Nature or Natural - A Human Perception

Nature to me is a place that feels not designed or created by man. I would not consider a pine tree farm as being nature, but if I went to the woods and came to a pine tree farm adjacent to the woods, I would not say I exited nature while entering the farm. I believe this is because nature to me is an experience as well as an object or entity, which I relate closely to the concept of natural.

I place mankind in nature, looking at the concept through a broader perspective. At a global level, I would say mankind lives in nature, with her fellow species. But nature on a global scale can also act as a force – as a whole. It is the sum of changes, what one could see from the moon and something with a peculiar tension to anything man-related. It is peculiar because we call on natures response to our actions. Like a hurricane or a flooding due to global warming. The global warming then is not nature, it is a phenomenon. And the effect is both a response from mother nature and sometimes something created by man. These ideas imply that a natural state has been disturbed. In this way nature has its own dynamic and course. The natural is, in this aspect, not only something derived from nature, but it also has to do with a biological path that is not disturbed. The natural as “as it would be, when nothing unnatural interferes” or untouched or even unspoiled. This perspective places humans outside the concept of natural and, at some point, becomes normative.

However, I wonder if once we were not a part of nature and as the eons have passed we continue to move away as far as possible. As mankind exists in nature, or at least in a part of nature, but often times we are shying away from having to deal with nature in its true sense, constructing barriers between ourselves and a true natural experience. We enjoy nature when we can control it but when we can no longer influence the outcome, then we prefer to call it a catastrophe or something unnatural, an anomaly. Perhaps, natural is something that is un-tampered with, that can act outside of humanity’s control as well, something that we haven’t been able to decipher in its entirety, and therefore can’t predict its outcome

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Image Credit: Mayank Bhogal - The Nature Exhibit

Image Credit: UN Photo/Logan Abassi - Thousands Displaced Due to Flooding in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti