Man vs. Nature
For centuries, mankind has struggled to find its place in the natural world. The human race has persistently been searching for balance with nature, and has never really found it.
Human beings are the one species that has evolved to a point beyond any other creature on earth, in that we have the ability to fiddle with nature. Mankind has moved beyond the instinctual and naturalistic behaviors that control other animals on the Earth. Man has invented industry and technology and has used its intelligence to progress further than what animals can do. Consequently, we have changed the entire direction of the world in our wake.
We created society. We built cities. We created agriculture. We organized, we explored, we conquered. No other species covers the earth like we do. We changed everything to how we wanted it. First, we lived in the dwellings and took the paths that nature provided us. Then, when they proved insufficient, we created our own dwellings and paths. We built streets, buildings, canals, bridges. We grew, we progressed.
Humans really took over the earth. We did what we wanted. We killed what we had to. We demolished what was necessary to get out of the way. We cleared a path for our own way of life.
But while we've lived our own way of life, separated from the natural way of things, we've always had to contend with nature, because no matter how much we try to separate ourselves from it, human beings will always be a part of it. Humankind has always kind of struggled with that, in my opinion.
There has never been one consensus of the way to live on this earth and still be one with the earth. We were more concerned with living with people. We created government, infrastructure, religion, capitalism, while always having free thought. And so we have things like litter, pollution, holes in ozone layers, smog, and recycling. There have always been people who have had no concern for what kind of problems, if any, we as a human race created and passed on to our creator, Mother Earth. And there have long been people who were very in touch with nature, and spoke out against the evils of treating Mother Earth like a doormat.
Gradually, these people's voices were heard. PSA's were made to demonstrate to the public audience the effects of litter and pollution and the disregard for the "correct" treatment of the earth. The naysayers have always said "nay" and at the same time, more and more people jumped on the "treehugger" bandwagon and promoted their agenda of education, conservation, and prevention of natural disaster.
In the twenty-first century, the battle between man and nature has heightened to extremes, and it seems, or at least we're being told now, that the situation is dire, and that direct action has to be taken immediately in order to prevent a catastrophic future. A certain Presidential candidate released a film detailing the drastic measures human beings' war against nature has taken. It won an Oscar.
The battle of man vs. nature can be seen anywhere. One of my favorite examples is the simple image of a weed or a small plant popping up in the cracks in a sidewalk. Even though man has put a sidewalk over the ground, nature has no intention of altering its course, and when it seizes an opportunity to bust through, it does.
A person can take whatever side he or she wants in the battle of man vs. nature. In the case of the weed in the sidewalk, a person may take the side that the weed is exactly that, a weed, and does not belong. This person might take the next measure to kill the weed and remove it from said sidewalk. On the other hand, as in my case, a person might root for the weed, exclaiming, "Go, little plant, go! Don't let a little bit of cement stop you!"
In going outside yesterday, I stumbled upon a rather unusual sight. It was an image, in my mind that perfectly captured the endless struggle that is man vs. nature. There was a city fire hydrant that had apparently been leaking and spraying water out into the street for several hours or days. It had obviously been leaking for quite a while, because, in the bitter cold that recently descended upon the city of New York, the leaky hydrant's emission has frozen and created an icicle almost an entire city block long.
Pictured here, the ice mass forms around the fire hydrant immediately, then stretches along the sidewalk downhill to the corner and across the street to the next block. Upon discovering massive ice cube, I found it very amusing. What was more amusing, though, was that after checking in on it later, I noticed the city sanitation department had driven by and thrown a bunch of sand on top of it.
Rather than send the fire deparment out to attend to the hydrant, and fix the leak, the city of New York apparently decided that all that was necessary was just to throw some sand on it.
No matter which side of the man vs. nature argument you take, there is one common thread that should tie everything together. That thread is efficiency.
When we decide as a society that we want to become efficient, all people will benefit from it in the long run. Nobody loses when we are all efficient (except those who benefit from making the rest of us inefficient, i.e. gas companies, car companies that power their cars by fossil fuels, and banks that loan out Monopoly money). When we run our cities, businesses, and homes in ways to educate consumers, to waste less, conserve more, and reuse what we can, we will all end up saving ourselves time, money, energy, and space.
It starts with the individual and the individual mindset. There has to be a conscious decision made. "What day am I going to switch to compact flourescent light bulbs? Tomorrow? Next week?"
"What day am I going to stop wasting energy? Tomorrow? Next week?"
"What day am I going to stop wasting my life? Tomorrow? Next week?"
Why not stop wasting right now? And start being efficient as soon as you finish reading this sentence?
What do you have to lose?
Exactly.
Eventually, we will streamline the way society functions. We'll make less mistakes, and we'll leave less mess behind to clean up. We will develop ways to find balance with nature. We'll use natural sources of energy, like the sun, the wind, and moving water.
The battle of man vs. nature is a long, hard-fought one. But if we keep going the way we're going, we're going to find that we are going to lose. It will only be when we team up and find a balance with nature that we will be able take on the challenges of everyday life, and we will better prepare ourselves for the next great challenge: an alien invasion.
We all know it's going to happen eventually. We might as well get all the mileage we can out of our great planet before some locust society comes swooping in and takes it out from under us.
Human beings are the one species that has evolved to a point beyond any other creature on earth, in that we have the ability to fiddle with nature. Mankind has moved beyond the instinctual and naturalistic behaviors that control other animals on the Earth. Man has invented industry and technology and has used its intelligence to progress further than what animals can do. Consequently, we have changed the entire direction of the world in our wake.
We created society. We built cities. We created agriculture. We organized, we explored, we conquered. No other species covers the earth like we do. We changed everything to how we wanted it. First, we lived in the dwellings and took the paths that nature provided us. Then, when they proved insufficient, we created our own dwellings and paths. We built streets, buildings, canals, bridges. We grew, we progressed.
Humans really took over the earth. We did what we wanted. We killed what we had to. We demolished what was necessary to get out of the way. We cleared a path for our own way of life.
But while we've lived our own way of life, separated from the natural way of things, we've always had to contend with nature, because no matter how much we try to separate ourselves from it, human beings will always be a part of it. Humankind has always kind of struggled with that, in my opinion.
There has never been one consensus of the way to live on this earth and still be one with the earth. We were more concerned with living with people. We created government, infrastructure, religion, capitalism, while always having free thought. And so we have things like litter, pollution, holes in ozone layers, smog, and recycling. There have always been people who have had no concern for what kind of problems, if any, we as a human race created and passed on to our creator, Mother Earth. And there have long been people who were very in touch with nature, and spoke out against the evils of treating Mother Earth like a doormat.
Gradually, these people's voices were heard. PSA's were made to demonstrate to the public audience the effects of litter and pollution and the disregard for the "correct" treatment of the earth. The naysayers have always said "nay" and at the same time, more and more people jumped on the "treehugger" bandwagon and promoted their agenda of education, conservation, and prevention of natural disaster.
In the twenty-first century, the battle between man and nature has heightened to extremes, and it seems, or at least we're being told now, that the situation is dire, and that direct action has to be taken immediately in order to prevent a catastrophic future. A certain Presidential candidate released a film detailing the drastic measures human beings' war against nature has taken. It won an Oscar.
The battle of man vs. nature can be seen anywhere. One of my favorite examples is the simple image of a weed or a small plant popping up in the cracks in a sidewalk. Even though man has put a sidewalk over the ground, nature has no intention of altering its course, and when it seizes an opportunity to bust through, it does.
A person can take whatever side he or she wants in the battle of man vs. nature. In the case of the weed in the sidewalk, a person may take the side that the weed is exactly that, a weed, and does not belong. This person might take the next measure to kill the weed and remove it from said sidewalk. On the other hand, as in my case, a person might root for the weed, exclaiming, "Go, little plant, go! Don't let a little bit of cement stop you!"
In going outside yesterday, I stumbled upon a rather unusual sight. It was an image, in my mind that perfectly captured the endless struggle that is man vs. nature. There was a city fire hydrant that had apparently been leaking and spraying water out into the street for several hours or days. It had obviously been leaking for quite a while, because, in the bitter cold that recently descended upon the city of New York, the leaky hydrant's emission has frozen and created an icicle almost an entire city block long.
Pictured here, the ice mass forms around the fire hydrant immediately, then stretches along the sidewalk downhill to the corner and across the street to the next block. Upon discovering massive ice cube, I found it very amusing. What was more amusing, though, was that after checking in on it later, I noticed the city sanitation department had driven by and thrown a bunch of sand on top of it.
Rather than send the fire deparment out to attend to the hydrant, and fix the leak, the city of New York apparently decided that all that was necessary was just to throw some sand on it.
No matter which side of the man vs. nature argument you take, there is one common thread that should tie everything together. That thread is efficiency.
When we decide as a society that we want to become efficient, all people will benefit from it in the long run. Nobody loses when we are all efficient (except those who benefit from making the rest of us inefficient, i.e. gas companies, car companies that power their cars by fossil fuels, and banks that loan out Monopoly money). When we run our cities, businesses, and homes in ways to educate consumers, to waste less, conserve more, and reuse what we can, we will all end up saving ourselves time, money, energy, and space.
It starts with the individual and the individual mindset. There has to be a conscious decision made. "What day am I going to switch to compact flourescent light bulbs? Tomorrow? Next week?"
"What day am I going to stop wasting energy? Tomorrow? Next week?"
"What day am I going to stop wasting my life? Tomorrow? Next week?"
Why not stop wasting right now? And start being efficient as soon as you finish reading this sentence?
What do you have to lose?
Exactly.
Eventually, we will streamline the way society functions. We'll make less mistakes, and we'll leave less mess behind to clean up. We will develop ways to find balance with nature. We'll use natural sources of energy, like the sun, the wind, and moving water.
The battle of man vs. nature is a long, hard-fought one. But if we keep going the way we're going, we're going to find that we are going to lose. It will only be when we team up and find a balance with nature that we will be able take on the challenges of everyday life, and we will better prepare ourselves for the next great challenge: an alien invasion.
We all know it's going to happen eventually. We might as well get all the mileage we can out of our great planet before some locust society comes swooping in and takes it out from under us.
posted by Leland J. Fischer at 10:40 PM
<< Home