On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 11:14, Scott Schultz wrote: > Yes, but the point that some people are making here (that I happen to agree > with) is that there is essentially no such a thing as "the unimproved > ecosystem". Humankind is a part of the ecosystem as surely as the rats, > bats, and pelicans. ALL creatures modify the environment in some fashion. > Men simply do it on a grander scale than others. The difference is qualitative, not quantitative. No other animal creates tools to create tools. And the difference between a spider's web or a beaver's dam on the one hand and the Hoover dam on the other is significant. > You can't exclude men from > "nature" and still talk about it in any realistic sense. > Of course we can, and we do, constantly. The very reason we act to prevent development in certain areas is in order experience aspects of nature. Individuals who climb mountains are doing the same thing. That both of these places have in certain ways been changed by the existence of man on the planet may be true, but isn't terribly important for the purposes of this discussion. > The idea that we're somehow "above" Nature (i.e. the ecosystem and > everything in it) is laughable. Heck, the idea that we're something special > is equally laughable. I'm not certain how above, below, or to the side fits into this, except that we ARE at the top of the food chain; a position I rather like. > Dinosaurs and their ilk were the dominant species on > this planet for millions of years. Meanwhile, the recorded history of human > civilization is only a few thousand years. A blink of an eye on the > planetary scale. > Certainly. But I'm not a planet. For that matter, I'm not a dinosaur. (My bird, however, is closely related to dinosaurs, and this may explain a great deal of his attitude toward me.) > > The only way to realistically discuss nature is to recognize that it > includes us and all of our works. Hmmm. That's rather interesting, given that including us and all our works effectively prevents us from discussing nature. > Drawing a line between "wild" and > "civilized" areas and claiming that one is "nature" and the other is not is > as fallacious as doing a survey of the pleistocene area and dividing > "pristine" forests and dinosaur-infested forests into "wild" and "civilized" > areas respectively. Well, you see, if the dinosaurs had consciously and deliberately changed their environment, then, to them, making such a distinction would not only be reasonable, but probably a necessary part of deciding how to consciously and deliberately change their environment. > Both areas are eco-systems. They're simply inhabited by > different creatures with their respective effects upon the environment. By this logic, there is no point in distinguishing between human writing and accidental marks on the beach caused by the waves. On some level, these two things ARE the same. But if we actually want to communicate with each other, it becomes necessary to make that distinction. Similarly, the more we wish to consciously and deliberately shape our environment, the more important it is keep in mind that which is *natural* in our world--ie, what the world has given Man as material to work with, and what we can *create* with our minds, our tools, and our will. > Is a > bush man tribe living their lives "natural"? If so, why? No, it is not natural. It is a culture, as distinct from natural. It is a low level of culture, as determined by such factors as life-expectancy and infant mortality rate, but it is certainly a human culture.