From: Richard Ridge (richard_ridge@tao-group.com)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 04:55:31 MST
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3C9.htm
by Patrick West
My friend Maria recently told me she was gay - which wasn't easy,
considering that she is conservative by temperament and still thinks
homosexuality 'is not natural'. But so what if something isn't 'natural'?
In modern-day discourse the word natural is increasingly used as a form of
legitimisation, as a term of endorsement. Dairy products boast that they
convey 'nature's goodness'; people buy natural skincare products from The
Body Shop; and companies ranging from Marks & Spencer to Tesco to BP have
adorned their products in the colour green.
Woe betide anybody who dares to defy nature. Opponents of censorship argue
that sex is 'the most natural thing in the world', and so shouldn't be
hidden away. Prince Charles and eco-worriers in general encourage us not to
'mess with nature', whether by despoiling the planet or creating
'Frankenstein foods'. Like primitive societies we truly worship nature.
'She' has sensibilities that may be pleased or offended - lest She will have
Her revenge.
In hindsight I could also have pointed out to Maria that behavioural
biologist Frank Beach has detailed same-sex mountings in 13 different
species, sometimes for non-reproductive social functions. But then,
defending homosexual behaviour among humans just because there are lesbian
lizards in South America would still using nature as a reference point.
Who cares what happens in nature? As far as I'm concerned, nature is not our
friend - it is the enemy of humanity. Earthquakes, cancer, death, wisdom
teeth, short-sightedness: these are natural. Penicillin, antibiotics, heart
surgery, toothpaste, the spectacles I wear as I write this: these are the
innovations of man. Our ability to defy, defeat and overcome nature is what
makes us human. Thanks to our tampering with the natural order of things,
most people in the Western world can now look forward to dying in their
beds.
So why do we worship nature? Jean Jacques Rousseau, the godfather of modern
anti-modern whining, was one of the first thinkers whose hatred of the world
led him to adore a natural world that might have come before it. He
speculated on the life of the happy savage in the 'state of nature',
contrasting it unfavourably with the 'state of society'. The man in tune
with nature wants for nothing but 'food, a female and sleep'.
But nature worship really came into its own with the growth of the green
movement over the past 30 years, which perceives Western lifestyles as
inherently destructive or 'unsustainable'. According to eco-activist
Stephanie Mills, editor of the 1997 book Turning Away from Technology: A New
Vision for the 21st Century : 'As a species, human beings have more
experience living wild, in hunter-gatherer band, embedded in healthy
ecosytems.' As with Rousseau, this kind of nature worship is bound up with
Romantic Primitivism and the idea that non-Western peoples are somehow
closer to nature than Western types.
In 1991, even the venerable US research institution the Smithsonian claimed
that 'pre-Columbian America was still the First Eden, a pristine natural
kingdom. The native people were transparent in the landscape, living as
natural elements of the ecosphere. Their world, the New World of Columbus,
was a world of barely perceptible human disturbance'. Such sentiments are
echoed in modern cinema, as in Kevin Costner's 1991 Dances with Wolves ,
which reversed the norms of the Hollywood Western, so that it was the white
man who was the ungovernable savage, and the indigenous Indians the true
custodians of culture and justice.
Ironically, today's praising of nature is possible precisely because we have
pretty much conquered nature. Just as the British started to romanticise the
Scottish Highland tradition in the 1750s - shortcake, bagpipes, tartan and
all - as soon as the Highland hordes were finally vanquished, so we can
romanticise nature because we no longer live at its mercy.
Consider the true state of nature. In pre-modern, pre-urban society, men and
women lived in filth and were hostages to disease. According to science
commentator Ronald Bailey, life expectancy at birth for a primitive
hunter-gatherer was 26. For early agricultural communities, it was even
lower: 19 years of age. It could even be argued that rape and unwanted
pregnancy are both features of nature. The proscription of non-consensual
sex is something guaranteed by civilisation.
If we hadn't intervened in nature, particularly agriculture, most of our
ancestors would never have been born. Today we live beyond reproductive age
thanks to medical technologies. Hospitals are modern-day temples to
humanism. Take away hospitals, clean water, electricity and so on, and
witness the state of nature in all its horror. Even 'natural childbirth' is
an invention, relying upon modern notions of hygiene, not to mention a watch
to time contractions. 'Organic food' does not grow itself either -farmers
have to work hard and with great skill to produce such foodstuffs.
I would argue that not only are tribal societies fantastically regimented,
religiously intolerant, and in possession of far more do's and don'ts than
Western liberal society - they are also ecologically destructive. Aboriginal
Australians and Native Americans caused massive deforestation to create
grazing areas for species they hunted, many to extinction. According to the
anthropologist Roger Sandall, after their arrival to New Zealand 800 years
ago, the Maoris had made extinct 30 percent of the islands' bird life,
including 12 species of Mao bird alone.
This suggests to me that the idea of people living 'in touch with nature' is
bogus - that all societies modify their surroundings. Of course, we humans
get things wrong, and there is cause for some concern for our planet,
unfortunately thanks to the excesses of Western industrialised society. But
this doesn't warrant the widespread anthropophobia - the view of
eco-extremists who see humans as parasites on the planet.
Today's nature worship is generated not only by ecological concerns, but by
a broader crisis in the Western world. So what or who do we turn to
understand what is right and wrong these days? It used to be God; then it
was man; but we live in post-humanist times now. The high priests of
humanism, scientists and doctors, are figures of suspicion. They are seen by
many as being 'out of touch', 'arrogant', and decidedly dangerous. Nature
has filled this ethical vacuum. Nature has become a point of reference, as
it seems it is 'all in the genes'. So even the human genome project seems to
have been transformed into a moral quest to understand how and why we act as
we do.
The collapse of the Western humanist ideal, which I would say started in
Hungary in 1956 and was completed in Berlin in 1989, has corroded the left -
and the left has somewhat perversely found solace in nature worship. Deeming
something wrong because it was 'unnatural' was traditionally the preserve of
conservative minds, railing against homosexuality, women in the workplace,
or defending slavery and the divine right of kings.
Now it is more likely to be the left saying we must jettison our 'unnatural'
Victorian taboos and 'do what comes naturally'. We mustn't upset the
'balance of nature'. We need to get a little more holistic, less Western -
tap into the 'ancient wisdom' of indigenous peoples. Even the left's
anti-racist rhetoric seems to be less about opposing racial discrimination
because it is wrong, than about telling us that evolutionary biologist
Stephen Jay Gould has proved that the idea of 'race' is erroneous in his
book The Mismeasure of Man. Next thing we'll be told masturbation is
acceptable because somebody saw chimpanzees at the zoo doing it.
If you ever find yourself watching some witless TV programme such as 'The
World's Scariest Earthquakes' or 'When Tidal Waves Attack', take solace in
the fact you are seeing the true face of Mother Nature. And consider this:
according to scientists at Sussex University, in 7.7 billion years from now,
the Sun will expand to about 120 times its current size, consuming Mercury
and Venus, raising the temperatures on Earth to levels that will make life
on this planet impossible.
That will be nature at work. Let's just hope man thinks of a solution in
time.
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