Why environmentalists have done us a disservice, and how language can start to fix it
Environmentalists have done us a great disservice.
Just read the headlines, “We Can’t Have a Stable Climate If We Keep Destroying Nature” (TIME) “Cultivating Compassion for Nature” (Oxford Blue) “World leaders pledge more support for nature ahead of UN summit” (Reuters)
Call it splitting hairs, but the language we use matters.
Our language creates the framework in which we view the world.
In this case, we have held up a Roman Catholic view of “nature” as something outside of us and we, humans, as special creatures without debt to it. In asking us to “save nature,” the war of ideas has already been lost.
Nature does not need saving, we do
Solving our most existential issues, from climate change to mental health, will be impossible until we understand ourselves as a larger part of nature. One extractive process will simply be replaced by the next.
Extraction is a mono-directional process. Nature is omni-directional. It is holistic system design at work.
Nature knows no binaries. We humans invented binaries as a form of otherization. Otherization is a conceptual choice made to express and make manifest power imbalances: male / female, white / non-white, human / nature.
It wasn’t always this way. Not with nature anyway.
In ancient Greece, Aristotle — using the then term of nature, phusis — did not exclude humans from the definition. Nature was a process and humans were not exempt from it.
Whereas in the Greek and Roman view of the world, even the gods were part of nature, in a monotheist context God transcends nature, and so does the Man, as he is created in the image of God. (Nature)
It is a reductionist approach, the kind of dangerous oversimplification that has led to the Western extractive mindset.
The great irony is that where modern religions tried to draw lines of distinction and difference, where division was embedded from the beginning, indigenous cultures long-saw and continue to see humans an an integral part of nature
“The ancient Hawaiians, for example, believed in a spiritual connectedness between nature and humanity. They applied that paradigm to a model for sustainable resource management, the ahupua’a system, designed more than 500 years ago to prevent overfishing and deforestation. Many Native American communities arrived at a similar concept of connectedness, and used it to develop careful hunting and land-use practices.” (CS Monitor)
This misalignment in mindsets imperils even well-intentioned efforts. Rather than trust indigenous communities to know how to steward and defends forests, funding to “protect nature” comes with so much bureaucracy and strings-attached that only a fraction reaches these communities on the ground. (Eco-Business)
Rather than see ourselves as possible stewards of the world, so many humans of the Western world are either at war for dominion over it, or a virus upon it. The enormity of this difference cannot be overstated. The former is of empowerment, and the latter, hopelessness.
We have put ourselves at war with a false ‘other’: Nature
It is no surprise that in the face of the enormity of something like climate change, so many are wallowing in despair.
Should we be fearful? Or should we be in awe, humbled by our interdependence on the world?
How do we solve it? Where is the silver bullet we have been waiting for?
The truth is, there is no silver bullet. Not to solve the many issues we face as a society. To think otherwise is to succumb to the same binary thinking that has gotten us into this mess.
The world is complex. Single-minded, extractive thinking is not the solution. The solution is muli-faceted, balanced. It starts with a change to our mental framework.
Take for example mental health. What explains the great rise in anxiety & depression among economically advantaged groups? (TheCut, American Psychology Association, World Health Organization)
Our extractive mindset would have us focus on a single solution, from the early days of lobotomies to today’s plethora of pharmaceuticals — how can we maximize our return on investment, a single pill for a quick placation? Surely there must be a silver bullet.
To realize that we are part of nature, is to understand that we have roots, and that we are nourished or not nourished by the world around us. A flower does not bloom without sunlight and good soil.
There is not a single solution if it is our modern way of living that is the problem, as Dr. Jean Twenge, social psychologist at San Diego State University, contends:
“I think the research tells us that modern life is not good for mental health.” (TheCut)
Or consider the whale.
A single whale, and the micro-ecosystem one creates from simply existing, is an active carbon sink on the range of more than a thousand trees. Resorting whales to pre-commercial whaling numbers is not a single-solution to climate change, but to ignore the importance of whale conservation would be the fall prey to the same extractive, binary thinking. There is not a silver bullet.
To create a better future, start with words
And this is not charity on behalf of nature. Because nature is not outside. We are nature. We are made of the same cells and run on the same cycles as other animals. The more we resist our connection to the natural world, the more pain we will feel.
Making strides to support healthy lives for animals is not charity work for the sake of animals, it’s not even necessarily a moral argument — though you could make the case for each — but it is something in our own self-interest.
Take factory farming. Whether you believe meat is a necessary component of diet, Americans’ eat more meat per capita than a century ago (National Library of Medicine). The method of factory farming specifically stands in opposition to our natural relationship to non-human animals — it is about subjugation and dominion over otherized animals as pure resources. The extractive mindset that has caused so much harm, not merely to the animals but to us. In exchange for this extractive relationship with other animals, we see early deaths from coronary heart disease, algae blooms from manure runoff, droughts exacerbated by inefficient use of water to food ratio, and of course, an explosive ton (literally) of noxious methane gas in the climate.
This is not an argument to not eat meat for moral or even health reasons. It is to point out that using our dollar to support the factory farming method of raising animals (which is how most meat is sold in the US is produced), a method set up in order to max out the amount of meat we eat per day, is not in our self-interest. It is to point out that our self-interest is not mis-aligned from the rest of nature, because we are not outside it.
Climate change is about much more than this technology or that type of energy. It’s about what humans do when presented with easy, cheap, exploitive opportunities. How do we wield that sort of power? To our benefit or to our detriment?
It is in our self-interest to come back to the understanding that we are part of nature, that we exist in a symbiotic balance with whales, and the trees, and the fungi. It is in our self-interest to re-integrate. In contrast to the extractive thinking of the Age of Enlightenment, we can instead herald a more inclusive, holistic future through the Age of Integration.
Instead of fear, why not awe? Why not humility for the vastly complex system in which we depend? Why not reverence for being part of something bigger than just us?
