Nature
has played a very important role in the discussions presented in this
column. Nature is the foundational
source of the organic stimuli for which human nervous systems were built. Most
of the time, it presents stimuli within the range that we can most easily
absorb. These stimuli are neither too
abrasive, too overwhelming nor too low-key or frictionless. In other words, nature becomes the source of
our physical and emotional grounding.
This positive side of nature acts as a template for human interaction
and, in particular, human bonding.
Without at least some aspects of nature in our daily living environment,
human society would fall apart. This is distinct
from all the animal, vegetable and mineral products that nature provides
humans. But what is important to think
about is that nature, as commonly viewed, is not simply a source of things to
consume, but rather a whole enveloping ambiance to absorb. Many of us appreciate this distinction when
we take our walks in the park or our trips to the country. We become reconnected to ourselves, feel at
one with ourselves. Chicago, my home
town, has the motto of Urbs In Hortus (City in a Garden) because most
residential streets have patches of grass and trees between the streets and
sidewalks as well as lawns between the sidewalks and homes. Boulevards have greenery and trees on median
strips. And apart from the big parks,
there are a lot of small parks strategically located throughout the city. This is all wonderful, and it is nature at
its tamest and most accessible.
But
nature doesn’t always behave so nicely. Nowadays,
nature is creating a whole series of new twists to the wild unruly behavior
that frequently made humans feel so fragile and perishable in the days before
modern technology came into its own.
Climate change is multiplying and exacerbating the natural catastrophes
that drove people to modern technology as a vehicle for rising above the
perishability of nature. Except that our
interventions to control nature have begun to have the opposite effect. The effects of technology have so disrupted
nature that our relationship to nature is, in a strange way, beginning to look
as powerless as before the creation of modern technology. All the heat waves with the resulting wild
fires, the proliferation of hurricanes and tornadoes, the increase in
earthquakes due to fracking, the breakup of traditional weather patterns in different
regions of the world, the rising water levels of the oceans that threaten to
swallow up coastal communities as well as islands. The earth is definitely not what it used to
be as a result of the increasing use of fossil fuels. And even were we to switch now to solar, wind
and biomass for the majority of our energy needs, the earth would not suddenly
return back to “normal”.
And
then there is the problem of the pandemic, which has been so disruptive. The pandemic is not so much the result of a
misplaced attempt to control nature as it is an attempt interact with nature in
inappropriate ways. HIV supposedly
entered the world of humans as a result of a human-chimpanzee sexual liaison in
Africa. By the same token, Covid 19
entered the world of humans as a result of the consumption of wild animal meat
in China. Meat from bats or meat from an
animal like a civet or pangolin that had been kept close to the bats. I know that the theory has been questioned by
many since it was first proposed. But
many other pandemics have been started by human contact with animals, so it
seems to me that at some point, humans went to bat caves in China. And why would they go if it wasn’t for the potential
meat.
So
humans destroy nature as a result of the mediation of technology. And then they try to commune with nature in inappropriate
ways as a desperate attempt to try to gain some pockets of extreme organic stimulation and thus feel more
vibrantly alive. Except that the organic
stimuli that they target are stimuli that they are unable to properly absorb
because of the microbes involved. And in
the case of Covid 19, this then leads to withdrawing even more from many
aspects of the world of primary experience into the increasingly mediated world
of Zoom.
So we
are now at the point where we are confronted with two distinct worlds of
experience: a technological world which is increasingly bland, sterile and
numbing and a natural world which, because of climate change and pandemics, is
becoming increasingly dangerous. And
people become more inclined to rely on the technological world, because of the
surface safety that it offers. And less
inclined to rely on the natural world, which should be the main source of
grounding in human lives, but which instead has been gradually moving to
swallow people up.
© 2020 Laurence Mesirow
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