For the first time in 21 years I need to disagree with Thom. We must “...leave large parts of Nature alone,” Thom says, “trusting that she knows best how to appropriately regenerate.” That, it seems to me, is a restatement of another misplaced cultural certainty, the “man/nature dichotomy.” It was powerfully introduced in 1865 by George …
For the first time in 21 years I need to disagree with Thom. We must “...leave large parts of Nature alone,” Thom says, “trusting that she knows best how to appropriately regenerate.”
That, it seems to me, is a restatement of another misplaced cultural certainty, the “man/nature dichotomy.” It was powerfully introduced in 1865 by George Perkins Marsh in his epochal book, Man and Nature. “Man is everywhere a disturbing agent,” Marsh wrote. “ Wherever he plants his foot the harmonies of nature are turned to discord.”
Professor Henry Vaux at Berkeley was a forest economist (attuned to man things). Professor Arnold Schultz was a forest ecologist (attuned to nature things). But both were classic scholars, attuned also to something larger: a quest for truth. So they sat down and talked about the apparent separation of man and nature and found it was false. The social system and the ecosystem are not separate and distinct; instead they are interactive, interadaptive, inseparable and INTERDEPENDENT, forming a single “biosocial” system. Vaux and Schultz made great sense to me in my career as a forestry prof.
The biosocial system, it turns out, is just a pedantic reformulation of Lovelock’s Gaia or indigenous cultures’ theme of Mother Earth. But all three reject Marsh’s splitting of man from nature.
So no, we don’t need to “...leave large parts of Nature alone.” We need to follow indigenous cultures’ treatment of Mother Earth: we need to use her to survive, but we must use her with respect, with gratitude, and with the wisdom to use her only for need, not greed.
All of which Thom also said, insisting we must recognize the fire in all of creation, and rearrange things to care for and nurture, not control and crush.
So Thom didn’t really err. He just slipped up. One offhand statement was inconsistent with everything else in his piece. And all that was just first rate, spot-on stuff. Pure Hartmann. (Ah, but he did split an infinitive.)
For the first time in 21 years I need to disagree with Thom. We must “...leave large parts of Nature alone,” Thom says, “trusting that she knows best how to appropriately regenerate.”
That, it seems to me, is a restatement of another misplaced cultural certainty, the “man/nature dichotomy.” It was powerfully introduced in 1865 by George Perkins Marsh in his epochal book, Man and Nature. “Man is everywhere a disturbing agent,” Marsh wrote. “ Wherever he plants his foot the harmonies of nature are turned to discord.”
Professor Henry Vaux at Berkeley was a forest economist (attuned to man things). Professor Arnold Schultz was a forest ecologist (attuned to nature things). But both were classic scholars, attuned also to something larger: a quest for truth. So they sat down and talked about the apparent separation of man and nature and found it was false. The social system and the ecosystem are not separate and distinct; instead they are interactive, interadaptive, inseparable and INTERDEPENDENT, forming a single “biosocial” system. Vaux and Schultz made great sense to me in my career as a forestry prof.
The biosocial system, it turns out, is just a pedantic reformulation of Lovelock’s Gaia or indigenous cultures’ theme of Mother Earth. But all three reject Marsh’s splitting of man from nature.
So no, we don’t need to “...leave large parts of Nature alone.” We need to follow indigenous cultures’ treatment of Mother Earth: we need to use her to survive, but we must use her with respect, with gratitude, and with the wisdom to use her only for need, not greed.
All of which Thom also said, insisting we must recognize the fire in all of creation, and rearrange things to care for and nurture, not control and crush.
So Thom didn’t really err. He just slipped up. One offhand statement was inconsistent with everything else in his piece. And all that was just first rate, spot-on stuff. Pure Hartmann. (Ah, but he did split an infinitive.)