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Lee Nellis's avatar

Fell asleep thinking about this excellent question.

My answer is that Nature is all there is and there can be no opposite within our experience. We are here, the Parks are here, Stephen Mather had his turn (we found the Mather plate at Carlsbad Caverns when we were there, and at Guadeloupe) as a result of all that has happened since the Big Bang, the dance of the continents, the procession of the great cycles, the proess of evolution. That's what's here and we conscious being are the witnesses or maybe as Alan Watts said, nature's way of experiencing or expressing itself, that we are to Nature what a wave is to the ocean.

The way around this conclusion is to introduce something outside and beyond nature, something supernatural. So, if there were such an entity, which I do not think there is, God would be the opposite of Nature.

One problem with this view is that things like Nazism - which I use as an example because it seems to be the topic de jour on Substack - must be understood as natural. That's hard. But if you understand any form of evil as outside Nature you, as a product of Nature, are unable to do anything about it. You may defeat Hitler, but are still waiting for God to send you something equally arbitary, which believers are taught to hope will be Grace, but could as easily be the 10 plagues all over again.

Sad or not, seeing evil things as part of Nature - as part of natural processes - should give us a sense of agency. The sense of agency that the religious (and in that term I include most of all those who worship money) want to deprive us of so that we may be more easily manipulated.

The problem with that conclusion is that the desire to manipulate others must then be natural (if its not, you have to invent the Devil who is just as unsatisfactory, arbitary, and capricious as God), which means we have to deal with it within or natural capabilities. It might mean, for example, that we have to have our narrative be one of throwing a potlatch rather than investing in stocks and bonds.

That seems like a good place to stop and see what, if anything, others have to say.

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Antonia Malchik's avatar

I never knew this, how interesting! I’m not sure I’d use the word “capitalism” here, either. It’s a monopoly, heavily controlled, and probably has a limited profit scope. Or at least it’s not free-market capitalism, I guess. Is it the opposite of nature? Or set up as such? What a good question. I’d have to think about it more.

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