Look out of your window. What do you see? Presumably trees, grass, a few chirping birds, a mountain range, a delightful assortment of shape-shifting clouds, an ocean view if you can afford it, maybe even an ant colony slavishly marching along your windowsill. Of course, this description assumes you reside in a rural or suburban setting. What about outside your dingy city apartment? You'll most definitely see a colony of cars slavishly marching along, possibly a few ponds circumscribed by well kept lawns, plumes of smog dotted with car headlights, your reflection upon the glassy facade of a neighbouring skyscraper, and undoubtedly the chaos of capitalism down below. When we juxtapose these differing scenes our thoughts instantly trail off to nature vs. man, authenticity vs. artificiality, green vs. gray. This ageless battle between Mother Nature and Man has undoubtedly shaped our world. We see ourselves as bastard children of Mother Nature, an unholy product of a holy world, but not in the same sense as abandoned children see themselves when put up for adoption, more like rebellious teenagers do when they run from judgment. We build roads, design cars, construct buildings, send some of our own into outer-space, formulate unfathomably complicated theories for our own existence, and even reconstruct damaged human tissue. Yet, before we congratulate our peers for these superhuman feats we lambast them for not conforming to a mythical set of rules set by nature. We insult scientific researchers with audacious claims that cloning is unethical. We assassinate doctors who operate abortion clinics (see the sad case of Dr. George Tiller) because we feel that a mother's quality of life is not as important as the baby's potential life. We protest logging companies for contributing to deforestation and yet we remain in our wooden homes, homes that have provide us a well insulated abode and flexible protection against earthquakes for centuries. And most notably, we condemn our dependence on fossil fuels while we flourish in a technological and scientific revolution largely dependent on this devilish energy reservoir.
What accounts for this bipolar response? Why do almost all of us reflexively resort to a detachment attitude from Mother Nature the moment we mould Her to fit our needs, whether moral or not? Why do we feel that our "negative" actions (negative is in quotations because im sure nature doesn't share our prejudice for some acts as being "good" and some being "bad") are unnecessarily harming nature? If you don't understand what I mean just ask yourself how often you comment on man-made structures with a negative undertone. For example, what's the first thing you blurt out when you see notices from city council that a sewage plant will be built within the forest adjacent your home? I can guarantee that everyone, as I have done in this particular situation, will scold man's never ending vendetta against nature. But is that an accurate attitude to take? Do other organisms on this planet respond the same way? Are those marching ants on your windowsill bemoaning their queen's slavish demands as "ant-made" requests that hurt Mother Nature? I have a feeling they don't. Just because some of our actions alter the surrounding state it does not mean we are working against nature. We are part of nature and must start interpreting "man-made" disasters as nature's method of altering herself through human hands. And so bemoaning our fellow humans as corruptors of nature hints to our arrogance and lack of understanding.
A prime example is the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is acceptable to exhort that this "man-made" disaster devastated the marine ecosystem and it is appropriate to expect advancement in technology so as to prevent further damage, but we must not interpret this as an external threat to nature. The extracted petroleum was diverted out from natural reservoirs into pipelines made from metals found in the earth's crust and into refineries built from similar natural components; all designed by the highly evolved neurons within the nervous systems of geologists and engineers across the globe. These are the causative agents reported to be responsible for the BP oil disaster and it would be contradictory to claim them as threats to nature, they are nature! This brings to light an important point. We must start viewing ourselves as Newtonian bodies that participate with nature in a holistic and deterministic manner. Grumbling about our irresponsibility in the Gulf of Mexico is as useless as acting bewildered about the catastrophe that is two cars approaching each another at 100km/h. Physics has predetermined the likelihood of each driver's death and as with the Gulf of Mexico a more complex assortment of laws determined the fate we witnessed. This is not apparent to many since, as any meteorologist will testify, a complex system only seems chaotic and unpredictable due to our limited mental capacity. Once technology reaches the unimaginable heights we anticipate, we will be able to predict weather and human behaviour as accurate as two-bodied newtonian systems. To accept this will require the abandonment of free will, a cozy notion that makes a predetermined universe seem bleek and colourless, almost mechanical. However, if this reality better adjusts us to our universe then it becomes vital we adjust correspondingly.
I by no means support a passive attitude towards such disasters. Quite the opposite, I am attempting to change the detachment attitude we reflexively revert to when a calamity takes place so as to expedite the technological advancements required. Instead of bickering at one another about our savagery behaviour we must accept these disasters as what they are: products of our inability to extract oil safely from the ground or to optimize renewable resources. Mother nature doesn't care that we caused an oil spill, she doesn't share our prejudice to such ecological changes. To Her, its just another day in her 4.5 billion year history. We care because it makes our immediate surroundings less hospitable. The only way we can efficiently progress then is to concentrate all our efforts into technologically preventing events that derail our environment towards a less hospitable state. Blabbering about our irresponsibility is useless, it provides nothing tangible. It disregards the fact that we are on an evolutionary path and are slowly learning from our faults.
I will label this disconnect from nature as "Detachment Disorder" (DD). It is exemplified by the belief we are distinct and superior from Mother Nature, we are harming and upsetting Her, and we should be shameful of ourselves. The initial belief isn't a necessary symptom of DD, however it does manifest itself in my people, particularly religious people.
A possible reason for DD's manifestation within our species may be found within our religious tendencies. The belief in a divine being, as seen in the Abrahamic religions, seems to predispose people into a mental framework that allows for the disconnect. Since religion teaches we are a sacred product of God's creation, an elite heavenly species, it becomes possible to justify our exclusion from His other creations. I remember watching the eye-opening movie "Gattaca," a movie about how all children are born through in vitro fertilization (IVF) so as to allow parents to pre-screen for the "perfect" embryo. As the movie began the first comment made within my household was "...that's haram (sinful), only Allah can create humans. We shouldn't interfere with God's workings!" But if God didn't want us to create humans then why did He give us the mental capacity to perform such an "unholy" act? Moreover, why did He make the medical field potentially responsible for cloning humans (regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy) the same field responsible for curing so much of our suffering? What's more, you can substitute Mother Nature with God and my point will remain. This shows that religion and hippism are two ideologies that can be accused of spreading Detachment Disorder. Religious fanatics and fanatical hippies put themselves into indefensible positions by joining human-centric and ahuman-centric paradigms, respectively, accusing humans as earthly deviants. For example, religion says pre-marital sex is sinful because God has decreed a divine purpose for sex. On the other hand, some hippies shame our sexual inhibitions as unnatural, we should experience sexual ecstasy without any man-made boundaries, become more animalistic. Both sides are vocalizing their concern that our actions on this planet are not in harmony with nature almost insinuating that we started off as natural Homo sapiens but somewhere along our tumultuous history we've become unnatural Homo sapiens, Man.
Another example of how religion plays an exemplary role in fostering DD is seen in the parable of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Disobediently, Adam ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge resulting in his banishment from paradise along with Eve. They are sentenced to suffer as earthly mortals. Christianity embellishes upon this fable to convey the concept of original sin while Islam and Judaism retell the story without original sin. What sort of effect do you think this story has on our naive minds? What kind of changes to our mental framework do you think a story like this, especially the idea of original sin, has on our early development? Does it make us feel closer or more distant to Mother Nature? I have a slight suspicion that stories of this ilk feeds into our disconnect from nature. We are excused from feeling superior to the green around.
I am not claiming that these three religions are responsible for initiating DD, more that they are responsible for mass producing and packaging it. What may actually account for this disorder is the superiority complex we've inherited from our primitive ancestors as a result of asymmetrical evolution. Why are we the only ones capable of higher level thought processes? Why are we the only ones capable of effectively manipulating our surroundings? These questions were undoubtedly uttered from the lips of ancient philosophers and it wouldn't be far fetched to conclude that the Abrahamic interpretations explained above were derived from these utterances. And because the answer to why we don't see Shakespearean lions or Einsteinian birds remained so elusive for so long we remained inclined to believe that our origin was a divine one. Had there been a companion species evolving alongside us with similar cerebral abilities we may have viewed our world differently. However, Darwinian evolution and the weak anthropic principle are currently the most advanced theories to explain why this is nonsense.
What other implications does DD have on our sociopolitical lives? It would be a feeble point of mine should DD only affect our attitudes towards "man-made" disasters. But as I will attempt to show, its influences are far reaching.
