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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
by 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 agoThat'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.