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Jamie Dunn
English 101. 07
Definition Essay
October 25, 2010
Natural Changes
“The natural world” is an interesting phrase really. How natural is it? When I hear this
phrase, my first thought is of nature itself, which the word natural is derived from. I think of
ancient forests and cascading Amazonian waterfalls, fresh stormy lakes and meadows brimming
with dainty wildflowers. I don’t immediately think of social interaction or factories producing
food whose ingredients sound anything but wholesome. The world that we live and work in has
been conditioned to view anything natural as strange and not worth paying attention to. We’re
so far beyond such simplicity in this technological age of cheaper, better, faster. That’s what
people would like to think. To make ourselves feel better about our separation from nature as a
whole, we sometimes label things as natural—behaviors, abilities, food—that are anything but.
Today’s view of what is natural is largely artificial—a contradiction in terms perhaps, but none
the less true. Natural today isn’t necessarily even connected to nature: natural is whatever
we’ve become accustomed to within the confines of our artificial environments.
Natural is presenting a false front to your peers making you feel as if you’re alone in a
crowded room. When in a group, no matter what anyone says, you act differently according to
whichever group of people you’re with. You can’t truly be yourself until you’re by yourself with
nothing but your thoughts for company. Natural used in reference to people can either mean
naïve and stupid or it can mean being really good at something without much effort. In both
states of being, you’re not affected by any outside influence. People can’t make you good at
something without any instruction and they can’t make you unintelligent. How many people can
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actually say that they haven’t been influenced by someone or something that made them check
their normal reaction or tendency? Most of us as humans are not natural at all if referring to a
sense of naiveté and innocence. They only way to be natural is to be considered unnatural by the
larger public. In the public’s eye it is unnatural to be a loner or to not enjoy partying and
drinking. So many young people go on a journey to find themselves, but this is simply because
by living together in groups and interacting with others we lose ourselves, our natural state and
spend the rest of our lives searching for it.
Everyone has a place where they feel the most like
themselves, someplace where their natural self shines and is the least artificial, before it’s altered
by the presence of anyone else. For me it’s in the great north woods where I grew up, where
there is not a sound to be heard except the breathing of the earth and me.
Natural is often not so much a state of being as it is a fad. Think of all the times you see
the phrase ‘all natural’ on items in the grocery store only to take a closer look at the ingredients
and discover that you can’t recognize or pronounce half of them. The word natural is used by
advertising firms to engage the interest of a recently health and eco-friendly crazed public.
We’ve become so far removed from nature as a society that we resort to replicating it instead of
gathering it straight from the source. An example of a product that sports ‘All Natural’ labels is
a Zone perfect nutrition bar. Let’s see what the ingredients are: “Soy protein nuggets (isolated
soy protein, cocoa[processed with alkali], tapioca starch, salt), chocolate layer (corn syrup, sugar,
palm kernel oil, unsweetened chocolate, invert sugar, cocoa[processed with alkali], milk protein,
soy lecithin, salt, xanthan gum, carob seed gum, gum arabic, vanilla extract with other natural
flavors), . . . ” and that’s not even half the list. Most—if not all—of the food we produce is of our
own creation, not nature’s. It has undergone a great deal of processing and contains a bunch of
chemical additives. Just a few other examples of products which bear the phrase “all natural” are
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Simply Lemonade, Snapple beverages, and Hunt’s tomato sauce. I know when “natural flavors”
have to be added to something, it’s definitely not all that natural. Just like the false image we
show our peers, food producers present a misleading if not completely false front to consumers.
They know that many consumers will take the label at face value without bothering to check
whether or not it’s true. The public trusts that the Food and Drug Administration is looking out
for them. Well, the FDA doesn’t have very strict regulations as to what can and cannot be
labeled natural. You see, like many people, they’re unsure of what natural means. Our food—a
life-sustaining resource that is a gift from nature—has been altered so much that it is now almost
completely artificial. We have no problem calling our processed food natural though because
after all, the ingredients were originally from nature, right? Not necessarily.
Natural is hard to identify in a world that has been altered so much by a parasitic species
like humans. Is it natural to kill ourselves with something meant to sustain us, like food? Many
would say that a potato is definitely natural seeing as it can be found in nature growing right in
the soil. Well, what if it’s a genetically altered potato? What if that potato is then made into
French fries you order at McDonald’s? Is the potato still natural? We are conditioned at an
early age to recognize that certain objects and things are natural whether or not they really are,
and this certainly has a great impact on our lives. It’s only natural to have toxic waste spills
every once in a while. It’s only natural to eat strawberries the size of your palm. It’s only
natural to party on the weekend. We’re taught that industry, urban settings and ultimately we
ourselves are closed off from nature when in fact studies show that we have a direct impact on it.
How can we begin to fix our climate problems when we can’t even see past the artificial aspects
of our conditioned beliefs?
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I think the only thing we could really agree is natural in everyone’s life is change. It’s
the one unifying thing that has been occurring since the beginning of time and is something that
is an ordinary part of all our lives. Change is natural to nature as well because nature is ever
evolving; fire consumes an ancient forest and new plants emerge where they had not been before.
Water levels rise and fall. Coast lines erode. What’s natural to me may never be the same as
someone living in Siberia, for instance, but we all have things that we consider natural depending
on where on this Earth we hail from. For the well-being of our planet and all its inhabitants we
must agree to work towards finding a balance; a natural state that nature could be a part of. The
first step in healing our planet is to see through the artificial front we’ve erected between
ourselves and nature and to realize that what we’ve become accustomed to and what is natural to
us is not natural to the planet we live on. If we’re not careful, soon the only remaining truly
natural entity on this Earth will be change.