I’m not to feed the birds…
My brain hurts.
Everything else is a disappointment.
I started reading a book called the “The way home: Tales from a life without technology.” by author Mark Boyle.
There is some irony to me reading that book on a kindle isn’t there?
I’m enjoying it and hating it at the same time.
He’s one of those “We need to get back to nature types,” and I always find myself somewhat cringing at that idea of getting back to nature.
Because nothing can exist without nature.
The idea that ‘man-made’ things are not natural has always bugged me.
What does that say about man? That man isn’t natural? So what is man? Supernatural?
But even ‘super’ natural has the word natural in it.
So are humans supernatural?
A strange phrase really, ‘supernatural’ isn’t it?
We say supernatural to mean something not natural, don’t we usually? Something ‘beyond’. Yet the word super suggests something is MORE natural not less natural or beyond the realms of nature.
I was looking up some birding humour the other day and I came across an article that was trying to say how “bird watching,” and “Birding” are different. I wasn’t interested in what they say is different or not about it. But what did catch my eye was this “Birds are natural; birders aren’t.”
Everything a human does we deem not natural.
So I ask, what exactly do people think humans are?
Is it a mass delusion of grandeur or is it an odd sense of self-hatred?
Obviously, the truth is it’s a bit of both, because some people in the population of humans certainly have delusions of grandeur about their place on this earth as a species, and then you have the others that hate humans and hate what humans are doing to the planet.
Anyway back to the book I’m reading it’s a somewhat painful read for me.
He’s done something I could only ever wish I could.
You don’t live this long with my medical conditions without technology, for one reason only: I’ve been kept alive by machines while they operated on me.
It’s not just the electrical technology stuff.
I don’t have it in me mentally, I’m not tough enough to do what he calls ‘get back to nature’ as much as I pick at that phrase.
It’s like reading a reminder of all the things that I have to some degree aspired to be, maybe not as extreme as he is. But certainly the idea of living in a cabin in the woods, pissing up against the trees in the morning while the birds sing and squark the morning away.
Yea that’d be my thing.
I don’t think I’d completely discard technology. I do after all use a powerchair, and I wouldn’t get fart without it. Then again right now I get nowhere because it’s broken.
After feeling dejected by everything I started searching for ways technology can be used to help the environment. Only really to reassure myself that technology isn’t as evil as the writer makes it out to be.
But when he talks about the machines that come along to knock down a whole load of trees and essentially driving animals out of their habitats it’s hard to argue that humans and our technology aren’t bad.
To some that is enough to argue that we’re ‘not natural’ but it’s not really a good argument for that because nature is as destructive as it is creative. The fact humans do some bad things doesn’t argue against the idea we’re natural at all.
But people will use that fallacy all the time.
If we don’t like something about humans we will say it’s unnatural and that we need to get back to nature.
Sadly that mirror you’re looking in that you’re trying to change to look ‘natural’ was natural all along.
yes, that means our destructive force can’t be singled out as something not natural.
Sometimes the more I find myself involved with environmentalism the more I find myself feeling we’re just chasing our tails.
I get to wondering that maybe we’re too self-aware for our own good. But then a little voice niggles in my head and says, “It’s an illusion of self awareness.” And I think that voice may have a point.
We think we’re self-aware.
To me the very fact people seem to separate us off as another category away from nature suggests we have no idea.
Sometimes I get the feeling that we’re aware that there is something we should be aware of but that we can’t quite put our finger on it.
Or maybe it’s just me. I often find myself aware of being aware of something I can’t quite put my finger on.
