MAYBE my readings on the nature of Nature are poor and I am ill-prepared to do something to address the problems besieging the environment in which I live. I will not rush my decisions.
I really wonder how this generation of educated citizens view nature and where has these views led us in the quest for development and quality living?
Thus far, haven’t we encountered two commonly held views of nature in relation to the subject of community development and the quest for progress? These views are concerned with economics and ecology. They pursue their causes in opposite directions.
On days when my sympathies are with practical courtiers, politicians, and economists, I agree to some degree with their economistic conception of the natural environment. To them, nature is a repository of resources to be exploited to sustain the existing mechanistic civilization and its ecological processes and services.
This has been played over millennia. Today, personally, it makes me insecure somehow. The economistic view of nature does not guarantee the security of survival over the long term. It’s like a ladder that lifts you up high in the precipice of development and leaves you dangling up there when nature and its life support systems have all been used up and became extinct in the quest of attaining its goals.
Today, the economistic perspective tries to address environmental sustainability issues by such difficult technical jargons and concepts like “economizing ecology” and “ecologizing the economy.” They simply suggest a need to make the pursuit of economic development not destructive of the environment or vice versa make ecological pursuits economically profitable. Both concepts have their distinctions. One is more concerned with the balanced economic development and the other is about ecology and its economic benefits. Both may have to be thoroughly understood if they have to be properly advocated with the public.
The other perspective - deep ecology - view nature in an idealized manner. It appeals to our longing for Eden. It makes us nature’s keepers in its entirety as possible and appeals to our conscience as having a common fate with endangered living species. Deep ecology looks at our environment “as a harmonious system in eternal balance unless disturbed by humans.”
Both perspectives fail each other and would clash endlessly. They would in effect try to deny humanity what it needs economically and ecologically to survive.
The deep ecology perspective becomes silly when it fails to appreciate the material basis of nature and society’s needs for things. But to make “things” all too important in our value systems destroys the very key or path to achieving ecological sustainability.
I should have developed this article as a thesis on the subject of fulfillment in the quest for development and materialism in nature. But it would be too big a subject and one that may require a better alternative to scholastic perspectives. I only rely on my occasional readings and perceptions generated from encounters with experts along the way.
Generally, in the understanding of natural history and the materialistic understanding of human interaction with the environment, we abused the concept of stewardship of nature to advance greed and the evils of materialism. To the extent possible, we marginalize other creatures, environments, and peoples, to advance our goals and objectives – to get what we want. That is what is wrong, what is missing in the search for balance in development and materialism.
Human beings will always seek fulfillment in the ladder of progress and development, moving from one goal to the next, and proving themselves worthy of their achievements. But as in any quest, things become bad to worse when all that mattered in our pursuits are what we can take with us, not what is noble in having lived life.