BEING HUMAN

HUMAN AND NATURE

I have found that when we talk about human beings, it is inevitable to talk about nature and the relationship between nature and people. Because the environment is the most important factor in human existence. So I want to explore the relationship between humans and nature.

When we talk of nature, there is an important thing is what are we talking about we discuss nature? Nature is a concept which means that it has been developed over the years over the centuries, over the millennia. It has gotten a specific content there are many ideas which are attached to nature. Nowadays, a quite dominant narrative is that nature is somewhat a static equilibrium. Static equilibrium meaning as if nature is not so much supposed to change a second feature would be that we human being are considered to be outside of nature, so not taking part in it. We are changing it but that’s because of our actions and if our actions would stop then nature would again turn into some kind of static equilibrium and third thing that I notice here is the idea that although we are outside of nature and we have kind of changed it course there’s also this idea that we could change it back, we can fix the problems that we’ve caused ourselves. So these three fault narratives are at the end quite mechanistic in the idea that we’ve changed the machine as the outsider the machine of nature. And we find ways to fix it, again.

And at the same time, I want to introduce a term which is crucial here, it is dualist. Dualist means that we consider ourselves to be outsiders. Dualism is a way of thinking, in which there are always opposites. Culture is different from nature, man is different from an animal, technology is different from organic movement or whatever. So if are talking about these three features. One was that nature was a static equilibrium, if we think about how nature works, of course, there’s nothing static about it, nature is violent, nature is always in change, nature can be extremely unexpected. Also for biologists. So the first feature actually makes no sense which means also, there’s nothing to return back to, there’s nothing to restore, there’s nothing to protect maybe even. About the second feature, that as we consider ourselves to be outside of nature, it is not the case too. We are not outside of nature. We are in all possible ways we are a part of it. And the third aspect as if we can restore it, yes, we changed its course and of course, we can change it again. Whereas there’s no way that there will be some kind of restoration. So what we should focus on is not finding your quick solutions but rethinking nature from a very different perspective which is not mechanistic and which is not dualist. It has been for a long time already. We can see a monist’s idea at work in the works of Nietzsche, for instance. In the 70s, there was Gregory Bateson, he wrote a book “Steps to an Ecology of Mind”. He gives us all kind of examples of how our mind is part of everything that happens around us.

There is another book I have to mention here, which is a short text by French philosopher and psychoanalyst. His name is Félix Guattari.

2019-11-16 下午10.29.43.png He was writing a lot about ecology near the end of his life. The best one of the most influential one is a text which called “Les trois écologies” (The Three Ecologies)（1989）Which discuss ecology but in such a way that it actually touches upon many different problems that we are confronted with today or many of the crises that we see today.

By the tree ecologies, he wants to think about ecologies as the environment issue, a social issue and a metal issue.

Félix Guattari takes up the ideas of Gregory Bateson, he calls this ecosophy. Is a very important term, it’s a mix of ecology and philosophy. So it is thinking not so much about the ecology it is thinking ecologically which means to think according to everything that’ going on. But it has to do with a kind of search for a way of thinking which is not so humanist or anthropocentric which is not putting ourselves outside of nature. So this has a big consequence also for the concept of nature itself. It means that nature does not so much end with the physical environment. Nature is a monist term which means that it includes pretty much everything. Thinking ecosophically means that we have to take into account the environmental the social and the mental in every possible way. It means that where we are somehow detached from the earth that’s all around us is actually the same problem as the social detachments that we found in our society today so the fact that we do not know our neighbours anymore. We have no communities anymore. Is actually a similar consequence of modernism as the environmental detachment. And following Guattari, this also takes place in terms of mental detachment. He takes this ecosophy very seriously. He shows that, to put it very negatively that we’ve only understood a very little part of the problem that is dominating our society today.

Guattari in the end, is not so much interested in finding solutions, but he is a Marxist, he is coming from a generation of militants and this means that he is very keen on finding ways to make this a discussion that’s not so much limited to philosophy but should be a social discussion, it should be part of the society. We should think ecosophically with our scientists and with our neighbours in order to see how we can live this world differently.

Part 2

Part 2

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