Why harmony with nature is a myth | Hacker News Reader

Why harmony with nature is a myth

freethink.com

26 pointsBrajeshwar20 comments

Perhaps the author plans to develop the core argument better in subsequent chapters but I find this weak so far. I think my issue with the core thoughts of this piece can be summed up in this statement from the article:

> To place intrinsic value on nature, then, is ultimately nihilistic and profoundly anti-human.

This statement only makes sense if you hold the view that human and nature are two separate things. This is a narrow Western viewpoint, whereas the Eastern mindset skews towards nondualism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism). The human is seen as an interconnected part of all the nature around them, not a separate thing. In this mindset assigning value to nature is a path to assigning value to oneself.

For example, many cultures with a more collectivist mindset have historically derived great personal meaning and value in their lives from the idea that they were protectors and stewards of the nature around them, even as that nature protected and sustained them.

In my opinion, setting the human apart from nature (and in some cases in opposition) is it's own path to nihilism. The more we build this wall of separation the more quickly we fall down slippery slopes to the darkest areas of modern Western thought. With few other ways to define the value of a human, we attempt to define the value of humans relative to the value they produce for each other, and then we independently isolate human value by ranking humans in order of most value to least value, etc.

I wouldn’t call it a western viewpoint, looking at environmental records around the world it’s clear that both “Eastern” and “Western” cultures are both highly capable of showing wanton disregard to nature. Let’s not go out of our way to find contrived differences.

You are correct, the nondualism prevalent in Eastern thinking is not mutually exclusive with wanton disregard of nature. I'm just suggesting that this idea of "intrinsically valuing nature means devaluing the human" requires a strong mental separation between the human and nature, and this way of thinking isn't quite the universal truth that the article makes it out to be.

Sure perhaps there’s some difference in prevalence but I’m not even sure of that.

Believing humans transcended nature isn’t universal in western thought either - source: an American of Western European descent of a fairly typical background, I.e. me.

For a larger group, anyone who cares about global warming is clearly showing they do not separate humans from nature.

Sure on the other hand there are people who seem to believe humans are above nature, but it seems to be a fairly worldwide fallacy. Maybe some areas have a higher prevalence of the belief, but it’s nowhere near universal anywhere.

separation between human and nature != humans are above nature

or maybe more accurately:

humans are above nature \subsetof separation between humans and nature

There's a ton of people who care about global warming by thinking of humanity as a destructive plague on the innocent natural world. That's also a philosophy that hinges on separation between humans and nature.

But human nature requires constant surplus bribery to not decay into cyclic warfare. Into which all cultures, living in harmony decayed down into. Japans warlords, chinas warlords and brutal starvations, the islanders ritualistic abortions by tribal warfare.. the harmony there had a horrible price.

It's also a contradiction to say that valuing nature is nihilistic. At best, it's begging the question.

> But slowing growth and limiting development isn’t living in harmony with nature—it is surrendering in a battle with nature, capitulating to her unreasonable demands.

How do you want it? Is nature inanimate as you say later? And why are living within the means of what surrounds us until we better figure out what to do capitulating to unreasonable demands?

I am thoroughly unimpressed by this text. Harmony with nature is a myth in the sense that it is subjective and often has little to do with actual balance. At the same time, the article's view of nature as something detached from humans seems way more harmful than a really trying to look far a balance.

I wonder if you consider harmony with nature a myth then does it not follow that you must also consider harmony between humans as a myth? We place limits on ourselves all the time to accommodate for our neighbors. We surrender as he says in a battle with our neighbors and capitulate to their unreasonable demands.

> To limit it is to limit human life. To limit us, and not other animals, is to single out humans for punishment and degradation.

Limitations form the basis for all free societies. You can argue if a specific limitation makes sense but equating it to punishment makes no sense. Do we punish our fellow citizen by imposing laws and rules on them?

I think he would have a better point if he argued that he considers the concept of harmony with nature ill defined. For example if one species drives another to extinction without human intervention. Do we intervene? Do we let nature runs its course?

The optimal balance between natural preservation and human expansion is the one that maximizes the sum of human economic benefit from the expansion and the human phycological benefit from natural preservation.

Perhaps stable equilibrium would be a better phrase than harmony.

We as a species are currently knocking our environment out of a fairly stable equilibrium in to some dynamic trasition to some new point which may not be so habitable or suceptible to out 'mastery'.

Mastery means knowing your limits and working with your working material rather than arrogantly pushing it past what it is capable of sustaining... And then getting angry when it doesn't do what you want.

To arrogantly pretend we can truly be masters of our environment, and that we will never need the insurance policy afforded by maintaining biodiversity is absurd.

Reads more like a screed than an essay. I agree with other commenter so far argument provided is weak. I found lots of false equivalencies, and unsupported logic. This one example was striking:

> But like all organisms, modifying our environment is how we live.

This is seemingly a tautology and/or trivially true. Of course organisms existing within and as part of an environment change it by their very existence. If there is a more profound statement here, it must be proven.

> To limit it is to limit human life.

Nope, this does not follow (even if the premise were true). False dichotomy.

Consider, if we limit the behavior of an unruly dog, are we limiting dog life? Maybe, but if we tell the dog "bad dog" when it is chewing the couch, is dog life therefore limited?

> To limit us, and not other animals, is to single out humans for punishment and degradation.

The premise is flawed, therefore the conclusion is moot. Further, this is an appeal to emotion & not reason. To which my response is, even if the premise were valid- so f'in what? Is it really a bad thing? Is human nature so good that limiting it is invariably bad? Why then do we have laws and government? What is more, why should we consider treating humans equally to other organisms as equitable? Is there no distinction between humans and other organisms?

Humans drive other species to extinction - so perhaps holding ourselves back a little (also called restraint) is not a bad thing (even if it does not feel great, it is perhaps an example of a local minima being a global maximum). The author does not discuss or acknowledge other possibilities either, which is a false dichotomy.

When I hit the text "single out humans for punishment and degradation" I immediately thought of the old chestnut about being so accustomed to getting whatever you want that restraint feels like oppression.

> The premise is flawed, therefore the conclusion is moot.

Yes but not in the way your dog analogy argues. The reality is that anything humans chose to do is be definition in our nature so strict environmental policy is not a limit on our behavior, it is our behavior.

> holding ourselves back a little (also called restraint) is not a bad thing

Of course, but you have to accept that our desire to preserve nature is selfish or else you end up seeing humanity as a cancer to be destroyed instead of the most advanced part of nature to be promoted.

It's selfish and limiting in the same way that going to the gym and eating well is limiting. Maybe the view of progress that says lazing around and eating sugar (poisoning our water supply, endless pollution, etc) will come home to roost. Ironically enough, we have already implemented lots of anti-progress memes like the EPA and CAA after seeing the fruits of progress!

Right, but like diet and exercise, we protect the environment for our own benefit, including our ability to visit untouched ecosystems. We dont protect nature because it is more important than humanity.

We are in an interesting time. It would be easy to skim something like this and say “those who don’t study the history of philosophy are doomed to repeat it,” and this certainly seems to hold here. This has all been said.

But what happens when all of the background in a field like philosophy is too much to internalize? What happens when the field is effectively constrained by the actors’ capacity for understanding or time for learning, and humans can’t incorporate meaningful new additions?

The irony of misanthropic environmentalism is that the psychological desire to preserve nature is our most unnatural and uniquely human instinct.

> But my anthropocentrism is even more radical: there is no need to reduce our “ecological footprint,” and no reason, as stated in the Ecomodernist Manifesto, that “humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature.”

Can somebody make this guy work at a slaughterhouse/CAFO for a bit. Maybe he's getting really mad about what he perceives as hippy woo, but I do place some intrinsic value on having a functioning ecosystem and not paving over everything in the pursuit of progress.

You may also remember me from such blog posts as "Earwigs, Ew!", and "Man Versus Nature: The Road To Victory."

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