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Wendell Berry once wrote that we are at war with nature, and I think the metaphor is quite appropriate. This war, like most wars, has turned out to be a tricki

Wendell Berry once wrote that we are at war with nature, and I think the metaphor is quite appropriate. This war, like most wars, has turned out to be a trickier business than we expected. We must now face two shocking surprises. The first surprise is that if we say and believe that we are at war with nature, then we are in the fullest sense at war: that is, we are both opposing and being opposed, and the costs to both sides are extremely high. The second surprise is that we are not winning. [...] Even in our most grievous offenses against her, as in the present epidemic of habitat destruction and species extinction we are being defeated, for in the long run we can less afford the losses than nature can.

crispinb 8y ago
Though I sometimes enjoy Berry, he's wrong. We can't be 'at war' with nature. We are nature. Human destruction of ecosystems is a natural process - it's not fundamentally different from introduced flora & fauna overrunning island ecologies. It's just happening on a planetary scale. The only 'unnatural' aspect of the picture is the common notion that humans (primates designed for small-scale tribal interactions) could somehow magically adapt to managing planetary-scale populations (let alone the vast network of ecologies hosting them). The story of human 'progress' or 'destiny' is a religious myth. Amusingly, it is held with particular vehemence by many technologically-inclined atheists without a shred of irony.
- gerbilly 8y ago
  I read it more allegorically than that. Being at war with nature is a good metaphor for our behaviour, because we seem determined to completely vanquish it and bend it to our will. Of course it's a bitter irony that if we are at war with nature, we are at war with ourselves (because as you say we come from nature). I think that's implied by the passage. The way we interact with nature is different in kind from other species, not just in scope. For humans, it's not enough to take , say, just the fish that we need. Because of money we take _all_ the fish we can get and then sell them. What doesn't sell is thrown out.
  - crispinb 8y ago
    That's certainly the standard narrative - Berry isn't as counter-cultural as he thinks. He's just the mirror image of convention, but that buys in equally to the false nature/culture dichotomy. We don't 'interact' with nature. There's no getting outside of it to do the interaction. When we 'take more than we need', we're acting exactly as a hominid with tribal cognitive & affective adaptations that have been turned to extended purposes in a global context would act. In other words: evolution in creating H. Sapiens has explored an area of state space that will result in large-scale ecological collapse. This is unfortunate, from our present-day point of view, but it is not unnatural.
- quantum_magpie 8y ago
  >Though I sometimes enjoy Berry, he's wrong. We can't be 'at war' with nature. We are nature. Human destruction of ecosystems is a natural process - it's not fundamentally different from introduced flora & fauna overrunning island ecologies. It's just happening on a planetary scale. Yes, we are nature. However, in this case, we assume a role of a parasite. A cancerous growth that keeps consuming it's host until they both die. That is the uniqueness of humanity, the ability to completely destroy the habitat of the species on global scale.

crispinb 8y ago

Though I sometimes enjoy Berry, he's wrong. We can't be 'at war' with nature. We are nature. Human destruction of ecosystems is a natural process - it's not fundamentally different from introduced flora & fauna overrunning island ecologies. It's just happening on a planetary scale. The only 'unnatural' aspect of the picture is the common notion that humans (primates designed for small-scale tribal interactions) could somehow magically adapt to managing planetary-scale populations (let alone the vast network of ecologies hosting them). The story of human 'progress' or 'destiny' is a religious myth. Amusingly, it is held with particular vehemence by many technologically-inclined atheists without a shred of irony.

gerbilly 8y ago
I read it more allegorically than that. Being at war with nature is a good metaphor for our behaviour, because we seem determined to completely vanquish it and bend it to our will. Of course it's a bitter irony that if we are at war with nature, we are at war with ourselves (because as you say we come from nature). I think that's implied by the passage. The way we interact with nature is different in kind from other species, not just in scope. For humans, it's not enough to take , say, just the fish that we need. Because of money we take _all_ the fish we can get and then sell them. What doesn't sell is thrown out.
- crispinb 8y ago
  That's certainly the standard narrative - Berry isn't as counter-cultural as he thinks. He's just the mirror image of convention, but that buys in equally to the false nature/culture dichotomy. We don't 'interact' with nature. There's no getting outside of it to do the interaction. When we 'take more than we need', we're acting exactly as a hominid with tribal cognitive & affective adaptations that have been turned to extended purposes in a global context would act. In other words: evolution in creating H. Sapiens has explored an area of state space that will result in large-scale ecological collapse. This is unfortunate, from our present-day point of view, but it is not unnatural.
quantum_magpie 8y ago
>Though I sometimes enjoy Berry, he's wrong. We can't be 'at war' with nature. We are nature. Human destruction of ecosystems is a natural process - it's not fundamentally different from introduced flora & fauna overrunning island ecologies. It's just happening on a planetary scale. Yes, we are nature. However, in this case, we assume a role of a parasite. A cancerous growth that keeps consuming it's host until they both die. That is the uniqueness of humanity, the ability to completely destroy the habitat of the species on global scale.