Why is 'Natural' better?

[Nephtys]

I just came back from seeing at a friend's behest a documentary that was... very vocal. It's a yet unreleased independant film that ran for like two hours, and I can basically sum it up here.

Overpopulation is happening
Energy Crisis is happening
Western Lifestyle caused this.

Okay, so far, thats pretty much what we've always heard. And it's not too unreasonable. You can't have an American standard of living for 6 billion overnight after all, and our fuels are finite (even though it totally rails against nuclear energy with emotional appeals)

Then it gets very unreasonable. This is where my question is.

Agriculture is the cause of all of this.
We should all be hunters and gatherers.
12 artists and book-writers agree that life needs to go 'back to nature'.
Science is bad. It makes us 'utilize resources'.
The American Indians were the best culture ever.
Unless we get rid of science, industry and capitalism, humanity is doomed to go extinct.

...

Okay. Now this is hardly unique a view of one somewhat crazy documentary, as we've all known people like this for years. But uh. Why do so many people feel that 'Indians had it right'? What's with all the dreamcatchers, and people expressing how great their spirituality was?

When I commented that the 'natural' way of things was to die of malaria or a bad winter, they totally gloss over it and imagine a perfect, communist utopia. Why is 'herbal' good, and 'formulated' bad? Why is 'solar cell industry' good and 'disease-resistant crops' bad? I can get why someone wouldn't want to drive a car when avoidable, but how can anyone legitimately suggest that antibiotics and agriculture were a curse on humanity?

[Darth Wong]

It's a half-truth. Heavily processed food tends to be both unhealthy and unappetizing. A shut-in lifestyle is very unhealthy compared to an outdoor lifestyle. Steroids are very unhealthy compared to the natural testosterone in your body. There are plenty of facts like this in which "natural" is clearly better than "artificial". But of course, there are also plenty of situations which run the other way.

The problem is peoples' tendency to turn individual cases into a blanket rule. And once you've adopted that blanket rule and repeated it enough times, it is so obviously "true" that you simply ignore cases where it is clearly contradicted.

[tim31]

The Mayans, Inca, Aztecs, they were all advanced civilizations like the North American Indians. Their time came. Science and technology props up civilization; I just don't see a hunter-gatherer lifestyle as any sort of progress, unless you're an early hominid.

[B5B7]

Agriculture is the cause of all of this.

Basically true, in that agriculture lead to creation of cities --> civilizations, which indirectly after quite a while lead to modern scientific civilization.

We should all be hunters and gatherers.

Apart from being totally impractical, this would mean we would be basically living the same as any other species of animal - what a beautiful life - with very short life expectancy. Also, nature in 'response' would simply evolve another species to become sapient and take our place [who would possibly exterminate us].

12 artists and book-writers agree that life needs to go 'back to nature'.

Some kind of appeal to authority - a whole 12, they must be right!

Science is bad. It makes us 'utilize resources'.

Every species of life consumes some sort of resources. Also, there is a logical contradiction - if we are living as small populations of primitive hunter-gatherers then it doesn't matter if all the oil, etc have been consumed - indeed this would become desirable as a means of achieving this primitive ideal of the noble savage [similar to the reasoning of some extreme fundamentalists thta it is alright to destroy the environment to hasten the second coming].

The American Indians were the best culture ever.

He/they don't know much about the Indians. I'm no expert, but I believe they were warrior cultures who engaged in continuous war with each other.

Unless we get rid of science, industry and capitalism, humanity is doomed to go extinct.

This is exact opposite of true situation - without science and progress we are doomed to pass away.

Also, if one has ever seen the story of the natives of Easter Island, they were non-scientific primitives who became extinct because they used up all their resources - they cut down too many trees to create religious idols; no western lifestyle involved. Many other non-scientific cultures have become extinct due to overpopulation &/or lack of resources, such as the Mayans mentioned in previous post.

[Patrick Degan]

The whole argument is bullshit. Yes, modern society "utilises resources". It is also what has produced the tools, the food supply, the medicines, and the knowledge base to keep humanity from "going extinct". Fuck these people who yammer on about the alleged superiority of the hunter/gatherer lifestyle in which you're average life-expectancy was around 30 if predators or disease didn't get you first. They can spout such blather from the comfort of the society they say shouldn't exist. They wouldn't last ten minutes living with the Clan of the Cave Bears.

As for the slam about science being "against nature", everything having to do with humanity and its activities stems from nature by definition as there is no such thing as an "outside" from which anything "unnatural" could be imported in to our Reality. Or, as George Carlin pointed out to the Back to Nature crowd: "your worship-word is essentially meaningless".

[Knife]

12 artists and book-writers agree that life needs to go 'back to nature'.

Lol, I can't help but note that in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; most of a person's time would be devoted to hunting or gathering. There would be no time for art or writing in any meaningful form. It's only in an evil resource using civilization where food is plentiful and shelter is pretty much gaurenteed, that some of the population can go into more subjective fields instead of fighting everyday for their individual survival.

[Nephtys]

The whole argument is bullshit. Yes, modern society "utilises resources". It is also what has produced the tools, the food supply, the medicines, and the knowledge base to keep humanity from "going extinct". Fuck these people who yammer on about the alleged superiority of the hunter/gatherer lifestyle in which you're average life-expectancy was around 30 if predators or disease didn't get you first. They can spout such blather from the comfort of the society they say shouldn't exist. They wouldn't last ten minutes living with the Clan of the Cave Bears.

As for the slam about science being "against nature", everything having to do with humanity and its activities stems from nature by definition as there is no such thing as an "outside" from which anything "unnatural" could be imported in to our Reality. Or, as George Carlin pointed out to the Back to Nature crowd: "your worship-word is essentially meaningless".

Of course it's bullshit. But it seems to be something that those types cling to, that they assume 'using' something is inherently bad. Every time I try to mention that 'Nature' means we use any and all physical laws to get ahead for ourselves (you don't see Lions pulling punches so that antelope can get away after all), it's a null signal. These people have a view of 'nature' pretty much akin to a fundamentalist's view of religion. It's a cherrypicked rose-tinted view.

I don't understand why some people have such a strong backlash against something as basic as materialism. After all, who wouldn't want to have a better quality of living, compared to a worse one?

[Shinova]

Dump them in the wild with nothing but their own wits to survive, and only the most fanatically stupid will keep their beliefs.

[Darth Ruinus]

The American Indians were the best culture ever.

He/they don't know much about the Indians. I'm no expert, but I believe they were warrior cultures who engaged in continuous war with each other.

I was in an American Native Studies class, our teacher was Uziel "He Who Runs with the Desert Dog" Martinez, and while he did teach us some pretty noble ideas, the American Indian did fight each other, I have no idea where this whole Native Americans were so peacefull thing came from, since they had been fighting each other for territory since before the Europeans came, as that one general so blatantly pointed out to Sitting Bull.

Also, I might be in the minority in this, by why is it that lots of people dont see machines and science as an extension of "Nature"?

Either way, what they expect us to just happily hand over our possesions and cars and power, and trade it in for what? Flowers?

[Imperial Overlord]

Lol, I can't help but note that in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; most of a person's time would be devoted to hunting or gathering. There would be no time for art or writing in any meaningful form. It's only in an evil resource using civilization where food is plentiful and shelter is pretty much gaurenteed, that some of the population can go into more subjective fields instead of fighting everyday for their individual survival.

Actually hunter-gatherer cultures have a lot of leisure time and low levels of inequality. Of course they don't create permanent structures, science, or anything like modern medicine because they can't specialize like agrarian societies. They're also fucked in a bad year because, unlike agrarian societies, they can't store food surpluses. There's good reasons why our ancestors bailed out of that form of living, but of course the granola-crunching brigades only point out the high points and leave out the very real drawbacks. Like freezing to death or dying during a bad year or high infant mortality or so on and so forth.

[Flagg]

Well, in reality the concerns about the overuse of antibiotics in the livestock inductry are valid. That's a partial reason for the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria that can lead to some really nasty infections. Of course it doesn't help that they are overused in people, as well.

Unfortunately alot of these Durden-esque retardo-hippies can't figure out that because the overuse of something is bad, doesn't mean the use of it at all is bad. And It's great for them to get on their "no pesiticides, no genetically modified foods" soapbox, but then they aren't living in shitholes where people commonly starved to death before the introduction of those technologies. And in many cases, still do.

[PeZook]

When I was at a hospital some time back, I've had a very frustrating conversation with a woman who spent her time ranting about modern medicine.

It went something like this:

HER: It's best to use herbs, anyway. They can cure most problems!

ME: They can work with many illnesses, but for the bad ones you should still consult a doctor. After all, herbs can be overdosed too, they're a medicine like any other.

HER: Bah! They're a natural remedy, there's no way to overdose them!

The frustration with modern living and the failures of modern civilization is an ongoing problem with many people. I think the "natural is better" line of thinking is a complex phenomenon, a result of latent guilt, disillusionment with what civilization and science failed to accomplish, frustration at personal problems (financial, health and others) and the good-old-days mentality.

And I think it was present at any given point in the past. The ancestors always did everything better, after all.

[Lisa]

12 artists and book-writers agree that life needs to go 'back to nature'.

What credentials do these 12 layabout dog fuckers have to say we need to "go 'back to nature'"? So they draw pretty pictures and write prose, what makes their opinion valid? do they realize with out modern science they probably wouldn't be laying about writing stuff or painting stuff, they would be busy hunting and gathering during the light and and night they wouldn't have the benefits of electricity to write and paint their drivel?

[Nephtys]

12 artists and book-writers agree that life needs to go 'back to nature'.

What credentials do these 12 layabout dog fuckers have to say we need to "go 'back to nature'"? So they draw pretty pictures and write prose, what makes their opinion valid? do they realize with out modern science they probably wouldn't be laying about writing stuff or painting stuff, they would be busy hunting and gathering during the light and and night they wouldn't have the benefits of electricity to write and paint their drivel?

They're written books. and 'their minds are open'. You know, as in, they have selective facts, but are really emotional about unconventional subjects. Why else would it be 12 random 'artists' and 'authors', instead of ecologists? I think the only expert the entire thing had was a guy who was an doctorate in History.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

Ever read Niven's "Fallen Angels"

I find a lot of the Green's behavior to be eerily plausible

[Zixinus]

Agriculture is the cause of all of this.

What, that we have reliable food source and that a famine is a stuff of novels?

We should all be hunters and gatherers.

The lifestyle where you roam the wilds, searching despretaly for any food,and hoping that there is enough for everyone? Hunter-gatherer lifestlye may sound good for the healthy and young, but how much chance do children, the elderly or even the crippled have in such a world?

12 artists and book-writers agree that life needs to go 'back to nature'.

I'll play the devil's advocate here, and say that these guys, at least some of them, might have been quoted out of context. They might refer to naturism, the idea of enbracing nature and calling it beautiful (I'm specifically referring to the artistic and poetic approach, not necessarily the political approach).

Naturism, by itself, doesn't state anything againts technology, or at best, state that one should study of how nature does things. Of course, nature's engineering priorities and goals are a bit different then ours, something I often observed as ignored.

Science is bad. It makes us 'utilize resources'.

I thought it was the "desire to live".

The American Indians were the best culture ever.

Really? Which one? I recall that there were various ingenious American cultures, one of them sacrificing people with factory precision.

Unless we get rid of science, industry and capitalism, humanity is doomed to go extinct.

Well,we're doomed more if we do just that.

Why is 'herbal' good, and 'formulated' bad?

Because "herbal" was prepared just for you by an weird man/woman, and works on placebo effect. "Herbs" might include drugs, that rely less of placebo effect.

While formulated medicine was produced in factories for everyone and works on chemistry that one needs years of study to understand. They are regulated by doctors, and feel strange to eat/swallow/etc.

I know you know this, but look at this from an emotional point of view.

Why is 'solar cell industry' good and 'disease-resistant crops' bad?

Because people believe that solar cells are like trees, while "disease-resitant crops" is "playing god".

Or to go on more.

Solar cells are desprate attempt to find alternative energy sources for the masses. They utilise the sun, just like trees do (note that I didn't say "just like"), so the concept is not alien.

Disease resistant crops on the other hand, evokes subconscious fears of social breeding and is "less natural" because most people image that the plants that are grown in the fields are from nature and not a result of a millenniums of unconscious breeding. They also image that farming is like working with a garden, just on a bigger scale. Complete bull I know.

I have some family in agriculture, and disease-resistant crops are a God-send for them. You don't want to work all year to one day found out that your crops are useless due to disease.

And also, the answer to this 'overpopulation' is one of two things: either embrace science and go the whole way, since with sufficient technology, we can support far more than the current world population even at Western styles of living. The other option is to abandon agriculture and medicine, and start having a 'natural' death rate among children.

I prefer the former.

Me too.

"Natural" population growth means having 10-15 children and having about 2-3 live to be an adult.

I don't want to see the face of a mother that just lost her 5th child and knows that more will join him/her within her (the mother's) lifetime.

I don't understand why some people have such a strong backlash against something as basic as materialism. After all, who wouldn't want to have a better quality of living, compared to a worse one?

People are told from a young age by various things to not be "materialist", to embrace the "spiritual world". People fear that if they become materialists, they will be greedy and empty. They'd rather fall to one extreme then the other. From their viewpoint at least.

And also, people are forced to be materialist every day. They want out.

Or at least, that's how I image they think.

Also, I might be in the minority in this, by why is it that lots of people dont see machines and science as an extension of "Nature"?

Coffee makers and computers don't grow on trees. You have to buy them and work for them, and not just go there and pick it up.

Either way, what they expect us to just happily hand over our possesions and cars and power, and trade it in for what? Flowers?

To take off our clothes, hand over our every material possession (to them I presume, you know "just to keep the church/movement running") and go into the great wild naked, and come back after a day sick, cold, hungry, dirty and half-dead.

[PeZook]

So...are they willing to personally execute 99% of humanity so that the Earth can support a hunter-gatherer lifestyle?

Or are they too pussy for that? I guess they prefer to shut down all industry and agriculture and then watch hundreds of millions of people starve slowly on the streets, ravaged by disease...to see small children, bloated from starvation, loosing teeth, beg them for food? Are they willing to starve horribly themselves, and watch as hungry crowds eat dead bodies?

They're not willing to endure that? Then what, exactly, is their fucking point?

[Hillary]

As has been said, this is very much a black/white argument. How about picking the good from both science and nature?

I am planning, in the next few years, to buy a nice detached, out of the way property with a bit of land. I can grow my own veg, keep chickens, have an orchard, an open fire and wood-powered Rayburn to cook on, do very little paid work and be very happy. I will, if possible, install solar panels and have a windmill, collect rainwater and compost waste foods. Become as self-sustainable as I can.

I also want my car, computer, TV, playstation, intenet access, central heating, health insurance. I have managed, through working hard, getting a decent career and taking advantage of property price rises to be in a financial situtaion that will allow me to do this. I won't be rich, but I won't be scrabbling around for my next meal.

It is possible to appreciate nature without eshewing the benefits that science has given us. It's yet another issue where extremists are trying to force us to take sides (you're either with us or against us) and I'm not going to play.

[Broomstick]

Overpopulation is happening

Although population is falling in most industrialized nations. (The US combats this with immigration, otherwise we'd have a dropping population, too)

Agriculture is the cause of all of this.

Um. Too simple an explanation. We had agriculture for thousands of years before achieving global overpopulation.

We should all be hunters and gatherers.

Nevermind the 99% (or more) of the population that would have to be eliminated first in order to make this practical. Are going to volunteer for elimination? No? Hypocrits.

12 artists and book-writers agree that life needs to go 'back to nature'.

And what the fuck does that mean?

Science is bad. It makes us 'utilize resources'.

Everybody utilizes resources - food, water, air to start with. H-G's are no exception.

The American Indians were the best culture ever.

Wow. Now we get ignorant racism. There was NOT "an Indian Culture". There were thousands of tribes, with an equal number of cultures.

And yes, constant warfare/raids was a feature of all of them.

Hell, among the Iroquois when they held a game of lacrosse they expected injuries and fatalities - from a freakin' game. Many east coast tribes systematically tortured prisoners of war. And then there are the Central Americans and their human sacrifice. Oh, yes, lovely and "natural".

Unless we get rid of science, industry and capitalism, humanity is doomed to go extinct.

Evenutally, humanity will go extinct. It's unavoidable even if we get into space. No species last forever. Either we become extinct because we all die, or because humanity evolves into another species or a bunch of them.

[Dooey Jo]

Okay. Now this is hardly unique a view of one somewhat crazy documentary, as we've all known people like this for years. But uh. Why do so many people feel that 'Indians had it right'? What's with all the dreamcatchers, and people expressing how great their spirituality was?

When I commented that the 'natural' way of things was to die of malaria or a bad winter, they totally gloss over it and imagine a perfect, communist utopia. Why is 'herbal' good, and 'formulated' bad? Why is 'solar cell industry' good and 'disease-resistant crops' bad? I can get why someone wouldn't want to drive a car when avoidable, but how can anyone legitimately suggest that antibiotics and agriculture were a curse on humanity?

Sounds like typical New Age fluff. I wouldn't be surprised if they also mentioned how this "natural" lifestyle would let people use their "naturally evolved abilities", such as telekinesis and telepathy and all that, which the modern world have suppressed. As for why they think arbitrary things are bad and others are good, who knows. They have their "truths", just like how certain pro-environment groups like to say how all nuclear power is always bad. As long as you call it "natural" they'll probably like it. After all, they like their natural magnetic therapy, even though there's no way you could find anything like that in nature.

In reality, it's very hard to say what exactly is natural for humans, especially in terms of food, because agriculture has been the primary source of food for most cultures for millennia. If anything that mankind thought up is unnatural, then it must be unnatural to wear clothes and live in colder climates at all. Hell, even using fire would be unnatural by that definition.

Apart from being totally impractical, this would mean we would be basically living the same as any other species of animal - what a beautiful life - with very short life expectancy. Also, nature in 'response' would simply evolve another species to become sapient and take our place [who would possibly exterminate us].

Would it? There's not necessarily an empty sapient niche that will be filled. If humans where to disappear, some local creatures would take over in all the environments where humans currently dominate (which is about everywhere), but there's nothing to say at any one of them would become sapient and take over everywhere.

[Zixinus]

I've accidentally found this. It's dated, smells a little, but the main point may be interesting.

“Ecology as a social principle…condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates men’s return to ‘nature’, to the state of grunting subanimals digging the soil with their bare hands.”



“An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Bibical times – a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream – an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly – an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth – these do live with their ‘natural’ environment’, but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother whose child is dying of cholera: ‘Should one do everything one can? Of course not.’ Try to tell a Russian housewife who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather on order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations [in the former Soviet Union], that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.”



“In Western Europe, in preindustrial Middle Ages, man’s life expectancy was 30 years. In the nineteenth century, Europe’s population grew by 300 percent – which is the best proof of the fact that for the first time in human history, industry gave the great masses of people a chance to survive.”



“If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States (from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company):”



1900 – 47.3 years

1920 – 53 years

1940 – 60 years

1968 – 70.2 years…



“Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent ‘Thank you’ to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find [or alternatively, the Indian Point Energy Center].”



“Now observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists – amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for ‘harmony with nature’ – there is no discussion of man’s needs and the requirements for his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision – i.e., on the level of the sea urchin or polar bears….”



“In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire.”



“Without machines and technology, the task of mere survival is a terrible, mind-and-body-wrecking ordeal. In ‘nature’, the struggle for food, clothing and shelter consumes all of a man’s energy and spirit; it is a losing struggle – the winner is any flood, earthquake or swarm of locusts. (Consider the 500,000 bodies left in the wake of a single flood in Pakistan [or the current 130,000 plus lives lost in the tsunami of 2004]; they had been men who lived without technology.) To work only for bare necessities is a luxury that mankind cannot afford.”



“It has been reported in the press many times that the issue of pollution is to be the next big crusade of the New Left activists, after the war in Vietnam peters out. And just as peace was not their goal or motive in that crusade, so clean air is not their goal or motive in this one.”



“The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of capitalism in today’s mixed economy, and the establishment of a global dictatorship. This goal does not have to be inferred – many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to that end.”



“If after the failure of accusations as ‘Capitalism leads you to the poorhouse’ and ‘Capitalism leads you to war,’ the New Left is left with nothing better than: ‘Capitalism defiles the beauty of your countryside,’ one may justifiably conclude that, as an intellectual power, the collectivist movement is through.”



“City smog and filthy rivers are not good for men (though they are not the kind of danger that the ecological panic-mongers proclaim them to be.) This is a scientific, technological problem – not a political one – and it can be solved only by technology. Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death."

[Raw Shark]

HER: Bah! They're a natural remedy, there's no way to overdose them!

I run into this one a lot. "You can overdose on [expletive optional] Vitamin A!" works well if anything will.

[Twoyboy]

I run into this one a lot. "You can overdose on [expletive optional] Vitamin A!" works well if anything will.

Tell them you can overdose on WATER. Many people do while loading up for marathons and other sporting events.

[Big Phil]

I would be shocked if any of these 12 "experts" had ever spoken to a real-life American Indian... or if they had, even listened when the Indian told them he/she wanted a car, a home, and a stable family life instead of living in a teepee and hunting with spears and bows.

[Mobiboros]

I12 artists and book-writers agree that life needs to go 'back to nature'.

I'm an artist and I'd like to state that having to live using their definition of nature would /blow/. I don't want to have to run down and slaughter my own deer for food, or wander form place to place hoping to fund some malnourished tubers or fruit. I don't want to die of the flu, or because I stepped on a sharp stick and there was no medicine.

So, there we go, 1 artist who disagrees. Think we can get more than 12 artists and book writers here to disagree with them? Not that me knowing how to draw and paint should really carry much weight when it comes of major global socio-encomics anyway but they seem to think it does.