One article that really struck me was Christine Walley’s Where There is No Nature. Before reading this, nature for me existed in parks, in the wilderness of the mountains, and in far off jungles, tundra, and deserts. Nature definitely holds connotations of being pure, serene, untouched, and definitely separate from humans; it is something that people go to visity. There is some sort of romanticism or mythicality when nature comes to mind, and the word is an important part of our lexicon. However, Walley challenged these preconcieved notions by showing how a society functions without even an understanding of the word nature showing that it is more of an abstract concept than a reality. Everything on the earth has been affected by human’s prescense, so nature can not be a pure, untouched entity. Sure there are places that have been more or less affected, but where does the man-made world end and nature begin? Gone is the majesty of the word, and what is left is just the fact that it means little to nothing at all.
Just last week I was writing about ecospirtuality and the importance of keeping the essence of nature alive in our thoughts and actions, but now this idea is rendered meaningless if I don’t even know how to define the word. Modern day interpretations of nature seem to believe that it is some separate world kept away from humans in parks, but as White’s article, The Problem with Purity, points out, nature is not stagnant. Our current definition is trying to appeal to a sense of nostalgia for an old, somehow purer, world when purity is merely subjective. The world we live in now is certainly different, but it is no less ‘pure’. Thus, if there is no sense of purity in the natural world, perfection is impossible to achieve, and nature is always changing. Nature was not perfect before us, and it will not be perfect after us.
Understanding these ideas are pertinent to understanding the Love Your Monsters readings. Particularly the article Evolve deals with showing how our world is ever changing and why that is not a bad thing. I don’t want to live in a world without polar bears either, but it would be ridiculous to try and preserve the exact state of the world when change is natural and even good. The authors point out all the amazing things humans have done to eradicate problems of hunger and lack of power creating (debatably) lesser problems of obesity and global climate change. While it would be impossible to fix everything, we can change to improve things in our world. Evolution, including the evolution of our perception of nature, needs to be embraced, not feared.
I enjoyed your take on understanding what nature is. I also found that it is hard to comprehend what true “nature” is, it seems to be an undefinable word. That’s the same with “wilderness.” I also find this naming of nature to be confusing in terms of food. Some food is marked as “natural” but that really doesn’t mean anything. So it’s hard to believe when food is produced in a natural– whatever that means– way.
I really like the way that you connected all the different readings. It made sense! I found it very interesting that we have separated ourselves so much from “nature”, when really what we think of as nature is not necessarily true. One question about your last paragraph, you mentioned how we have fixed a lot of problems in the natural world, but do you think humans should even put a hand in these issues? Or are we just interfering with the natural order? Or is there even a “natural” order anymore, has this definition just changed?