OVERCOMING THE ALIENATION OF MAN AND NATURE
Author: Robert D. Brinsmead
The environmental movement began as a protest against
Western culture’s alienation from nature. This alienation was said to have its
roots in the Judeo-Christian heritage that sets man apart as a special creation
above the natural kingdom (see Genesis
There is a very pervasive anti-human bias in
environmentalism, and it is expressed in a bias against human technology,
economic growth and human prosperity. Global warming theory is popular because
it is just another big stick to beat up on human activity. Human activity cops
the blame for everything from the disappearing green tree frogs to almost any
natural disaster.
It is as if Augustine’s old doctrine of original has
come back to haunt us again. It was a doctrine that said every single calamity
on the earth, including the disaster of death itself, was all man’s fault – or
was it woman’s fault? Anyhow, in this present orgie
of human blaming, eagerly supported by media sensationalism, the alienation of
man from nature has become worse than what it was before environmentalism tried
to correct it.
I want to propose that we look at our human
relationship to nature in a new way. This will be like putting on a whole new
pair of glasses that puts biotechnology and every other kind of human
technology in a much more positive light.
I propose that we recognize that the same natural
evolutionary process that brought bees, birds and mammals into existence, has
also brought Homo sapiens into existence. By saying this I am not trying to
empty this emergence of everything of its awe and wonder. I am just pointing
out the scientific reality that humankind emerged through the same natural
processes as every other living thing. This means that the human species is
nature too.
If every other form of life made up of living cells
with genes and DNA is what we call nature, then Homo sapiens, whose genes are
98.7% the same as the chimpanzee, is also nature. When ants accomplish an
amazing feat of technology in constructing a termite’s nest, or elephants make
water holes with their feet, or beavers construct a dam across a stream, we
call that nature. On what basis can we then say that human technology is
man-made rather than natural? This is philosophical and scientific nonsense,
yet we keep repeating this nonsense like the slogan of the pigs in Animal Farm,
“Four legs good, two legs bad” – as if what is done by a creature with four
legs, six legs or no legs is natural and must be good for the environment,
whereas what is done by a creature with two legs is man-made and must be bad
for the environment.
If human intelligence evolved through the same natural
process that produced a fox’s cunning and a beaver’s dexterity, then all human
intelligence is natural and all human technology is natural. I am not saying it
is necessarily good, but it’s undeniably as natural as the technology of a bee
hive, the weaving of a spider’s web or the navigational equipment of migratory
birds.
In human consciousness nature has finally become
conscious of itself. “We may think of ourselves,” says the great mythologist
Joseph Campbell, “as the functioning ears and eyes and mind of this earth.”
Heretofore nature could only act in a random order of hit and miss. As such,
nature has often been wasteful and prone to structural flaws, as the ABC
science reporter, Robyn Williams, has made all too clear in his recent satire,
Unintelligent Design. But now Mother Nature has acquired in this human mind
what Julian Simon has called “the ultimate resource,” and a power that the
brilliant
“Nature has structural flaws and physical limitations”
writes Greg Easterbrook (A Moment on the Earth) “Genus Homo may be able to
change that. People may be here because nature needs us – perhaps needs us
desperately…There is no reason in principle why nature ought to oppose the
arrival of the high-speed analytical powers of the mind. Nature may have been
dreaming of these very powers for 3.8 billion years.” (pp.668-669). This is why
the late physicist Heinz Pagel could write in Dreams
of Reason that it is high time that we discard “the radical distinction between
mind and nature.” This includes, of course, the distinction between natural and
man-made. RDB
Web Published – August 2008
Copyright © 2008 Robert D. Brinsmead