My friend Maria recently told me she was gay - which wasn't easy, considering that she is conservative by temperament and still thinks homosexuality 'is not natural'. But so what if something isn't 'natural'?
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In modern-day discourse the word natural is increasingly used as a form of legitimisation, as a term of endorsement. Dairy products boast that they convey 'nature's goodness'; people buy natural skincare products from The Body Shop; and companies ranging from Marks & Spencer to Tesco to BP have adorned their products in the colour green.
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Woe betide anybody who dares to defy nature. Opponents of censorship argue that sex is 'the most natural thing in the world', and so shouldn't be hidden away. Prince Charles and eco-worriers in general encourage us not to 'mess with nature', whether by despoiling the planet or creating 'Frankenstein foods'. Like primitive societies we truly worship nature. 'She' has sensibilities that may be pleased or offended - lest She will have Her revenge.
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In hindsight I could also have pointed out to Maria that behavioural biologist Frank Beach has detailed same-sex mountings in 13 different species, sometimes for non-reproductive social functions. But then, defending homosexual behaviour among humans just because there are lesbian lizards in South America would still using nature as a reference point.
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Who cares what happens in nature? As far as I'm concerned, nature is not our friend - it is the enemy of humanity. Earthquakes, cancer, death, wisdom teeth, short-sightedness: these are natural. Penicillin, antibiotics, heart surgery, toothpaste, the spectacles I wear as I write this: these are the innovations of man. Our ability to defy, defeat and overcome nature is what makes us human. Thanks to our tampering with the natural order of things, most people in the Western world can now look forward to dying in their beds.
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So why do we worship nature? Jean Jacques Rousseau, the godfather of modern anti-modern whining, was one of the first thinkers whose hatred of the world led him to adore a natural world that might have come before it. He speculated on the life of the happy savage in the 'state of nature', contrasting it unfavourably with the 'state of society'. The man in tune with nature wants for nothing but 'food, a female and sleep'.
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But nature worship really came into its own with the growth of the green movement over the past 30 years, which perceives Western lifestyles as inherently destructive or 'unsustainable'. According to eco-activist Stephanie Mills, editor of the 1997 book Turning Away from Technology: A New Vision for the 21st Century: 'As a species, human beings have more experience living wild, in hunter-gatherer band, embedded in healthy ecosytems.' As with Rousseau, this kind of nature worship is bound up with Romantic Primitivism and the idea that non-Western peoples are somehow closer to nature than Western types.
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In 1991, even the venerable US research institution the Smithsonian claimed that 'pre-Columbian America was still the First Eden, a pristine natural kingdom. The native people were transparent in the landscape, living as natural elements of the ecosphere. Their world, the New World of Columbus, was a world of barely perceptible human disturbance'. Such sentiments are echoed in modern cinema, as in Kevin Costner's 1991 Dances with Wolves, which reversed the norms of the Hollywood Western, so that it was the white man who was the ungovernable savage, and the indigenous Indians the true custodians of culture and justice.
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Ironically, today's praising of nature is possible precisely because we have pretty much conquered nature. Just as the British started to romanticise the Scottish Highland tradition in the 1750s - shortcake, bagpipes, tartan and all - as soon as the Highland hordes were finally vanquished, so we can romanticise nature because we no longer live at its mercy.
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Consider the true state of nature. In pre-modern, pre-urban society, men and women lived in filth and were hostages to disease. According to science commentator Ronald Bailey, life expectancy at birth for a primitive hunter-gatherer was 26. For early agricultural communities, it was even lower: 19 years of age. It could even be argued that rape and unwanted pregnancy are both features of nature. The proscription of non-consensual sex is something guaranteed by civilisation.
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If we hadn't intervened in nature, particularly agriculture, most of our ancestors would never have been born. Today we live beyond reproductive age thanks to medical technologies. Hospitals are modern-day temples to humanism. Take away hospitals, clean water, electricity and so on, and witness the state of nature in all its horror. Even 'natural childbirth' is an invention, relying upon modern notions of hygiene, not to mention a watch to time contractions. 'Organic food' does not grow itself either -farmers have to work hard and with great skill to produce such foodstuffs.
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I would argue that not only are tribal societies fantastically regimented, religiously intolerant, and in possession of far more do's and don'ts than Western liberal society - they are also ecologically destructive. Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans caused massive deforestation to create grazing areas for species they hunted, many to extinction. According to the anthropologist Roger Sandall, after their arrival to New Zealand 800 years ago, the Maoris had made extinct 30 percent of the islands' bird life, including 12 species of Mao bird alone.
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This suggests to me that the idea of people living 'in touch with nature' is bogus - that all societies modify their surroundings. Of course, we humans get things wrong, and there is cause for some concern for our planet, unfortunately thanks to the excesses of Western industrialised society. But this doesn't warrant the widespread anthropophobia - the view of eco-extremists who see humans as parasites on the planet.
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Today's nature worship is generated not only by ecological concerns, but by a broader crisis in the Western world. So what or who do we turn to understand what is right and wrong these days? It used to be God; then it was man; but we live in post-humanist times now. The high priests of humanism, scientists and doctors, are figures of suspicion. They are seen by many as being 'out of touch', 'arrogant', and decidedly dangerous. Nature has filled this ethical vacuum. Nature has become a point of reference, as it seems it is 'all in the genes'. So even the human genome project seems to have been transformed into a moral quest to understand how and why we act as we do.
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The collapse of the Western humanist ideal, which I would say started in Hungary in 1956 and was completed in Berlin in 1989, has corroded the left - and the left has somewhat perversely found solace in nature worship. Deeming something wrong because it was 'unnatural' was traditionally the preserve of conservative minds, railing against homosexuality, women in the workplace, or defending slavery and the divine right of kings.
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Now it is more likely to be the left saying we must jettison our 'unnatural' Victorian taboos and 'do what comes naturally'. We mustn't upset the 'balance of nature'. We need to get a little more holistic, less Western - tap into the 'ancient wisdom' of indigenous peoples. Even the left's anti-racist rhetoric seems to be less about opposing racial discrimination because it is wrong, than about telling us that evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould has proved that the idea of 'race' is erroneous in his book The Mismeasure of Man. Next thing we'll be told masturbation is acceptable because somebody saw chimpanzees at the zoo doing it.
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If you ever find yourself watching some witless TV programme such as 'The World's Scariest Earthquakes' or 'When Tidal Waves Attack', take solace in the fact you are seeing the true face of Mother Nature. And consider this: according to scientists at Sussex University, in 7.7 billion years from now, the Sun will expand to about 120 times its current size, consuming Mercury and Venus, raising the temperatures on Earth to levels that will make life on this planet impossible.
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That will be nature at work. Let's just hope man thinks of a solution in time.
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Patrick West is the author of Conspicuous Compassion: Why Sometimes it Really is Cruel to be Kind, Civitas, 2004. Buy this book from Amazon (UK).
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