Bill McKibben argues in, The End of Nature, that humans have been slowly destroying nature over hundreds of thousands of years. That our constant contact with nature has influenced its natural qualities and has caused it to form into something new or worse, tinkered with it all the way into oblivion. He suggests that nature is any place in which the wild is untouched by humans and that with every year we live, these areas are becoming less and less.
However, Emma Marris, would have to fully and respectfully disagree with McKibben. In her Ted Talks video, Nature is Everywhere–We Just Need to Learn to See It," Marris suggests, nature is all around us, we are a part of nature since in our simplest definition, we too are animals. She argues that there is no place on the planet that is untouched or not influenced by humans but that does not mean it still does not constitute as nature.
While I think both McKibben and Marris have very solid arguments, I would have to suggest that perhaps, in a sense, they are both correct. While I do agree with Marris that nature can be found anywhere, on an abandoned bridge and even in your own backyard, I believe it is important to recognize McKibben's concerns about human's relationship with nature. Human's should have a very healthy relationship with the environment. We should, as Marris suggests, allow our children to go outside and touch nature and explore nature, tinker with it and learn from it. I think it is important for human's to have an intimate relationship with the nature around them. I also believe humans need to be more aware, as a species, just the detrimental influence we can have on nature. I think if we look too much into the concept that we too are apart of nature, we will allow ourselves to excuse the flaws we place in nature and the habitats in which we have destroyed or altered drastically. I think it is important to have Marris's view on what exactly nature is as well as having the cautious outlook on humans and nature that McKibben has.
It is interesting for McKibben to suggest that nature is any place that has been untouched by humans. Nature, according to McKibben, is defined by its relationship (and distinct separation) with humanity. Humanity, therefore, is defined by its separation from nature and natural law. This duality could certainly not have always existed, and I wonder at what point in man's evolution he may have become separate from nature. Did it begin with the industrial revolution?; is our separation from nature distinguished, as McKibben suggests, by our capacity to destroy it? It is possible that this separation from nature goes all the way back, beginning with the initial evolution of human consciousness.
ReplyDeleteThe primary difference between humans and the rest of nature is our self-awareness. We know we are alive and we know that we are going to die. Other organisms only care about surviving and reproducing, but we know too much to be content with simply surviving and reproducing. Through the evolution of human consciousness nature seemingly created an aspect of itself that was separate from itself. In this sense, Marris and McKibben are both at least half right; Humans are hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones just like everything else that lives on this planet, and in this way we are a part of nature. Our humanity, however, is not defined by our similarities to other creatures but by our differences. We are hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones just like everything else, but we are the only creatures who are aware of this and the only creatures who work to convince ourselves that we are something more special than that.
McKibben suggests that humanity is not only separate from nature, but in characteristic opposition to it. Marris asserts that humanity is not, in fact, separate from nature, and that whatever influence humans have on the world is by definition 'natural', since humans are themselves a product of nature. They are both wrong and both right, but the degree to which they are each wrong and right depends on subjective interpretations.