Human relationship and responsibility to the natural world - Essay Example

The natural world is the world where aspects of life interact in ways that create eco-systems in order to create spaces of survival. As human beings, the natural world should be a responsibility in which nature is preserved and protected. The way in which human beings have behaved, however, is to create the concept of the world as a resource rather than a responsibility to be protected. As stewards of the Earth, human beings should have tended to nature rather than stripping and using up resources many of which cannot easily be replenished. Just like locusts come and strip plant life down to that which is no longer usable, human beings have created a planet that is suffering because of the uses to which it has endured. As stewards of the planet, it is the job of human beings to begin to nourish and enrich the natural world so that much of it can be put back to its natural state. Rather than destroying species and allowing them to disappear for the Earth, the natural environment should be cared for so that it can once again evolve into a beautiful and rich space in which nature thrives and flourishes. Resources for this paper will be works from A Sand County almanac: With essays on conservation by Aldo Leopold, as well as a variety of sources which describes the current human condition. The following paper will discuss the concept of stewardship in order to answer the question about the relationship of human kind as it has a responsibility to the natural world. Name Professor’s Name Class Date Stewards of the Earth The human element is something that seems to have placed itself outside of the natural world. Despite being part of the world itself, nature and humankind are not part of the same kinds of systems that promote the cycles of life. Although there are still some tribes in the world that participate in natural lifestyles, people in modern cultures have divorced themselves from nature though food that is packaged and paths that are paved. The natural world is plucked from the cracks in the street as much as it is annihilated by the bulldozers in the rainforests. The number of species that mankind is responsible for destroying each year is staggering. The following paper looks at the ways in which mankind has lost its place in the natural order and the responsibility that it has in relationship to stewardship over the environments that have been so woefully destroyed. In order to discuss this topic, the first question that must be examined is how the human cultures have continued to evolve away from the natural environment and use it as a place to strip natural resources. Modernity means taking what is natural and using it as a resource rather than living within it as a part of its ecosystem. When human beings involve themselves with nature, it comes in the form of ‘going’ to it. The terms ‘going fishing’ or ‘going skiing’ suggest that a human is going to a place where they can begin to enjoy the abundance of nature. Modern human beings are not involved in nature in the way that a fox or a rabbit would be involved. They are not hunted, nor do they hunt for their food. They live in packaged environments that deny nature as they sit in their air-conditioned offices and shop in the chilled regions of the frozen food aisle. Industrialization was the capstone of the divorce from nature as needs became packaged so that inconvenience and direct work was supplanted for making money to pay for the industrialized nature of survival. Buying an apple takes more than plucking it from a tree just as making a bed is no longer about finding the right leaves and branches in which to lay. It could be said humans have grown lazy because they are no longer required to run from tigers or chase down buffalo. It is the convenience of modern life that has taken us from lean, strong fighters to artificial leanness when it is chosen to be manufactured or soft bellied beings that wait for the doorbell to ring in order to eat pizza. Modern humanity is about packaging what nature would otherwise provide and becoming a part of capitalistic culture that depends solely on money in order to create survival. The divide between human kind and nature comes for the use and abuse that human beings have ladled onto the natural world purely for the advantages of profit. The excuses for being divorced from the natural world are based on the expression of capitalistic culture in which manufacturing and producing is placed above all other human activities. An example can be found of this debate in the mid-20th century Hungary where industrialization was not a substitute for the need of the people to farm. The debate was whether or not in a socialist nation the production of goods was a substitute for the activities that created food for a family (Lampland 214). The use of data as a resource for understanding the effect on industrialization shows that the world has been changed for the purposes of primarily capitalistic cultures. This data shows that the “gap between the industrialized and developing world is slowly narrowing” (Sarewitz 132). Industrialization was not always the method of real survival and people have changed their nature in order to conform to a series of states in which survival is based on labor for wages over labor for goods. Instead of the freedom to go out and find food, human beings are fed through an exchange program where food is produced and packaged in order to be sold to those who can afford it. Affording to live in nature is not an issue, but living in the modern human world means having the fees that are the costs for survival. There are still people who live in a way that is based upon natural interactions with the world. They often are tribal and have not had the influences of modern life interrupt the way in which they live. The sad part of this existence is that when modernity reaches these regions of the world, the balance of the tribe to the natural world becomes out of sync, leaving those people who once lived in harmony and comfort marginalized and impoverished in a new world that no longer sustains them through directly confronting their needs. Where they once fished, the shores have docks and boats in their way. Where they once hunted are now signs and fences to keep them out. The idea of creating survival through one’s own means is not a part of modern life. This problem of displacing people in order to promote modernity was seen throughout the period of European colonialism where people native to a land were taken from their means and forced to serve as labor in fields and in houses. The Caribbean Islands have histories that can serve as models for this problem. Not only was nature being stripped, but natural life for human beings was being stripped. The divorce of human beings from the natural world became not only a choice, but for many cultures, a mandate which left them disengaged from their former life, but not able to fully prosper in their new life. The identity of those who had been tied to the natural world was suddenly overwritten with the nature of modern life as it needed not only the land, but the labor of human beings who once felt the pleasure of abundance through using the natural resources close to them. Even as equality created a more stable place for those who had been disenfranchised from their lands and means of survival, the separation of people from nature began the slow decline of human participation in the natural world. Human beings need to become a part of the natural world in order to participate in the true abundance of the Earth. Woodbridge writes “The world community must declare war on ecological decline and mobilize global resources to fight this war” (221). Woodbridge furthers his argument by discussing how people need to be the stewards of the Earth, not her enemy and through being good stewards they can help to recreate the power and influence of the natural world while benefiting from resources and riches that are no longer in conflict. Woodbridge defines this war as one in which the battle is with mankind with the protection of the ecological balance at stake. It is imperative to be the stewards and advocates for preserving what is left and renewing that which has been destroyed (221). Stewardship can be defined as an active role in which protection of the environment means engaging with nature in meaningful ways to improve its existence and to guard against intrusion (Carr 38). This means that the nature of the ecology is actively engaged rather than lobbying as an advocate. To be an advocate is to act for the benefit of nature, but not necessarily engage it directly. An advocate is someone who tries to lobby for law changes or to try to get donations. While these activities have some elements of stewardship, the real need is those who would act directly to protect, preserve, or encourage the growth of a natural environment. Being stewards of the earth means active participation with nature rather than roles that still maintain the distance between the human world and the natural world. What people have stopped doing is responding to nature other than through destructive means. People will kill the bee rather than encourage it to make honey. They will strike down the snake rather than allow it to eat the mice, which are then also struck down. Rather than allowing nature to thrive under its own conditions, human beings have been poor stewards in trying to control the events that suggest a natural connection to the world. However, the concept of stewardship is complicated from the divorce of mankind to nature. Leopold writes in a spectacular response to his experience with conservationism that “all conservation is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish” (Leopold 163). Experiencing the world through engaging it leaves a footprint, but it is that footprint that most endangers the world. The problem with modernity is that it is here. Human beings have embraced their new lover, modernity, after the long, dark divorce with nature. The highways cannot become unpaved and the buildings cannot be razed and leveled, bringing down all the steel and harsh conflict that is in tension with the natural world. Stream beds lined with concrete for waste control cannot be broken back into stream beds and the great dams that hold back the waters would create destruction if they were released to be wild and ecologically correct in their destruction and resurrection. Lifting the modern world into the air would put human kind in conflict with the wind and putting them under the sea would have its own effects. There is no solution to the presence of modernity and no way in which to fix the problem that this has caused for the ecologies of the world. What is left is real work in order to once again be involved with nature and without leaving the human mistress of modernity. So the question is what is to be done? Nature may have been left, but it still exists and must be considered in the strategies of moving forward into the future. The natural disasters of the world and climate change have come together to show human kind that it cannot abandon nature and have it slip quietly into the background. The Dust Bowl in the 1930s showed the United States that ignoring the natural advantages of nature could be a devastating choice. When the thick prairie grasses were dozed under and the soil exposed for agricultural needs in the prairielands of middle and western regions, the result were large, raging dust storms that blew through the lands (Vander Hook 8). Hurricane Katriana is another example of how nature will assert its power over mankind as it blew through New Orleans, releasing the levies so that the water filled the street. Nature is jealous and in order to quell that jealousy, all people of the Earth should participate as good stewards. Being stewards of the Earth simply means working with nature in order to encourage it to flourish rather than trying to control it. As stewards of the Earth, mankind has a responsibility to the natural world to do nothing when it is working and to encourage growth where growth has been stifled. To accomplish this will take both small acts in local areas and large massive global acts in order to change trends in climate change that are imposing new horrors on the Earth on a daily basis. Responsibility means making sure that the Earth is cared for in a way that allows it to heal and become wealthy once more. The wealth of the world is in its abundance, but in stripping much of the natural resources, the world is very quickly becoming old and wasted. The responsibility of human beings to the Earth comes with having been the ones to have abused her. Through responsible stewardship, human beings can redeem themselves and become a part of the world once more rather than apart from what was created as a habitat and living space for all Earth’s creatures. Works Cited Carr, Anna. Grass Roots and Green Tape: Principles and Practices of Environmental Stewardship. Annandale, NSW, Australia: Federation Press, 2002. Print. Lampland, M. The object of labor: Commodification in Socialist Hungary. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995. Print. Leopold, Aldo., A Sand County almanac: With essays on conservation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print. Sarewitz, Daniel R. Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. Print. Vander Hook, S. The Dust Bowl. Edina, MN: ABDO Pub. Co, 2009. Print. Woodbridge, Roy M. The Next World War: Tribes, Cities, Nations, and Ecological Decline. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2005. Print. Read More