Nature: An American Cultural View
When I think of “nature” or the words “saving the environment” I always imagine some picturesque setting of giraffes walking across a plain with a sunset behind them set to music. This is caused by seeing this image over and over, in National Geographic, movies set in Africa, the show Planet Earth, etc. The reason I think this occurs is because most Americans are unsure what to feel about nature in real life. The theme of “natural beauty” means a complete ecosystem of animals, meaning that for our cultural purposes animals construct our sense of nature. America is not famous for the animals in it except in the national parks, and a lot of people do not see those, especially since some of the most famous places are cities like New York or Los Angeles where the idealistic nature is completely absent from. The effect this creates is that people think of nature as something that is far away and while pretty, too savage for civilization. The animals in our culture are then thought of as not really a part of nature but not equal to humanity either. The question of how we should feel about nature is answered by investigating the laws that govern it, how we value the life of animals in America and how they are equal to us, and the ways our culture first misleads us into being confused about these.

Do people think of the laws of nature as good or evil? Certainly we accept the idea that those laws exist in the world, but since we do not apply them to ourselves could they be considered a necessity? In nature there is death and the struggle to survive, something that is not accepted as in human culture except in the most extreme cases, so the morality of this system seems very ambiguous compared to human values. Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay called “Nonmoral Nature” in which he discusses how nature does not follow a strict code of morality. In one section he writes, “Our failure to discern the universal good we once expected does not record our lack of insight or ingenuity but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms.”. In other words, nature is not good or evil but simply an effective system for the survival of each creature, which shows that maybe our rejection comes from a lack of understanding. However, this view does not mention that a species keeping itself alive by competing is a kind of morality in the long term, and the death involved is no different than how we kill creatures for our nourishment. Even if our way is clean and no as bloody as a lion attacking its prey or a parasite attacking a host, the end result is the same, profit for the winner. So even if we look at the animals in nature as having a blunt system of survival of the fittest, we cannot deny that our own survival still requires this morality of humanity being part of the system, even if we are at the top.

Even if animals have a system similar to ours, the differences between us and them are obvious, more specifically in intelligence and ability to communicate. Some animal rights groups fight this problem by revealing how similar animals are to us in hopes of showing the connections man still has to the rest of nature, most of the time not for a large scale changing of culture, but teaching an important lesson nonetheless. In The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan, he quotes Peter Singer, the author of the book Animal Liberation, which argues for equal rights for animals among humans. Singer argues by writing “If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans for the same purpose?”. This brings up the theme of how humans value their own even if animals prove to be as smart as those who are mentally retarded. With this logic, even if we cannot communicate with animals they still deserve respect beyond admiring them on television, in a zoo, or in a park. Advertising how interesting the rest of the animals that are left are is not the same thing as connecting to them, using them for simply entertainment, even if they are in their natural environments is still exploiting them and not providing the equality Singer asks for. Unfortunately, this view knocks us off the pedestal our culture has put us on, and says that we are just like the rest of nature. The lack of animals causes this to not be communicated in our culture, which makes animals even rarer making a cycle that leads to people worrying about humanities problems more because they are always visible.

Another question that reveals the confusion of what to think about nature is how do we value animals in relation to ourselves? And by value I do not mean respect, I mean how much do people think that other life is worth in comparison to our own? According to television, many of the preserved parts of nature with lots of animals look fine, so why should effort be put in to value them? At the very least they will always be on TV. The value we place on the animals we do come into contact with (even their meat) is important because it reveals the judgments we as a society make on the value of life, and how much effort is taken to justify looking down on other animals as subservient to us and not a part of nature. How we treat the real animals reveals our cultural confusion of how to treat nature, because if we treat “normal” animals badly how can we expect to know what nature is? We can see with the way fast food companies treat their animals sometimes animals are not worth as much as our convenience, but other times like with endangered species they are worth vast amounts of money. Since we elevate ourselves, it would make sense that we would elevate some animals to not being in the rest of nature, but instead chosen servants of our food industry. Michael Pollan wrote a book called The Omnivores Dilemma discussing normal Americans choices about what they eat and the truth behind it, including some sections about the morality of eating different foods. In one section he discusses the killing of chickens in the classic small farm way by writing “…the pile [of chicken guts] offered an inescapable reminder of al that eating chicken involves—the killing, the bleeding, the evisceration.” which means that the graphic reality of eating meat is still bloody despite the way it is packaged. Although Americans do not necessarily dislike animals, our lifestyle still ends up with their mass deaths so how can we gain a respect for them and thus a concept of nature in America? Or to look at it on a larger scale, our lifestyle hurts nature in the same way, as we have a hard time respecting nature as a majority of our efforts and economy in life ends up being a metaphorical slaughterhouse toward the natural world. If we looked at animals on our level we would have to change our entire lifestyle in order to manage for them, and that would end up making ordinary living more difficult, so the question of how much animals are worth is really asking how much our society now is worth. Eating animals and using them for our purposes are part of our culture, which while it can be immoral, is also part of our national identity and past. So in order look at animals on our level, we would have to abandon many of the traditions which make this country itself, showing another reason of why it is difficult what to think about nature.

Where does the cultural confusion about the way to deal with the destruction of nature come from and why is it wrong? Even television and media do not explain how it could be so deeply ingrained in our culture. The answer is that we view ourselves as being completely separate from nature, transcending it with our intelligence and creating something that is better: civilization. Even religions put us first, for example the bible says that man was made in god’s image, alluding that he had the divine right to rule to begin with, and is above the rest of the animals. Some can even argue that the Darwinian view supports our expansion by the concept of “survival of the fittest” which we apparently are. However does survival of the fittest have to mean that other species do not survive at all or survive only for our benefit? Even though American culture has the argument of being successful for mankind, the concept of our success is built on the assumption that the ecosystems we cleared away were not as important as our expansion. John Berger wrote an essay called “Why Look at Animals?” in which he discusses the lack of animals in our culture. He ends the essay by writing “This historic loss [of ecosystems with animals in America], to which zoos are a monument, is now irredeemable for the culture of capitalism.” which addresses how our way of life itself is an affront to connecting with animals. This notably points out how our economy reflects wanting to see animals but yet not really save or preserve nature, revealing how even though it is pointed out that while nature is made to be a precious commodity in our culture like in movies like Avatar, this image comes from a consumer culture which is destructive creating confusion. The entire image looks like this: humans consider ourselves rulers of nature, and while we want to rule fairly this also means we get more than a fair share and we are supported by a culture and economy which supports nature on one side (“being green” is more popular then ever) and exploits on another. All of this causes confusion of what to feel, whether it is blessed for a life of comfort or guilty for taking part in this contradicting society.

Going back to the question of how we should feel about nature, there are a lot of ways to think about it, even ones that I have not discussed. For example, thinking about nature not through the animals in it, but through nature being areas that lack humans in it as most residential areas do not include a lot of plants and animals. However, I have chosen to discuss nature this way because when we view animals, they are seen as fascinating, even deer are viewed with awe when seen living close to people. This awe comes from both an understanding of their rarity and a desire to understand how and why animals act and think compared to us. Viewing animals makes people more connected and interested in nature, so the treatment of animals and the way they behave in America reflects our realistic values of nature compared to how we feel about what is far away from us, and allows us to question what we feel about nature by viewing our part in it.