Humans have historically considered themselves masters of planet Earth, exerting what has been regarded as a moral authority over Nature. To all accounts, the worldview is logical: as the sole sentient species on the planet (by our own reckoning, to be sure), seeing ourselves as masters of all we surveyed made sense in a world that has been, by turns, paradise and hell.
Since the rise of fixed agrarian societies what has most radically changed in our relationship with Nature is that whereas humanity once saw itself as greatest among equals—or at least as cohabitants of a single world, together with most other life on Earth—humans have begun to exercise ever more draconian domination over Nature. Whereas once humanity depended on grueling labor or uncertain hunts to obtain food enough for a family, today most people in the industrialized world drive to the nearest grocery store to obtain a far greater variety in foodstuffs than people a century ago could have imagined, much less enjoyed. Whereas once people were at the mercy of the weather—sun, wind, rain, snow—modern industrial societies, by in large, function beyond the weather’s control. Whereas long-distance travel once meant weeks or months of nearly insufferable conditions, with spoiled food and its accompanying malnutrition, poor water and poorer living conditions, a modern traveler has a cushy seat in air-conditioned comfort to nearly anywhere on the planet—and within hours rather than days.
There has been a dramatic shift in the relationship between humanity and Nature. We humans have come to see ourselves as not cohabitants, but rather conquerors of Earth—indeed the dominant species, masters of a subservient world. We imprison Nature in safe little holes in sidewalks in our concrete cities and reduce Nature to excursions and outings—it’s a nice place to visit, but we wouldn’t like to live there. The connection between humanity and Nature, forged of shared experience and human necessity, is gone, and humans have broken the world.
And what sort of masters are we? We cram animals meant for human consumption in filthy and cramped cages, shooting them up with hormones so they’ll produce more saleable meat or milk. We blithely delight in gas-guzzling SUVs, which we often drive alone, and turn already noxious air above our cities even deadlier. We’re responsible for depleted fisheries, which don’t feed just humans; for the gradual extinction of countless species around the world through the direct action—and more importantly, inaction—of human beings; for the willful destruction of forests and plant life that no one denies are critical to the survival of oxygen-breathing life on Earth, including humans; for behavior responsible for increases in carbon-dioxide, a course of action that may have disastrous and wide-reaching consequences for people and Earth.
Humanity-cum-master, it seems, lacks humanity.
Perhaps human ingenuity will develop some soft of “master plan” that will miraculously save humanity—or the part that can pay, anyway—but what of everything else?
Nature? We Don’t Need No Stinking Nature…
Maybe the issue isn’t so much that humans are somehow less connected with the natural world around us than we are less aware.
We’ve been astoundingly successful at isolating ourselves from nature: if it’s hot out, we crank up the AC. Bugs? Slather on some DEET. Nature has become an inconvenience, the realm of environmental freaks, backpackers, and Amazon Indians. Nature should mind its own business and we’ll mind our, thanks. We pretend we’re a self-made species, forgetting our existence is interwoven with that of all other life on Earth.
And with our loss of awareness has come a serious negligence of responsibility—we feel as if what we don’t know or care about we aren’t responsible for. But like most responsibilities, ignorance is no excuse: we are accountable, and a reckoning has begun.
There are no auditors to appease or distract because the stopgap measures we’ve used are no longer concealing our mismanagement of life on Earth. We lose, according to some estimates, a species a day to extinction. But for all of humanity’s creativity, science still looks to Nature for inspiration, so our daily loss may be far more menacing than an Appalachian snail or African rodent might suggest: Do we know what possibilities might have been contained within those species lost? Can we say with any sort of definiteness that what has vanished was not the key to our salvation?
Might it be that with every species lost, we actually lose that much more of our own existence?
Pleasure Principle; Or, Earthron
As masters, humans have proven to be astoundingly incapable (or unwilling) to plan for the long-term future. Governments implement policies that address immediate concerns, but rarely look forward beyond 25 years, as if humanity will, in that quarter century, make the next evolutionary leap and make any longer-term plans moot. Or perhaps there is hope among leaders that a technology will appear that will miraculously cure our mistakes.
Yet despite that optimism, few plans are made to either aid in that next great leap forward or to deal with the possibility that technology won’t—or can’t—save us. In more places around the world, people consume energy, water, food, land, and other resources as if there will be no tomorrow, but talk as if those resources will be. There’s no irony there yet, but I fear there will be.
I’m no Luddite, but I worry that the Nature I enjoy will be pictures in old National Geographic magazines and stories told by grandparents. Perhaps not for my children, or even theirs, but someone, someday. I don’t want to live in that world, nor do I want that world for my children, theirs, or the generations that follow.
It’s a narrow, self-serving course we’ve plotted, and the decisions necessary to change that course must happen while we may still act rather than react to the radical changes that will surely result from our selfishness and short-sightedness.
Regardless of whether we see ourselves as God-appointed masters or sole sentient species on a living planet, our actions have particular import and our crimes definite consequences. Our existence is not independent of the Nature we see around us, but predicated upon Nature’s continued survival, placing us in a moral quandary: by killing Nature by degrees, we threaten to destroy ourselves, making us the agents of our own destruction.