Above, a link to a recent post by Zhiwa Woodbury, titled "Nature as a Threat." It is interesting for several reason, one is how he sets the virus threat as "Eco-Anxiety," part of our general perception of Nature as an enemy, a threat, the concept that Edward Wilson called "Biophobia."
Never in history we saw this unbelievable frenzy of self-harming by disinfecting, washing, staying apart from other creatures, hiding one's face, taking harmful concoctions, thrusting phone apps controlling one's life and, wanting more of all that. In general, it means retreating inside a personal micro-fortress and seeing ourselves as besieged by armies of monstrous creatures stemming out of the evil goo that Nature is.
So much depends on your life experience and circumstances. People who have spent most of their lives in cities are uncomfortable and afraid in wild natural surroundings, and want to clear trees and plants and kill microbes, insects and animals. On the other hand people raised in more natural surroundings often learn to love wild nature, and don't feel threatened. But supporting such a huge human population means we are in constant conflict with wild nature and this is reflected in our attitude. Another factor in our war on nature is our instinctive desire for status, which leads to massive over-consumption. So many of our ancient tribal and survival instincts are now working against us.
ReplyDeleteThere is a world of life that is not human-made, known as nature. There is also a world that is human-made, known as the civilization. searchenginejournal
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