Nature Does Not Exist
Nature does not exist!? Say what?! Is this my equivalent of Nietzsche’s much misunderstood “God is dead” statement?
What I mean by that bold statement is that we, in our language, create a separate word and concept for something "out there" separate from ourselves.
But it's an illusion. An illusion and a dangerous delusion that has caused enormous harm. Harm that is nearing a point of irreversibility for our current and future generations.
And if we're not first examining the language we're using, then we're not really effectively examining anything because we're not at Source. We're at interpretation. To get close to source experience, and true connection, we need to confer with the senses. Our senses sense before what they are sensing is translated into one's particular language.
What’s happened here is that English and a few other languages that do consider nature to exist, have dominated, and thus we have this 'relationship to nature' as a separate “thing” from us.
Here’s an example right now as I'm walking (yes I am actually typing on my laptop while standing on the sidewalk halfway between home and the café), and I’m walking when so few others seem to walk anymore. It’s no wonder when loud, smelly vehicles dominate the roads and blem past in a great big hurry. On a sensory level, and for a thin-skinned creature on the ground, they are somewhat scary. Clearly we are to stay out of their way.
And here’s the example I’m getting to:
One of those loud smelly trucks, driven by two white guys, blares past a brown female cyclist (I’m not making up the demographics—just reporting on what-is) only to careen to a halt at the road crossing, where she will soon catch up to them going at a steady state, even while inhaling their spume. The signage on the side of their truck reads - Tree Solutions.
My first instinct brightens at the thought of trees as solutions. For I grew up in trees, literally! Here was one of my favorite hide-outs.
Recently I found myself crying watching the documentary My Passion for Trees with Dame Judi Dench. Because I can relate to such an ardent love of trees.
For my “Sweet Sixteen” birthday I asked for trees to plant in our garden. I miss the trees behind my mom’s Ithaca, NY home, like this Shag Bark Hickory that is far bigger and older than it seems at first glance. Here I am in Autumn 2022, dancing with her.
Trees ARE solutions. They co-create the havens we love to live in, or visit and restore ourselves in.
Yet I feel certain that the blokes in the ute, with their aggressive energy and their petroleum-driven machinery on the back, were instead providing solutions to what many urban humans see as tree problems. The answer I get when I ask folks why they cut down their trees is, “Because they're messy". Seriously?
Messy.
You know what's messy?
A world without trees that is so hot we humans get angrier and sicker than ever.
That’s messy.
Trying to clean up what already is, is messy.
Much less, what’s quickly coming into being.
That’s messy.
And where is everybody going in such a blasted hurry anyway? Don’t they realize there’s no place to “get to”? I feel like an old person, lamenting the frantic pace of things. If that’s the case, then I’ve all-ways been “old”. I’ve all-ways been questioning the need for speed. Seems to me we actually need to slow it right down in an emergency in order to see clearly what-is before we start running round all crazy-like.
In this re-posted post from 10 years ago (how did 10 years just go by?!?), I suggest we slow down enough to Stop, Drop, and Roll:
Stop – step off the emergency excitement ride.
Drop – the distractions and get clear on what’s what and whose stuff is whose.
Roll – from that place of awareness to flow with the moment.
Now I want to offer:
Stop. Assess. Clean up the mess(es).
Clean up your room!
I’ve written a couple posts already on the plague of Stuff and Dying Clean, but maybe there’s a future post that ties our struggle to clean up our stuff with what it is—a crisis of maturity, as Mark Manson said in his book Everything is F*cked, A Book About Hope. Collectively, as a species, we've made a mess and are expecting someone else to clean it up.
Or something else to clean it up, like technology.
Yes, absolutely, fantastic! I love all these feats of human ingenuity that address our self-created existential crises. I love them even better when they are modelled on biomimicry, like this brilliance of a dear Wellington friend that may be a prime solution for plastics!
All the while, the real issue is, what is the nature of our relating?
Even if we manage to solve a certain crisis like the Plague of Plastics, doesn’t mean we have confronted the root of the problem, which is how we’re treating all others in our world and whether or not we have any manners in those relationships.
Is it morally ok to trash your mother? Do we agree that’s ok? We came from her. We owe everything to her. We’d be idiotically self-sabotaging to wage war against the being who makes life possible.
Yet we do. We are. How can that be? To return to my original bold statement:
Nature does not exist, because Nature is a word many cultures don't even have. They are not existing in a separatist paradigm. Take, for example, evidence from this article I came across in my research for my recent thesis proposal:
“…the very idea of nature is problematic.
We examined the etymological and semantic diversity of the word used to translate nature in a conservation context in 76 of the primary languages of the world to identify the different relationships between humankind and nature. Surprisingly, the number of morphemes (distinct etymological roots) used by 7 billion people was low.
Different linguistic superfamilies shared the same etymon across large cultural areas that correlate with the distribution of major religions. However, we found large differences in etymological meanings among these words, echoing the semantic differences and historical ambiguity of the contemporary European concept of nature.
In other words, only in languages influenced by the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are humans regarded as apart from and above nature, hence supernatural (Tirosh-Samuelson 2001)…Therefore, the meaning of natura in monotheistic cultures was no longer an idea of changing process, but a passive and static set of things in the hands of God…This modern (in fact monotheistic and idealistic) representation is thought to have led to a certain depreciation of the material world (Callicott & Ames 1989) and has been denounced as the main source of the ecological crisis by some authors (White 1966).
Current nature conservation is still rooted in this reductionistic, static, and passive vision of nature (Sarrazin & Lecomte 2016), whereas such an idea finds no purchase in most other societies, which has led to strong cultural conflicts in conservation.
Like biological diversity, semantic diversity is threatened.”1
My translation of all that?
Most languages (and there are 6700 still in existence aside from this one I’m writing and thinking in now) do not have a separate word for Nature because there is no blanket separate world from our own. However, the dominant view/paradigm that thinks in English is operating as though we are not part of all-that-is, to great disarray and distress for many.
Thus, we can say, in English, and in these domineering times, Nature needs saving. However, in the reality of most indigenous cultures, Nature (as a separate conglomerate) does not even exist.
If anything needs saving its those of us that think we are separate.
Because, in reality, as we know by our senses,
What one thinks or feels or does is part of a tapestry of thinking, feeling, doing.
My one thread tugs on, or adds color and support to, all other threads.
In reality, there is no general category “tree”. There is only this tree, this type of tree, this type of tree in this season. This type of tree in this season and this location and under these conditions…you get the idea. The naming of things comes from human conceit.
This is tricky to convey but let me leave you with an experiment. Try this - take the words “Nature” and “Natural” out of your vocabulary. Substitute those words with what it actually is that you’re referring to. If you know. Better yet, touch it, smell it, taste it, listen to it. Know it for real with your body’s wisdom more than the mind’s ideas and indoctrinations.
We’re all in this together, by whatever names.
Ducarme, F., Flipo, F., & Couvet, D. (2021). How the diversity of human concepts of nature affects conservation of biodiversity. Conserv Biol, 35(3), 1019-1028. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13639
