I have never much appreciated the pro - nature lobbyists. I
have always found them fake, their followers fake and their propagandas fake too.
What do you want to save so dearly anyways? Animals? Trees? Rivers? Seas? ‘Mother’-Nature?
Do you really think ‘Nature’ is some motherly God? Well, I don’t!
For all I know it was the very same ‘Mother’
Earth who was once nothing but a hot ball of dust spitting venomous gasses out
if its pits, who never even knew a water molecule let alone the rains. Once it
was nothing more than the billions of other lifeless planets like it. It is not
the propaganda of Nature to sustain and build life! If it was then we wouldn’t be
the only life-forms, on a planet, less than the size of a dust speck on the scale
of the universe.
And what evil could the Human Species evoke in the Universe
anyways? Provoke a global warming that melts the glaciers? Well, they have
melted and refrozen a number of times before. Extinct a few endangered species?
Dont you know how countlessly many species have died out in the course of
evolution anyways? Do a nuclear war? Well, there are billions of a billion
nuclear reactions happening every second in the Universe!
The point I am trying to make is that Humans are too
inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Our planet is going to die
someday; I won’t say it would be a nice thing, but only that the apocalypse is
a surety anyways.
I can still understand the concern behind developing a sustainable
progress because well it affects us and our future descendents directly.
Striving for ground water-harvesting or fuel efficient cars is alright I guess.
But let us not mock each other for building towering concrete jungles, mighty
industries or bringing about a global warming. Also definitely appreciable would
be people not raising a bandwagon against Diwali crackers or Ganesha Murtis! For,
if hedonism is not the ultimate goal of the ‘made in Nature’, ‘selfish genes’ then
I don’t know what is!
There are some (very few) people who actually love animals (in the wild, I mean). In fact, anyone taking interest in, say, bird watching, even for a few days, will develop an attachment to nature in the typical environmentalist sense. These guys genuinely want to 'save nature'. But it is certainly not a cause that can be imposed on the rest of humanity.
ReplyDeleteThen again, there is the class of people who love the 'beauty of uninterrupted nature'. I am probably one of them (hence the comment :P). It is a mind blowing experience to just explore the imposing Himalayas, or sit for hours by a lonely riverbank. Perhaps the experience is so profound precisely because it is very different from the 'artificial', which we experience everyday. I mean, the experience would obviously not remain so profound if I see it everyday, and it becomes a part of my 'fight for survival'. Yet, in whatever form and of whatever cause, it remains touching, and people (including I) would be willing to defend it. These people want nature to be let alone only for the sake of personal pleasure, just as anyone buys an iPhone for pleasure, so it is as justifiable for them to take a pro-nature stance as it is for others to take a pro-technology hedonist stance.
Finally, there is the altruistic reason that we need to think of nature in order to save our own skin. Nature obviously requires no saving. It is probably an evolutionarily developed instinct to care about future generations. Interestingly, I just realized that this is the only altruistic reason for 'saving nature'; the first two are completely selfish!
There is always the post-modernist line of thought that man is a part of nature and that what he does is as natural as what a cat does. Such considerations also, usually, have a consistent solution (it might still lead to a conclusion that nature needs saving), but I haven't given much thought to it yet.
@Saurabh- I agree that Nature is beautiful, no debate there. Experiencing Nature is also beautiful, again no debate there. But I don't feel it justified to, say, remorse loosing forests to industrialization.To me it okay, for example, to see the wild animals in a zoo; I don't regret that we have taken away their natural habitats.
ReplyDeleteI agree that pollution infiltrating natural systems looks ugly compared to the scenic beauty of something pure and that we feel bad and responsible for it.But if I have to pick one then I would rather have a beautiful home for me than a beautiful river. And I shouldn't be made to feel guilty about it.
Debasing humans and moral policing against materialistic progress in the name of 'save nature' is what I find annoying. And like you have agreed too, a limited get-away into Nature would suffice. Uninterrupted Nature feels exciting but again, we really won't enjoy it if it grows to an extent that it triggers a fight for our survival.
Ofcourse we must worry for the future generations, but I feel that in the long run, they will adapt accordingly. For eg, when future humans will face a fuel-crisis, I am sure that by then we would have developed some alternative energy source. Necessity will trigger an innovative adaption.So, we mustn't worry too much about saving the skins of future humans,
atleast not about current hedonistic progress on the cost of Nature.
When you have been reading Ayn Rand, you cannot help but post a strong reply :P
ReplyDeleteNobody should ever be made to feel guilty by others, but that does not mean facts should be hidden just to avoid guilt. For example, even if no one tells you to feel guilty, but simply points out the mass killing of dolphins (see or read about the documentary 'The Cove') for purely economic reasons, you cannot but empathize. Or when you see a stinking nullah in place of a river in Mumbai, you cannot help feeling something is going wrong. The guilt, I think, is not because one is made to feel it, but because you genuinely value these things that you see being destroyed.
In that case, avoiding guilt is tantamount avoiding facts; facts about the cost of development - and that is certainly not desirable. People who love non-veg food give it up after seeing videos from slaughterhouses. The point is, our vastly complex socioeconomic systems are extremely adept at hiding large chunks of facts from large chunks of populations. And if revealing these facts makes people feel guilty, it is not bad.
If a person does not value the environment, there will be no reason for them to feel guilty about its destruction, just as people who kill their sheep for themselves feel no guilt in eating it. If they indeed feel guilty, then it would be more appropriate for them to fight for the wrongs that are happening, rather than hiding the facts. How much do you agree to this?
Yes, environmentalists use a lot of rhetoric and might tend to induce guilt to further their purpose, but then, so do industrialists and politicians. In fact, it is the balance between the three extremes (environmental, economic, social) that will help find the middle ground.
About new inventions coming up with need, it is an entirely different issue for me, so I will let it rest :P