Nature & Man (04/11/2008)

Some thoughts from 2008.

Crowds gather in central London on 21st Jan 2006 to watch the £100,000 rescue of a stranded bottle-nose whale.

Japanese whaling ship kills sears whale (worth between £11000 to £70000)

We humans are certainly contradictory creatures of many sides. Consider the quite opposite attitudes to whales in these two photos. I visited the site of the top photo. A crowd of thousands waited patiently partly to get a sight of the extraordinary creature, but also to encourage the team in their rescue. It was actually very touching and when they winched the whale aboard the boat I remember a child announcing in some confusion 'Mummy I'm crying', so there was nothing pretentious here, quite natural expressions. Unfortunately despite all the efforts to save the London whale it later died.

The Japanese on the other hand view the animals as a source of amongst other things food. It would certainly be hypocritical to criticise them since we in the UK slaughter thousands of farm animals a day for the same reason. Such a judgmental comparison is not my purpose.

I wish to highlight these two quite legitimate sides of human nature which we all share. The first I will call Man-the-human and the second I will call Man-the-animal, which I will now tackle first. (This distinction was one of the two problems, which became very apparent to me during my John o'Groats walk.)

Man the Animal

All animals have basic biological needs. The needs for water, food, shelter and reproduction are common to all animals even protozoa and for more complex species social inclusion and status becomes a requirement. Humans are no exception and it is the search for these basic resources which determines much of our behaviour. The often quoted destruction of the planet, the hunting of animals, the love we show our family and the hate we often show to strangers are all simply expressions of our animalistic nature. It is an irony that it is humans behaving as animals that are the threat to fellow animals. Many people argue that because animals are incapable of being human that is the justification for behaving like animals to them. Whether we accept this argument or not, we do have a choice.

Man the Human

The saving of the London whale is hard to explain in animal terms. There is no apparent reward for the people involved. If it wasn't saved it is hard to see how this would make any difference. Surely £100,000 could be better spent elsewhere? I would think most hard-line pragmatic Darwinists would agree that the operation was a misdirected expression of love (or altruism), which should have been directed to people closer to our own genetic line. Others might argue that humans have no right to interfere with nature, and we should just let things run their course.

For anyone who identified with the suffering of the animal it is much easier to explain. It is hard to resist helping anything that is in difficulties. Such empathy and unconditional appreciation extends to all forms of life and certainly further than any biological theory. It is the same breadth of vision and wonder at the world which inspired humans to explore the world's plants and animals as widely as we have, and come up with such evolutionarily pointless theories as Evolution. This sensitive appreciation of the world, something maybe the whale will never have understood (see essay on Human and Animal), is what makes us Human.

The Human-Animal Balance

In the event a person is forced into a survival situation the basic issues of water, food and shelter will turn the natural world around them into the means to the end of survival. Animals will be hunted for food, trees cut down for timber and firewood, plants foraged and rivers dammed for irrigation. This is how our ancient ancestors behaved in the UK cutting down 80% of the forests once covering the island. This is how we often continue to behave now with mining and factory production an added activity.

When not in an extreme survival situation another attitude can be liberated, the attitude of experiencing and enjoying. Forests no longer become resource for survival but becomes a pleasure to visit. Animals no longer become sources of food, but become living things in their own right. Landscapes are no longer the places upon which our food is grown and our houses made, instead they become places to spend our time.

There is an essential balance between the two. Obviously mankind must make a living from the land, and while we rarely consider it, that living is intrically bound to the land and its wildlife. The celebrated chalk grasslands of England, that hosts one of the country's richest wildlife, were created entirely by ancient man cutting down forests. But that biological living is only half the story, because more importantly we are humans, and as humans the world and its wildlife matter for its own sake.

The irony then is that the closer to nature we become the more like an animal, and thereby the more of a threat to nature we become. While the more we distance ourselves from nature and its drives within us, the freer we are to experience and enjoy it as it is, and through this awareness we become much more harmonious with other living things. Perhaps the most innovative part of this view is the realisation that the world of technological advances, high brow politics and economics, which to many sets us aside from the natural world, is actually our most animal side. Indeed despite all the advances the human world seems more than ever dominated by a belief we are in a 'survival' situation. The idea that we still need to struggle for our pay and survival as though it was the stone age is absurd (see essay on Work). By contrast it is the world of arts, literature, religion and outdoor pursuits aimed at exploring and appreciating the environment for its own sake that are our most human side.

The risk is always to go to extremes, either to the extreme of conservation and become too human at the expense of our animal side and needs; or the extreme of industry and become too animal at the expense of our human side. On my walks and in my lifestyle I have explored this balance for many years. I can say that my animal side requires much less than I was led to believe it did (especially by advertisers), and the human side has a potential to be much greater than I once cynically thought it could be.

updated: 04/11/2008, 01:43:58