When people hear the word "environmentalist" they generally think "tree-hugger": That is, someone who likes going for walks in the woods and thinks flowers are pretty. Basically, a pussy. And I will admit that I do like going for walks in the woods. But I don't particularly want to be chased through the woods by grizzly bears. That is to say, I like being "out in nature" as far as that goes, but I've spent just enough time amidst wild surroundings to have lost my illusions about nature returning those warm feelings. A lot of my experiences in "getting away from it all" have really driven home the point of how dependent I am on all those things I claim to be getting away from, like grocery stores and central heating. It's all well and good to say that you want to go experience solitude in the tranquility of nature, but it only takes one time getting your truck hopelessly stuck in the mud twenty miles from nowhere before you start getting a powerful jones to talk to somebody, anybody -- preferably somebody with a good high-clearance truck and a tow line. So I realize that a kind of theme-park appreciation of nature is often an artifact of middle-class urban white people. My experience so far of people who live in rural surroundings is that not many of them seem to shop at REI. But they do know how to make it through a cold winter. And they have tow lines.
The kind of environmentalist I am is the kind who thinks that modern humans have a warped idea of where we stand vis-a-vis the Natural World. Basically it comes down to the idea that there is such a thing as "the Natural World", and that it's somewhere over there. Over there out in the woods with Bambi and Thumper and all the other little woodland creatures. Over there in Somebody Else's Problem Territory. This view is not unique to people who believe that mankind is separate from nature because we were made in God's image and he has given us dominion over the Earth (sure was nice of Him, wasn't it?). It's often just as pronounced in self-proclaimed rationalists. Even the standard depiction of evolution shows a line of progressively more evolved creatures ending in us, as though the upright-walking hominid at the far right of the illustration is the only reason the little amphibian at the left bothered to crawl up on the beach at all. (And as always, where you crop the frame is as important as what's inside it. )
This is the outlook of a culture with an extremely short memory. A culture where real estate agents seem to have no problem selling view houses in the hills around Los Angeles in spite of the fact that they have a habit of getting washed away by mudslides or destroyed by wildfires on a regular basis or that they are built at the base of a still-growing mountain range on top of a major seismic fault; Because as long as it's been several years since the last of these catastrophes wrecked the neighborhood, nobody seems to care. This is not a culture with the patience to reckon with concepts like "geological time."
It's interesting to see how this view differs from cultures who marked the passage of time in millenia rather than in bits-per-second. As a kid, the Old Testament version of God (or, for my readers of the Jewish faith, just plain God) made a big impression on me. Not just because the Old Testament had the most exciting stories in it -- Samson and Noah and the like -- but because the God it portrayed had a real flair for the dramatic. Old Testament God was kind of like a divine version of the Incredible Hulk. Most of the time he was an alright guy, clear-thinking and good-hearted. But man, get him angry (and to be honest, this wasn't particularly hard to accomplish) and next thing you know he's all "Arrr! Puny humans! God smash!!"
Always with the smiting, Old Testament God. Flooding the Earth, wiping whole cities off the map, killing all the firstborn children, turning people into pillars of salt. You definitely wouldn't like him when he's angry.
This portrayal of the personification of the forces of nature seems pretty consistent with a lot of religions springing from societies that lived on a thin margin of survival. If the harsh, often violently capricious natures of Zeus or Poseidon or Odin or Jehovah seem unduly grim from a modern perspective, it is worth noting that the people who revered these gods were often only one bad storm away from oblivion. In the absence of any understanding of why these things happened, it was probably more comforting to think of natural forces as resulting from the actions of ill-tempered gods than as random, unpredictable occurrences. After all, a god could be bargained with. If Very Bad Things happened because God was angry, well we'd better make sure not to make him angry, right? People like to think there's something they can do.
And while the current usage of terms like Druids or Wiccans may conjure an image of middle-class anglophiles with an odd predilection for flowing silks and spelling magic with a "k", it's a safe bet that back in the day the original practitioners of those well-known nature-worshipping traditions took a substantially more, shall we say "nuanced" view of the workings of the Wondrous Forces of Nature. Which may go a long way towards explaining the pits full of human bones that archeologists keep digging out from under the altar stones in their holy sites. Something about showing the gods that you were serious about winning their favor, serious enough to give up something of value.
If I say that modern humans have lost something by reducing Nature to a lovely postcard sunset when it used to mean "Everything In the Universe Including Me", I am certainly not suggesting that we ought to try to return to the good old days of human sacrifice or recreate some era of Noble Savages that never existed in the first place. But I do sometimes think that we have lost something in our capacity for awe in the way we view the world around us, awe as in "great reverence mixed with mortal terror". This is what I'm thinking when I consider that the most powerful earthquake I've ever experienced, a 6.8 on the richter scale, was several orders of magnitude weaker than the quake that just occurred under the Indian Ocean. Seeing the unbelievable devastation currently visited upon the inhabitants of that region by the merest hiccup of the planet's tectonic plates, it occurs to me that we humans are still pretty puny, still huddled together for warmth against the unrelenting storm outside.
It's probably a good thing to remember from time to time.
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Here's a link for Oxfam's relief fund if you're interested.
There does seem to be a peculiar form of Modern Hubris, that runs along the lines of thinking our Technology can solve Everything. I see this in parents who want to medicate their children into more successful career choices, Homeland Security measures that are expected to prevent 100% of planned attacks on U.S. soil, playground equipment that prevents every form of injury, and "zero tolerance" policies on anything. I see this every time a politician or newspaper article is outraged that somebody let something bad happen, because we "weren't prepared". They talk as if, somehow, we could possibly be prepared for everything. And not just could, but must. It seems we enjoy belittling ourselves for "failing" as much as we enjoy striving "to Dream the Impossible Dream". Pure Hubris.
Fortunately, however, Nature takes no notice of this nonsense. We are a part of Nature, whether we like to think of ourselves that way or no. The real question we need to ask ourselves is not "how can we keep Nature in balance?", because Nature does its balancing automatically, without our help. As we can plainly see, though, Nature doesn't move until it is under strong pressure, and its reactions are pretty dramatic. No, the real question is "how do we maintain a reasonable balance before Nature does it for us?"
You kids had better settle it between yourselves. Don't make Nature come down there....
Posted by: The Green Man at January 2, 2005 12:57 PMNature will totally turn this car right around and drive back home, and then nobody's getting any ice cream.
Posted by: flamingbanjo at January 3, 2005 10:11 AM