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.
At first glance this strikes me as obviously right -- humans are part of nature, and thus so is everything human -- and yet not fitting the story I was trying to tell. The conservation movement centers on protecting "nature" (national parks, wildlife, wilderness, etc.) against... something. What? (It seems to me that most people want the "something" to be "capitalism," but I'm not sure that works.)
I think that what we are attempting to protect breaks down well enough into constituent parts like the parks or different kinds of ecosystems or, also, cultural resources like historic buildings or landscape. But you are right in pointing out the difficulty of naming what it is we are protecting things from.
To say we are protecting things from capitalism (or its kissing cousin, Marxism) at least puts it within our agency because its not supernatural (though some treat it as if it were because making it inevitable - making it either God or the Devil - means there can be no effective resistance).
I also think you (all of us) should be uncomfortable about capitalism as the threat. That is just too easy. There is going to be an economic system and that system is going to have certain functions like production and transactions. But HOW it works, how it fulfills those functions, is a symptom (result, consquence, impact, pick your word) of some underlying narrative or story or myth about the very nature of existence, the nature of nature, or in this conversation perhaps, we can limit it to the nature of human nature.
It is our conception of human nature in which the dynamic between conservation and whatever the economic system is exists. If our conception of us - of how we think, I guess - is linear, binary, dualistic, and competitive then certain things (including capitalism and communism) necessarily flow from that. But what if our story was nonlinear, nonbinary, holistic, and cooperative? Wouldn't something different have to emerge? Mather (and so many others you have written about) worked with the story he was given and of which he became a part. But what can happen within the parameters of that story is limited.
We have examples (not all of which are in the past) of peoples whose conceptions of human nature were/are, at the least, different than our own. If we could (and some of us are trying, though there is fierce resistance and, even harder to deal with than resistance, pervasive apathy) change our story about the nature of human nature, then we could be in a story in which there is no opposition between Nature and the economic system.
Well said! You and I have often talked about the need to come up with new overarching narratives. This post is one of my attempts at putting some concreteness into the existing one, to ask how it might differ.
A friend asked via email if I could expand on "the state of wilderness in countries with other economic systems." And I don't know enough. But do you know? What is wilderness in the nonlinear, nonbinary, holistic, and cooperative culture?
It is really up to some indigenous person to speak to this. I note also that Gary Snyder has written some useful things, things that have guided my learning. In response specifically to your friend, I think that designated wilderness is always a Western idea, even if you find it in Zambia or Ecuador.
My understanding, however, is that in indigenous culture the dichotomy disappears. That in the indigenous worldview its all just home. That doesn't mean that different places in the world don't serve different purposes. Of course they do. Snyder talks about the "good, the wild, and the sacred." What it means I think is that the people understand the necessity and balance of all the differences in what they experience as a unified way of life.
I think for example, about a world (a world I would like to live in) in which there is no distinction between work and recreation. Its just life. Robim Wall Kimmerer has something to say about that in one or more or her essays. I also think, and I know you have read it, about Wisdom Sits in Places, which makes ir clear that there are cultures in which the landscape is also a collection of stories, each "activated"by a specific place. That brings back a childhood memory that I may have to write about somewhere, sometime.
So, an incompelte answer (as it supposed to be, these thoughts do not come from the binary world), but a place to start.
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.
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.
At first glance this strikes me as obviously right -- humans are part of nature, and thus so is everything human -- and yet not fitting the story I was trying to tell. The conservation movement centers on protecting "nature" (national parks, wildlife, wilderness, etc.) against... something. What? (It seems to me that most people want the "something" to be "capitalism," but I'm not sure that works.)
Thanks John.
I think that what we are attempting to protect breaks down well enough into constituent parts like the parks or different kinds of ecosystems or, also, cultural resources like historic buildings or landscape. But you are right in pointing out the difficulty of naming what it is we are protecting things from.
To say we are protecting things from capitalism (or its kissing cousin, Marxism) at least puts it within our agency because its not supernatural (though some treat it as if it were because making it inevitable - making it either God or the Devil - means there can be no effective resistance).
I also think you (all of us) should be uncomfortable about capitalism as the threat. That is just too easy. There is going to be an economic system and that system is going to have certain functions like production and transactions. But HOW it works, how it fulfills those functions, is a symptom (result, consquence, impact, pick your word) of some underlying narrative or story or myth about the very nature of existence, the nature of nature, or in this conversation perhaps, we can limit it to the nature of human nature.
It is our conception of human nature in which the dynamic between conservation and whatever the economic system is exists. If our conception of us - of how we think, I guess - is linear, binary, dualistic, and competitive then certain things (including capitalism and communism) necessarily flow from that. But what if our story was nonlinear, nonbinary, holistic, and cooperative? Wouldn't something different have to emerge? Mather (and so many others you have written about) worked with the story he was given and of which he became a part. But what can happen within the parameters of that story is limited.
We have examples (not all of which are in the past) of peoples whose conceptions of human nature were/are, at the least, different than our own. If we could (and some of us are trying, though there is fierce resistance and, even harder to deal with than resistance, pervasive apathy) change our story about the nature of human nature, then we could be in a story in which there is no opposition between Nature and the economic system.
Well said! You and I have often talked about the need to come up with new overarching narratives. This post is one of my attempts at putting some concreteness into the existing one, to ask how it might differ.
A friend asked via email if I could expand on "the state of wilderness in countries with other economic systems." And I don't know enough. But do you know? What is wilderness in the nonlinear, nonbinary, holistic, and cooperative culture?
It is really up to some indigenous person to speak to this. I note also that Gary Snyder has written some useful things, things that have guided my learning. In response specifically to your friend, I think that designated wilderness is always a Western idea, even if you find it in Zambia or Ecuador.
My understanding, however, is that in indigenous culture the dichotomy disappears. That in the indigenous worldview its all just home. That doesn't mean that different places in the world don't serve different purposes. Of course they do. Snyder talks about the "good, the wild, and the sacred." What it means I think is that the people understand the necessity and balance of all the differences in what they experience as a unified way of life.
I think for example, about a world (a world I would like to live in) in which there is no distinction between work and recreation. Its just life. Robim Wall Kimmerer has something to say about that in one or more or her essays. I also think, and I know you have read it, about Wisdom Sits in Places, which makes ir clear that there are cultures in which the landscape is also a collection of stories, each "activated"by a specific place. That brings back a childhood memory that I may have to write about somewhere, sometime.
So, an incompelte answer (as it supposed to be, these thoughts do not come from the binary world), but a place to start.
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.