grammar mirrors metaphysics.* When language is self-centered, reality is fractured. When language arises from participation, reality becomes whole again. ------------------------------ *The Disease of Technology and the Alienation of Economics* Sarma’s critique of technology is uncompromising. He calls it a “man-made disease” afflicting both nature and mind. Technology, in his eyes, represents not progress but pathology—a symptom of our attempt to escape the womb of the biosphere and assert mechanical control over the living world. This disease extends into economics, which he interprets as the institutionalization of disconnection. Economics transforms symbiosis into competition, ecology into Social Darwinism. The living planet becomes a battlefield of extraction and survival, rather than a field of cooperation and mutual becoming. In Sarma’s stark formulation, *modern economics is a continuous war against nature and, therefore, against ourselves.* While one might question whether technology must always be destructive, Sarma’s deeper insight is psychological. The issue is not the tool, but the *intention* that wields it. When intention is grounded in separation rather than participation, every machine becomes an act of domination. Thus, the technological crisis is ultimately a *crisis of consciousness.* ------------------------------ *Education and the Recovery of Perception* Sarma extends his critique to universities, accusing them of becoming “dens of Social Darwinism.” Education, he argues, has been corrupted by its allegiance to economic and technological imperatives. Instead of awakening the student to the living unity of existence, it trains the mind to dissect, manipulate, and profit from it. His remedy is visionary: the creation of *Free Nature Parks*—spaces left entirely untampered, serving as true universities where nature herself is the teacher. Within such spaces, knowledge is not abstract but experiential, arising from immersion and emotional resonance with the living world. Sarma’s proposal is more than ecological conservation; it is a call to reconstitute the *epistemology of learning.* True education, he implies, must restore the mind’s ability to perceive unity—to feel, rather than merely analyze, the biospheric consciousness of which it is a limb. ------------------------------ *The Linguistic and Emotional Cosmos* One of Sarma’s most striking ideas is his vision of the atmosphere as a “macro-endocrine system,” circulating hormonal messages among all organisms. Here he merges ecological science with poetic intuition, proposing a planetary physiology that binds every being into one shared metabolism. In this context, emotions, sensations, and even electromagnetic fields become forms of communication—expressions of the planet’s emotional body. The world is no longer a collection of 3D objects, but a continuous field of feelings. This view invites a new kind of ecology: one that includes the psychic, emotional, and energetic dimensions of nature’s life. ------------------------------ *Relevance and Reflection* Sarma’s essay belongs to a lineage of thinkers—from Spinoza to Whitehead, from Arne Næss to David Abram—who have sought to overcome the metaphysical dualism of subject and object. Yet Sarma’s language is uniquely organic and metaphorical. He writes not as an academic but as a seer who feels the biosphere as his own body. What makes his vision powerful is its refusal to compromise. In a time when environmental discourse often remains technical and managerial, Sarma’s writing restores the sacred dimension of ecological consciousness. He reminds us that the crisis of nature is not merely external degradation but *a linguistic and existential estrangement*. We have forgotten how to speak *with* the world, and so we wound it with our every act and word. ------------------------------ *Conclusion: Toward a New Grammar of Being* To live as nature’s subject and predicate is to rediscover the participatory grammar of life. It is to understand that every breath, word, and perception is an ecological event. The healing of the planet begins, therefore, with the healing of language—with a transformation from a discourse of domination to one of dialogue. Sarma’s essay is not only a critique of civilization; it is a prophecy of reintegration. It calls us to re-enter the womb of the biosphere consciously, to allow our minds, technologies, and institutions to grow again as limbs of the living Earth. If humanity can learn once more to speak as nature, not about it, then education, economics, and technology may all be redeemed—not as diseases, but as the self-reflective organs of a planet finally aware of itself. ------------------------------ *In short:* *YM Sarma’s “Nature in Subjecting and Predicating” is a call to remember that we are not the authors of nature’s story, but its sentences—each word a pulse in the grammar of the living Earth.* ------------------------------ Would you like me to format this essay for publication (with citations, references, or academic style headings), or keep it as a reflective–philosophical essay? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. 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