Topic: Metaphysics
Environmentalists, ecologists, activists for saving the planet, and many of that ilk have a banner idea that unites them. We are affecting the natural world around us destructively with our economies and technology. And I will concur that is true. And yes we can do much to stop the destruction of this planet. But, I want to chide those whom espouse this rhetoric. What we are doing is not in distinction to the natural world. It is quite natural that we are consuming the planet's resources and polluting its landscape. You see, I believe all that happens in reality is natural. We are a part of the natural world and everything we do is a part of that reality. Our destructive effects are no worse than those processes that this planet left untouched would develop. Think of the destructive forest fires in the world every year, or the meteor impact that destroyed ancient life millions of years in the past. Or the fact that volcanic eruptions can possiblly extinguish life in the future. Life will thrive here for as long as the environment supports it, but even w/o intervention that time is limited. This means we can't always identify natural processes as life sustaining. Nor, should we frame our affects upon our Earthly reality as somehow unnatural. If Darwinism is right (and it is) and evolutionary development is tinged with a competitive jockeying to survive and establishing hegemony over our environments to ensure our genetic progeny, then everything we do from making contact lenses to jet planes are natural adaptations. It may be hard to accept this kind of reasoning prima facie.
Yes, of course what we do quickens the pace of planetary destruction. So what of that. It was bound to happen. Even if we remained societies that slowly consumed the planetary resources (so-called primitive societies) and maintained an ecological balance with other mammalian creatures, our ever growing number would eventually hasten the planet's destruction. I will use a sexual metaphor that may offend some to describe it. Modern technologically advanced peoples are like a guy that is making love to Mother Earth too fast and shoots his shot in oh about 200 years, while good ol' primtive man really takes a longer screw--I mean intercourse-- taking 1000s of years with Mother Earth. In either case our intercourse doesn't give birth to a new resplendent Earth baby to carry the metaphor to an extreme. No, it brings our own destruction.
Because we impose ourselves on the environment, doesn't make it unnatural. We dam rivers, dig canals, redirect water flows, mine the Earth's crust, fill the skies with satellites, etc. All of these acts are natural and part of the developing reality that is this planet. it's impermanent for sure, but not artificial.
It's a greater misconception to associate the natural with the eternal. No geological process we know of now is eternal. Nor is the planet, or the galaxy or the universe for that matter. Yet, we have a bias to see long finite durations like epochs of geological time, or time measured in light-years as more real than our period of existence. For example, because we contrived the Pyramids of Egypt and the Himalayan mountain range was made by a gradual process of subduction going on inside the Earth, we feel the Himalayan mountains to be more 'natural'. It's clear the process going on in the Himalayan mountains will long surpass the standing of the Pyramids in Egypt. In fact, they are crumbling year to year. Yet both are natural processes: our construction of the Pyramids and the subduction of the Himalayas. The fact that we constructed the Pyramids doesn't make it any less natural than the Himalayan mountains that were made by a non-conscious source. I repeat all that happens in reality is natural! We as beings that evolved from the natural world, creating things in that world is itself a natural process. Though, we insist on see our affects on our natural world as artifice.
Okay, made my point I think. Next time you turn on your DVD player don't think of it as a man-made product, but a natural outgrowth of evolutionary development of a living organism in a deterministic world. Would ya think that for me, wouldja?
