Nature

Earth has humans

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Tonight I got into a conversation with someone about religion, man and nature. He was disagreeing with me that everything is nature in the end. Essentially my belief is that everything still boils down to nature. I mean literally EVERYTHING. Even this laptop i’m writing on now, I consider to be something that exists because of nature, and is therefore in itself a part of nature. It seems a hard concept for a lot of you humans to get your head around, that this laptop, or that car parked on the street is also nature. We have catergorised them as ‘man made’ and therefore ‘not nature’ my contention is man is an animal, man is natural, the cars we build are a manifestation of mans natural ability to build. We can only build from and with what we have to hand to us on earth. Sure it looks very different to it’s original form, each component looks different to it’s ‘original’ form, but isn’t change a part of nature?

He brought up the belief that man was created, I can’t remember the exact way he worded it, but it was something like “nature was here long before us” and bringing up the creation part. That got me thinking because of the way he worded his ‘argument’ (It was a friendly ‘debate’ not a nasty argument) about this idea that we were created and put on earth. Nature existed before us and then we just got put here from god or aliens or whatever it is you wish to believe. I hope it’s aliens and not god, as I don’t put much faith into god what with the whole wanting everyone to worship him or it thing. If this is the case, we were created and ‘put here’ then aren’t we parasitic?

Humans as parasites

The human tendency to extremes

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It seems humans believe one of two things about human life, either

1. Humans are insignificant

2. Humans are the most significant species.

these can be framed in different arguments.

Humans are insignificant is an undervaluing of themselves as a species. They think it makes them sound ‘modest’ or ironically ‘enlightened’ ironic because to believe you’re enlightened is to believe your superior to everyone else therefore you sort of crown yourself as the significant one, it’s everyone else who is insignificant for noticing how insignificant they are.

Humans are the ‘more evolved’ (people who say ‘more evolved’ don’t understand evolutuion.) There is no ‘more evolved’ since this implies an eventual ‘perfect’ species. Evolution isn’t quite like those pictures of apes forming into humans in a row. Evolution doesn’t happen in step by step process quite like that, though the images are good at showing the similiarities and the gradual changes between one particular species into another. Anyway I digress,  to say Humans are the ‘more evolved’ or the most significant species is overvaluing humans as a species.

Both points of view seem to have difficulty seeing us as within the natural cycle itself. The insignificant line of thinking, that we don’t have much or any impact on the world, implied with this is that nature itself happens around us and we’re not a part of it. “That thing out there, thats natural forces, nothing to do with humans”

And to see us as the most significant species, erases the fact we act within nature and while we do have some impact on the world so does everything else in it, we have some significance but we’re not the most significant. We are within nature, not outside of nature. We don’t build outside of nature, we build within nature for better or for worse. but so do other animals.

We have significance in that we have great numbers of us and we’re multiplying, meaning we build more homes, cause more construction and with that destruction aswell.

Both points of view are a bit wrong and a bit right.

Humanity as a whole is significant, not in the sense that humans are important in a superior sense. We’re simply important in the life cycle and ecosystem that exists today. That doesn’t make us some brilliant magnificent species, it makes us the same as other species in that we simply play a role in the ecosystem. We can debate till the cows come home what is superior in the sense of which species can the most, which species has the best talent or whatever else you want to quanitfy. But all that aside we are simply like the other animals, we are fullfilling a role in the ecosystem.

You your individual self? You are insignificant. You as an individual would only become significant if the human race began to decline so much so that not many people were left and you were one of the very few left.

It is not humans that are insignificant, it is yourself.

Gorilla thinks about humans

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Humans don’t always treat other animals too well, and they most certainly don’t always treat other humans too well.

But consider, if you saw an anomaly in another animal that rarely would you judge it and damn it to hell. You may think the animal is filthy, you may think they’re ugly, but you wouldn’t judge it as harshly as you would if it was a human. You’d just say that he or she is ‘one of a kind’ he or she is a ‘rarity’ in this species. But you won’t necessarily afford the same acceptance to another human with a similar or the same anomaly.

Ponder that for a moment.

It’s not just other non-human animals that you can learn from, you can also learn from how you treat animals.

There is a reason psychopaths commonly abuse animals. The care for no living thing on this planet, human or otherwise.

In religion you haven’t found modesty, you’ve found a pedestal.

Gorilla asks questions #7

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Can nature become unnatural?  Is perhaps a question we should always ask ourselves before delcaring something unnatural. If I say something is unnatural, what am I suggesting it is? ‘not natural’ is just a repeat of ‘unnatural’ worded differently, so it can’t be the answer. What exactly is it, if it’s undone from nature? How does it still exist? How did it ever exist? To become unnatural, implies you can undo nature. How does one undo nature? And if you do perhaps, undo something, haven’t you just naturally created a new pathway, new neuron connections?

To say something is unnatural then, one must assume nature is immutable. And we know that isn’t true, we have seasons right before our eyes that shows nature changes.