Re: "defense of wilderness" (wasRe: lexicon)

Quoting J Y S Czhang <czhang23@...>:
>
> In a message dated 2003:06:02 01:47:19 PM, Andreas writes:
>
> >What are we meaning by "wilderness" here?
>
>     I mean Nature :) And we being animals too, we are part of Nature
> tho'
> many still think we are somehow separate (& above) like those who have
> in the
> recent historical past.
Next question; what do we mean by "Nature"? :-)

I've never been able to understand the "humanity as part of nature"
vs "humanity vs nature" debate. I mean, _obviously_ we are part of the cosmos,
as are flowers, supernovae and computers. Equally obviously, there are parts
of the cosmos that are, well, antithetical to human existence, and have to be
controled/avoided/defeated if we want to survive (and most of us apparently
does want to). When certain westerners speak/spoke of "defeating"
or "conquering" Nature, they were obviously intending the word to mean some
subset of the totality of things that they thought could and should be
meaningfully defeated or conquered - certainly not that they wanted to achieve
a victory over the universe.

> > Chinese, Feng Shui-y, gardening seems to me like a perfect example of
> art
> as >"defense against wilderness"; nature itself reordered to boot out
> disorder
> and >maligncy.
>
>     No no... Chinese Feng Shui and Asian gardening (Chinese, Japanese,
> Thai,
> etc.) is about balance and integrity with Nature... and a little
> disorder and
> asymmetry is actually aesthetically heightened and highly appreciated!
Here you seem to use "Nature" to denote some subset of said totality which one
can be in balance and integrity with. The "nature" that the 'Westerner' wants
to conquer is not the same as that which the 'Easterner' (bad terms, but I
can't think up anything more fitting right now).

(Incidentally, I'm always annoyed by (western) environmentalists who
pontificate on how we should be living in 'harmony with nature' - I'm always
tempted to ask how one is supposed to live in harmony with chaos. At a
slightly deeper level, what bugs me about this kind of environmentalism is how
it views humans as aliens in the biological world - while I don't subscribe to
any "all species are equal" ideology, I can't see what make humans
less "natural", less legitimate inhabitants of the earth than are, say, frogs.)

> > I'll happily admit that I'm unfamiliar with Chinese
> thinking/philosophy,
> but the >outer form here strikes me as fitting perfectly in Sally's
> box.
>
>     Surface appearances are incredibly deceptive ;)
>     Ferinstanz you may think that a French Baroque-period _jardin_ is
> no
> different than a Zen stone-garden.
>     On closer examination, these two different gardens express highly
> differing worldviews: one of highly deliberated, artificial forms, rigid
> lines and
> precise geometric orderings ("Mankind Separate from Nature and imposing
> his will
> on Nature") . . . and the other a near total antithesis of the first
> ("humankind part of Nature and attempting to be part of Nature and
> natural processes").
Two highly divergent worldviews - grantedly. But both seem interpretable
as "defense against wilderness" in the sense I, initially at least, assumed
that Sally meant it; as defense the against dangerous, "hostile", elements of
the universe.

>     The purest expressions of this particular Asian mindset IMHO is
> Taoist.
> Buddhist thinking comes in a good strong second place (many Buddhists -
> East
> and West - are active in ecology, animal and human rights).
In my experience, few no other groups are as prone to view homo sapiens as
deeply different from other species as are environmentalists and animal-
rightists. Grantedly, those such I've known have not been Buddhists (nor
Taoists).

                                                             Andreas

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