This is a word that always bothers me. From the very first time I heard it. Because it's something that I still can't understand. Natural and Supernatural. Those are pretty straight forward. Natural is things that exist in nature. Where as supernatural are things that cannot exist within the rules of the natural world. These ideas make sense.
So what makes something unnatural? It seems to be a moniker used exclusively for the creations of man. Which makes me wonder if a building is unnatural, what about a termite mound? At what point of advanced tool usage does it move from "wonder of the natural world" to "unnatural abomination"?
This word infuriates me because it ties to two other ideas that I think are some of the most dangerously backward thinking around. One, that human kind is not a part of nature, and two that scientific advances are somehow wrong or not to be trusted innately.
This idea that some things are unnatural handcuffs a lot of truly fascinating advances that could change the world. Genetic engineering, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, plastics, all these and however many others have the potential to create a world the likes of which we can never have dreamed about. But we fight against them. Cause it's "unnatural".
And that "unnatural is bad" thinking has people going so far as to casting aside modern medical advances in favor of returning to middle age witchery. I'm not opposed to the idea of looking to old techniques or natural plants for ideas to improve the health of those suffering. I'm not opposed to it because that's what medicine IS. Using any means necessary to heal the sick and end human suffering. Pushing the boundaries and finding the best possible ways. Not being content with the same old anything.
But I'm travelling away from my original point. In order for something to be Un Nature, it has to by the way the words work, be impossible to do within nature. If I made a device that turned earth into water, that would be arguably unnatural. But even then if I can pull it off given the physical laws of the universe then how is it Un Nature? HOW!?
I can't really say why this is that this just riles me up so much but it really does. Human beings are a part of nature. To paraphrase a quote from our dear departed Prophet of Atheism George Carlin, maybe the answer to our ultimate ego centric question "why are we here?" is "Plastic... asshole". Who are we to say what is or isn't "natural"?
Synthetic and organic aren't mortal enemies locked in a war for the souls of mankind. Human hands and minds are no less natural then any other thing on the face of creation. The things we create are an extension of that. Something Unnatural would have to be something truly disgusting, something truly alien, something that our minds cannot or will not fathom because it should not be.
It's not something that we make that makes us uncomfortable.
This is a post that I will have to whole-heatedly disagree with to a point. The fact that humans can be part of nature is one thing. The fact that they can not just bend nature to their will but completely supplant it with their own synthetic creations. While I do love to see advances in both medicine and technology, the fact is we have pumped many unnatural things into the environment. What makes something unnatural? If it wrecks undo havoc on the environment, not just replacing it, but making it uninhabitable then it's unnatural.
ReplyDeleteThere are islands of plastic in the oceans that are bigger than states, these things are unnatural. There are layers of oil imbued mud in the Gulf of Mexico, this is unnatural. The fact that we are pumping incredibly toxic, man made chemicals into the ground to release oil and we haven't given an honest assessment of how long (if) those chemicals will take to seep into the water table. That's unnatural.
Some people use the word as hyperbole, granted. There's an idea by those people that all of technology is evil, it is not. Much of it is beneficial. But quite honestly much of the stuff we have made we have made with no real conscious effort to access the damage that the stuff will do to us or the environment. When we create something and that something prohibits life, or makes life more difficult, particularly our lives, then yes I would say that it's unnatural. The air in the Salt Lake Valley this winter would be a prime example of that. For the first time we have something that we sincerely disagree on.
Frank: That sounds more like an argument about irresponsible destructive behavior than the unnatural. We can also unnaturally revive ecosystems and unnaturally protect ourselves from the weather. All these things you are mentioning are unnatural, yes, but it's not just the fact that it's unnatural that makes it bad. Being unnatural here is entirely tangential to being irresponsible. If a natural virus caused massive ecosystem disruption across the globe, it would be just as bad as us releasing a manmade virus (identical to the natural one) that caused massive ecosystem disruption across the globe.
DeleteI would argue that the man-made virus isn't wholly unnatural either as it's still a living thing and has to have something organic as a template. Humanity as I see it does live in an unnatural environment. However there's a difference between a structure that will eventually rust away with the glass being crushed to dust in a few centuries and a huge island of plastic in the middle of the ocean that will be there thousands of years from now. I didn't list everything that I consider unnatural only those things that are undeniably unnatural and have no potential benefit for us or the environment.
DeleteI love technology, but you know what? I consider the type of technology that we've currently embraced unnatural overall. That doesn't mean that it can't benefit us or the natural world, but it doesn't make it something the natural world would create ecologically. You're straw-manning the argument (after having agreed with me that all my examples are unnatural) to state that they are examples of humanity being irresponsible. It is irresponsible, but plastic, which makes up the island, is unnatural. Oil may be naturally occurring, but our refining of it is not. Nor is our refinement of metal, which contributes to the overall world air quality as well as to climate change. Humanity may be part of nature in the sense that we evolved ultimately from the same common ancestor as everything else in this world did. But that does not mean that our works are part of the natural world. I'm not maligning all of technology, nor am I trying to make a call to get "back to nature" as it were. But I acknowledge that we are not part of the natural world anymore, we've moved away from it. This is something, and trust me when I say it's one of the few things, that John and I disagree on.
I think you're dead on with this Frank. There's no way we're going to agree on this. I agree that the things your talking about are bad. But I don't see that significant a difference between our shit air and shit air created by volcanoes.
DeleteAs for the plastic islands There is some promising research into microbes that can actually eat plastic and break it down.
I just find it supremely arrogant to think that we are not part of nature. We're starting to see the backlash from our attempts at changing the environment but I really don't see that as any different from any other animal except in scale.
Hell, maybe WE are the next big extinction event that some of the scientist think the world is due for.