Nature and Mankind

[Nihilistic Seraph]

This is a question that seems to pop up a lot and in my opinion is rather important to Pagans who see Nature as something important. How are you going to really see and give honour to nature properly if you're not sure what nature even is?

From my view, the debate seems to go kinda life this.

1) Nature is all that is not human
2) Humans are/can be nasty creatures
3) We should try to be closer to nature to be better people.


The thing that I have a problem with (more than the others) is the first posit. Why is nature everything non-human? You can say that humans change their surroundings, while animals do not, but looks at termites and ants making their structures, and to a more extreme degree beavers who quite literally change the ecosystem when they build a damn. It can easily be argued that it's in humanities nature (excuse the pun) to change it's environment.

So, after some rambling, here are some questions. Feel free to raise others as well

If we're not part of nature, how can we hope to be part of it
If we are part of nature, why worship something already intrinsically part of you
If we are in nature, but nature represent an extremely large variation, wouldn't it make sense to turn your worship to more human oriented things?  

[Creepy Albino Fish]

I think a lot of people view us as kind of like Stewards to the world. We are separate from nature because we distance ourselves from it with all our new technology and social lives. We're also on the top of the food chain. We have no natural predators that hunt us (though, obviously some humans do get eaten/attacked because of mistaken identity, defense mechanisms, extreme starvation etc.), and that also distances us from the web of nature.

Animals would just as rather stay away from us than anything else. The only reason we have pets is because they know they have a free meal ticket with us (dogs are different though. they are the only animal that try to learn what people are trying to say to them and learn abou ttheir way of life because they want to be in a pack, dog or human, it doens't matter). Horses don't care, livestock don't, wild animals are scared of us etc etc etc

Our ability to reason and our higher intelligence also separates us. We set up religions, we (well some of us XD ) know math, and we arn't just in it for survival's (for either the individual's or the speicies') sake. We see the big picture of life (or at least try to).

So anyways, we are a part of nature. We effect it (immensely) and we were born of it. We're just not on the same level of it as most other things. What do you mean, more human oriented things? Computers and plastics?  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

Well, I've found personally that I'm more at home in a city than I am in the wilderness, for extended periods of time. Of course, at times a city will get boring an oppressive and I'll want some time alone with nature, but as a general rule I like the city more. There's something about being in a place that's the sum of human activity, of human actions, hopes and dreams that holds much more vitality and life than any rural setting.

Personally, I would try to look for my Gods in the human condition. I would look in art, I would look in philosophy, I would look in charity. I would have human Gods for myself as a member of the human race.

I think we are part of nature, but nature is so vast that it looses meaning.  

[Christina Prince]

Well my personal belief system be wacky so I'll try to stick to accepted philosophies and such. I feel that the human body is nature itself (meat, bone, flesh ect) and when we die we go back to nature but our counciousness, as limited as it is, is what sets us apart from the rest of nature and its involuntary spasms. Nature is not happy, angry, brutil, or gentle it just is. A perpetuating agent of exsitence.

We as humans feel alienated from that becuase we think, we feel, and we use logic as apposed to just instinctually doing things. I belive humanity is a harmony of nature and that which is unatural, that which we can't see and most of us can only tap into through meditation or sleep. Like I said its hard for me to talk about this without shoving my own biases and beliefs on things so I'll just leave you with that to discuss/debate.  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

Do you see nature as having sentience?

Don't worry about your views, this guild is around to let everyone share their beliefs. If people get uppity and angry I'll threaten to (or actually will) hit them with my banhammer of modship 3nodding  

[Christina Prince]

Heehee ok, yeah I just didn't want to get all preachy, I'm only human (mostly) so if that happens just...astrally smack me with a squeaky hammer or something.

I view existence itself as its own sentient force. We, like a body are mearly cells, different cells that hold specific and important purposes in order to keep existence healthy and well existing. I view a concept of "God" as the brain and everything after that as various cells. That's my usual metaphore for explaining my world view. I suppose I have no good metaphore for the heart, other than earth itself. We know, mostly, how the heart works and it is at the center of the body, or human understanding. We can manipulate the heart but often if we abuse it, it will correct itself to keep the body going. The brain, on the otherhand, we know very little about.

As scientificy as that sounds I'm what some might call an astral viewer. I don't enter the astral, I simply observe from the safety of my body. While I am made of flesh I belive I have a higher state of being that, while I'm partially barred from it, I have the ability to tap into it.  

[Jezehbelle]

Humans are natural and artifical (in the "fellow-man-made" sense) beings.

On one hand, our innards are very much organic, at least from where we enter the world. We're not born with satellites and such.
For a long time, we were (as a species) very much a part of our natural (organic) surroundings. It's part of the base for most religions, either pantheism or panentheism. God is All or God is Part of All or God Made All. Gods usually create (from what I've noticed) natural or supernatural things. Zeus turns himself into a swan. Peneus turns Daphne into a laurel tree. I can't really think of someone whose turned into a spear or an iPod.

On the other hand, we're artifical. For some reason or another, we've ventured away from it with more complicated tools and domestication and the like. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, and I like my tools and such, but it's pretty true. We live in buildings with cooler air or hotter air circulating around us with the flip of a switch. We don't hunt out of necessity, we hunt for sport, or "because if we don't they'll starve, because we hunted their natural predators for sport or fear and into extinction". We eat because we're bored, or because we crave, not because we have to eat or we'll die. Generally, unless you have a pet cat, dog, fish, rodent or reptile, most people (here anyways) don't come into contact or notice any animal, and some people might not see a living plant of some sort for their entire day, unless it's just decoration.

We're both natural and artifical. Some of us lean towards one more than the other.

Thusly, we are a part of nature on a grand scale.
We are a part of nature, but not entirely. We're both logical and intuitive beings, meaning we go by instinct and feeling, reason and expression.
We're part of something bigger, and as planets and space rocks orb around suns and bigger space rocks, we revolve around this bigger nature in some sense or another. The feeling of being part of something bigger, either in a natural sense, or in a community sense, drives us, pretty much.

For me, it's the area around me, that my family's lived in for the past hundred years or so. It doesn't make sense for me to personally worship the land of say, Egypt, because I'm not in Egypt. So, I'll assume we like things that are locally bigger than ourselves. Something directly nearer to us, from the stars in the sky to the iPods in our pockets.

I dunno how much of that made sense, but I've got a cold.
):  

[Starlock]

I s'pose I'll post up on this topic now, eh? whee

The supposed division between humanity and nature, if viewed from a more scientific perspective, is purely categorical rather than actual and on top of that is somewhat a function of culture. If you set up a categorical distinction between things using language, eventually that categorical distinction might breed itself into a strong psychological/cultural distinciton that exists within the minds of all those who use that categorization. In Western society we're practically bred to think of the categories "humanity" and "nature" as two distinct things. Anything, be it truth or lie, repeated often enough, becomes to the mind, truth. So it is with the alleged Great Divide between humanity and nature that exists in Western cultures and philosophies.

Such notions of seperatedness from nature, or the arisal of an "us" and "them" sentimentality between humanity and everything else has its strong and weak points. Either cultural model apparently works as cultures have been sucessful using both perspectives. I won't go into a full appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of each perspective, but I will say that at least in the current historical context, the view of seperateness has historically facilitated behaviors that are today leading to environmental problems. A cultural philosophy can be different form actual objective happenings without causing serious problems, but in the current context, this doesn't appear to be one of those times. sweatdrop

It's a fact that humanity is part of nature, speaking ecologically, speaking scientifically. The Earth operates as an interconnected system and all parts within it are part of the system, regardless of how one egomaniacal species likes to set itself apart as something seperate from that system. If there weren't so many of us on the planet, chances are it wouldn't matter and we could keep up our delusion of seperateness without any serious repercussions. Yet it is one of those basic ecological rules that when you have organisms (particularly ones with high metabolic requirements and material demands) that have a large population, one species alone can have tremendous effects on biosphere as a whole. We exert, as a species, a very heavy load of influence on our environment. The part people in "humans-are-not-nature-cultures" sometimes forget is that this influence will come back to bite us or bless us eventually. The bigger your population, the bigger the influence and the bigger the return we get for good or ill.

Getting away from that, though, why worship something already intrinsically part of you? One of the definitions of religion is "to reconnect." There's a little mystery hidden in here and to explain it really well would take quite some time, so I'll simplify. In basic, the whole point is to recognize that we already posess some of the things we yearn for most of all, be it immortality, divinity, or a connection with nature. In following a Nature-centered religion like a brand of modern Paganism, honoring and worshiping Nature is a means to reconnect with the Nature within our own selves. To see ourselves not as seperate from Nature, but within and of Nature. In our culture, which emphasizes a seperateness of humanity and Nature, that can be a challenge and we need to re-emphasize that point to ourselves living in this culture.

What is to be done, then, towards domains we consider 'human oriented' in our culture? Perhaps if you reach that point where you truly realize the distinction between humanity-and-nature is purely categorical, that ceases to become an issue entirely? Honoring the shelter of the home you made wouldn't be any less a part of your Nature-religion than honoring the turnings of the seasons or the miracle of that toaster you use every morning for breakfast. Perhaps that would be called the "enlightenment" state with respect to Neopaganism? The point a person has so completely broken down the barriers between human and everything else that it is all truly seen as the continuity it is? Is it even possible to reach such a state in our materialistic Western culture that really emphasizes that seperateness? And would some categorical separation really prohibit this kind of reconnection to Nature or state of enlightenment?

Hmm... this post got longer than I intended it to. Like I told Nihl, I could probably go on with this subject for... ever. sweatdrop So I'll stop now. I might go back and respond to some other people's posts a bit later.  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

I shall repond eventually, as now my mind has no room for smart discussion. It's full of desire to sleep, anger at having to work 4 hours tonight, and anger at being deprived of my guitar when it's getting a set-up.

Stupid bridge, going all wonky angled...  

[twilight insanity]

Nihilistic Seraph

This is a question that seems to pop up a lot and in my opinion is rather important to Pagans who see Nature as something important. How are you going to really see and give honour to nature properly if you're not sure what nature even is?

From my view, the debate seems to go kinda life this.

1) Nature is all that is not human
2) Humans are/can be nasty creatures
3) We should try to be closer to nature to be better people.


The thing that I have a problem with (more than the others) is the first posit. Why is nature everything non-human? You can say that humans change their surroundings, while animals do not, but looks at termites and ants making their structures, and to a more extreme degree beavers who quite literally change the ecosystem when they build a damn. It can easily be argued that it's in humanities nature (excuse the pun) to change it's environment.

So, after some rambling, here are some questions. Feel free to raise others as well

If we're not part of nature, how can we hope to be part of it
If we are part of nature, why worship something already intrinsically part of you
If we are in nature, but nature represent an extremely large variation, wouldn't it make sense to turn your worship to more human oriented things?

nature is NOT "everything nonhuman." i think that humans ARE a part of nature, and it is just that we are becoming more and more sepperrated from it by wanting to be closer to heaven (or hell, if you are a satanist) instead of wanting to be on this earth. it is an argument i have had to put up with alot of my catholic friends, alot of whom are actualy surprisingly open for catholics, especialy considering how stubborn the rest of the people at my church are....or is it even right to call it my church...? after all, i only go there on wednsdays to be with my friends, and am not christian....oh well....back to my point. there is nothing wrong with being respectfull and gratefull of your world, even if you are a part of it. after all, there are plenty of religions,Shinto for example, that worship in that way. we, as a part of the earth, and in turn a part of our universe, should strive to maintain our beautifull connection with it, and offer our praise and thanks to it.  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

Starlock, thanks for the big post. 3nodding

I think I've by now reached the point somewhere between seeing everything as nature, and just not really caring anymore, making it a non-issue.

Perhaps another question arises would be to ask about our relationship to other parts of nature in relation to ourselves. Do we owe the human race more than parts of nature? Are we more valuable than say, the deer, or certain fish or a species of tree?

Or for that matter, does sentience make us special?  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

auronclone

Nihilistic Seraph

This is a question that seems to pop up a lot and in my opinion is rather important to Pagans who see Nature as something important. How are you going to really see and give honour to nature properly if you're not sure what nature even is?

From my view, the debate seems to go kinda life this.

1) Nature is all that is not human
2) Humans are/can be nasty creatures
3) We should try to be closer to nature to be better people.


The thing that I have a problem with (more than the others) is the first posit. Why is nature everything non-human? You can say that humans change their surroundings, while animals do not, but looks at termites and ants making their structures, and to a more extreme degree beavers who quite literally change the ecosystem when they build a damn. It can easily be argued that it's in humanities nature (excuse the pun) to change it's environment.

So, after some rambling, here are some questions. Feel free to raise others as well

If we're not part of nature, how can we hope to be part of it
If we are part of nature, why worship something already intrinsically part of you
If we are in nature, but nature represent an extremely large variation, wouldn't it make sense to turn your worship to more human oriented things?

nature is NOT "everything nonhuman." i think that humans ARE a part of nature, and it is just that we are becoming more and more sepperrated from it by wanting to be closer to heaven (or hell, if you are a satanist) instead of wanting to be on this earth. it is an argument i have had to put up with alot of my catholic friends, alot of whom are actualy surprisingly open for catholics, especialy considering how stubborn the rest of the people at my church are....or is it even right to call it my church...? after all, i only go there on wednsdays to be with my friends, and am not christian....oh well....back to my point. there is nothing wrong with being respectfull and gratefull of your world, even if you are a part of it. after all, there are plenty of religions,Shinto for example, that worship in that way. we, as a part of the earth, and in turn a part of our universe, should strive to maintain our beautifull connection with it, and offer our praise and thanks to it.

How is it possible to become less part of nature? Wouldn't that imply that we aren't affected by it and don't affect it? If that's the case, I'd probably see it as positive, as both humans and nature would be safe from each other.  

[Starlock]

Nihilistic Seraph

Perhaps another question arises would be to ask about our relationship to other parts of nature in relation to ourselves. Do we owe the human race more than parts of nature? Are we more valuable than say, the deer, or certain fish or a species of tree?

Or for that matter, does sentience make us special?

Value judgements are always biased in some way and based upon what you subjectively find to be more important. However....

... the next time someone claims that humanity is the 'superior' species on the planet I think I'll say something like this about that self-pedestalization:

If you're going to put yourself on that pedestal, take a moment now to look at what composes that pedestal you stand on. That bagel you ate for breakfast. The wood putting a shelter over your head. The ground beneath your feet. So if you must think of humanity as 'superior' at least realize that your self-asserted superiority only exists because it has a foundation. Who is really superior here? The species that sits on the top who is the icing on the cake or the body of the cake itself which forms the support for that icing? Without them, we are not. Estis, ergo sum. You are, therefore I am.  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

Eh, that's a tricky argument, because humanity is still the one that's made the bagel, and shaped the wood to shelter us from the rain. I understand the point, but I'm wondering where the line gets drawn. Do I have a right to enjoy reading books when the paper is made from killing trees? Saying yes right away gives human entertainment a greater value than plant life.  

[Starlock]

Nihilistic Seraph

Eh, that's a tricky argument, because humanity is still the one that's made the bagel, and shaped the wood to shelter us from the rain. I understand the point, but I'm wondering where the line gets drawn. Do I have a right to enjoy reading books when the paper is made from killing trees? Saying yes right away gives human entertainment a greater value than plant life.

I'm not sure saying yes to that gives human entertainment 'greater value' though from some points of view it certainly does. What it really says to me is that all species intrinsically looking out for their own good, not for the good of anything else. They stop to consider the wellfare of someone else (including, often, members of their own species) when it in some way benefits them, be it symbiotic cooperative or just needing to preserve a resource. From each individual species' point of view, anything that serves them has 'greater value' and that's part of why I have issues with making those kinds of value judgements in general. We all do it anyway, of course, but stoping to think about it every once and a while can be eye-opening.