The Fallacy of Nature

The tale told of mankind’s destruction of Earth often coincides with the ascent of the Industrial World. From this Luddite standpoint it seems all that must be done is destroy all technology and Nature will be saved. However, technology is in fact a symptom, not a cause, of the curse that mankind ascribed to itself at the inception of the agricultural revolution, one which we continue to suffer the burden of, the religion that now lays waste to the soils of Earth: the belief in a self-contained human "ecosystem."
From the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution certain tribes and cultures of men have sought to dominate their ecosystems. As explained by Daniel Quinn in Ishmael, this entailed the process of eliminating certain species of plants, choosing only those beneficial to exponential human growth. A weed, the dastardly felon involved in the process of weeding, is defined as “an undesired plant.” The fact that we didn’t desire it justified killing it. As this annihilator culture expanded, conquering the territories and minds of other hunter-gatherers, eventually all humans became involved in the production of food, except for the few elite benefactors. As time went on and farming techniques advanced, more and more people could devote time and effort to different exploits, like basket-weaving, supermodeling, and businessing. Now, in a perverse, accidental manner we have replicated for the lucky middleclass a very hunter-gatherer way of life. No longer must a businessman till the soil for the fruits of Earth but he may instead pluck said fruit from the shelf of a supermarket; bargain hunting, if you will.
There is a fundamental difference between this way of life and that of the Navajo tribesman of yore. Our Amerindian friend gathers his sustenance directly from the environment around him. As such, he knows full well that his wellbeing is directly correlated to the wellbeing of his ecosystem. On the other hand, the modern hunter-gatherer procures his sustenance from a human middleman, the farmer, and another middleman, the merchant. The distancing of the consumer from the source of food has turned it into a commodity. As such, the consumer, the average Joe Shmo, no longer reckons his sustenance dependent on Earth but instead dependent on manpower, the farmer and the merchant. He reckons himself at the top of the human food chain, one infinitely distant from that of the squirrels, trees, and grizzly bears. Of course, this isn't the case. The source of our food is still Earth, the nutrients in them the same as those grown wild and harvested by our Navajo comrade. The progress of civilization, the continuation of the agricultural revolution, has been the distancing of man b understanding his environment, and reckoning himself separate from it. This process has now reached the point where there is a sincere belief in such a thing as Nature, an entity comprised of everything not part of the distinctly human World.
Now that there is such a Hegelian dissonance between the Same, us, and the Other, nature, we have something to fight against in order to raise our own rank. Before the days of separation, to fight against what we now call Nature would be to fight against oneself. Ludicrous! Absurd! But now such a thing is possible. There is a clear distinction between concrete and grass, between a road and a trail, between man and animal. Our sole understanding of geography is now based on roads, and cities, which take up a relatively small amount of space compared to the rest of the space on Earth's crust. But because the car is our main means of transportation, and because cars only drive on roads, our understanding of the world is one which implies a drastic overpowering of Nature by World because it only allows us to see the World. Every major thoroughfare seems just another testament to the fulfillment of man's divine destiny- - to conquer the world.
This habit of distancing ourselves from our surroundings extends far beyond the reaches of Mother Earth. We have removed our circadian rhythm from the "repressive clutches" of the sun's vicious cycle. With streetlights we have not only conquered nighttime - in doing so rendering mankind a compulsive insomniac - but we have conquered and erased The Universe. Light pollution has removed from our sight the rest of the cosmos. Instead, it seems as if there is a large, grey blanket extended over the night sky, one which causes a subconscious, anti-Copernican mindset. It seems as if mankind exists as the sole benefactor of the universe, for we have conquered it, it serves us, and there is no heavenly reminder that we are miniscule ever since the stars went away. Lemme tell you reader, sure it may seem empowering, but it is the dissolution of a massive community of all things made of matter. We remove ourselves from stars, rocks, animals and atoms all in one fell swoop on these humanized landscapes, and it is lonely.
It is the loneliest people who become the most dangerous, the people with the least to live for. The same goes for species, or cultures. We believe ourselves self-sufficient, with no need for anyone else. Of course, now we can mistreat them. The Columbine shooters had no friends in the halls within which they wrought annihilation. We find ourselves in a similar predicament, and I believe humanity is capable of better things than this Breakfast of Champions conundrum.
Every building we erect, every acre of rainforest we burn down, is another effort toward distance- from "Nature" and from "The Universe." When Man exists without these points of reference, he feels alone, almost to the point of feeling as if life is as meaningless and disposable as the Chinese-made paper towels sitting on the kitchen table. This is not a pattern that will be broken by programs such as recycling, or reducing carbon footprints. These are policies, not visions for a new lifestyle. Instead, the most that can be done is an actual grassroots overhaul of the way in which we think. The lifestyle changes will follow.

Listen:

There is no such thing as World. There is no such thing as Nature. We still exist within the confines of Earth’s ecosystems, and they were lush, and they are hurting, and they are all we have. We are still subject to Natural Law and we’d better start living in accordance to it or the negative feedback from Gaia dearest is only bound to get worse.