AT WAR WITH NATURE
Testimonies of concern for the environment, for Mother Earth, have resonated among
Friends in the past decade or so. Partly this has been corporate effort, as in the three
pioneering LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) buildings that come
to mind, the FCNL office in Washington, the new Middle School building at Sidwell
Friends, and Friends Center in Philadelphia. Partly it has been the testimony of
individual Friends in reducing their carbon footprint,, such as Steven Matchett in San
Francisco limiting his travel (with rare exceptions) to trains and bicycle. Each of us has
our own little ways, no doubt.
In spite of these testimonies, it troubles me that Friends seem generally in denial about
our long-standing war against nature. The chief human accomplishment in this war has
been the explosion of the human population. When I was born, no human had lived
through a doubling of the human population. In my lifetime it has more than tripled, and
I could still live to see it quadruple. All that growth has been at the expense of nature,
that is, at the expense of other creatures and features of the natural world. How has
that happened?
The campaign to achieve domination over nature has, of course, not been a specifically
Quaker war, but Friends have not distanced themselves from other humans in this
matter, and have generally participated with easy consciences or even pride in the
endeavor to have dominion over plants, animals, and minerals. To satisfy the “needs”
of humans, we have slushed millions of tons of topsoil into the ocean, we have depleted
fishery stocks and hydrocarbon deposits, we have decimated forests, and we have
emptied aquifers – thereby, as Evo Morales puts it, depleting in two hundred years the
stock that mother earth took tens millions of years to accumulate. Is that what NYYM
had in mind when speaking this summer of “Peace with Earth”? Did Friends have in
mind that this has not occurred? Or that it might stop?
I wonder whether at the root of this human war has been a reluctance to accept death
as integral to life. Defiance of death would be the ultimate form of domination over
Mother Nature. There is nothing that lives forever. Anything that lives, in the primary
biological sense, also dies. As Schiller put it, “Auch das Schöne muss sterben.” (Even
the beautiful must die.) In the poem that begins with this agonizing line, Schiller goes
on to say that tears stream down the faces of the gods and goddesses, but they can do
nothing to stop the beautiful from dying or the perfect from falling apart – all they can do
is to weep and to mourn. Death is essential to the dynamic of the natural world. Not
only does everything that lives eventually die, but while it lives its life depends on other
things dying or having died. No tree could grow if other living things had not died and
left their decayed remains to fertilize the soil.
Psalms 24 begins by saying that the earth is the Lord’s, and all that it contains. To my
mind that simple powerful verse conflicts with Genesis 1:26, in which the Lord is said to
give humans dominion over the whole earth. Dominion is more than custody. What I
have dominion over can belong to no other person, nor can it, without my permission,
follow its own laws or its own will. It appears to me that humans, Friends included, have
generally hearkened to Genesis 1:26 and neglected Psalms 24:1. Perhaps that is only
“natural.” Could it be that seeking dominion is a natural form of greed?
Psalms 24:1 speaks of the earth and all that it contains. Presumably that means all
creatures great and small. Do you tolerate all creatures great and small in your life? I
don’t. I don’t spray my apple trees, but I use insecticides to keep ants out of the house
and wasps from the eaves. I use herbicides around the mailbox and driveway, and
fungicides between my toes. I also use antibiotics to counter infections, and so on. I
know and respect Friends who are vegetarians or vegans, but I have not met Friends
who refuse to kill bacteria or carcinoma cells. I confess, therefore, that there are many
little things that I kill, so that I can have a longer and more comfortable life. Am I so
different from other Friends? Am I in these ways acting contrary to ideals of Quaker
Earthcare Witness?
Our war against nature is a war of domination. The issue is whether we humans can
dominate nature rather than conform to the natural dynamic of nature, which would lead
to far earlier deaths for far more humans. We have been very, very successful so far.
We no longer adjust to heat and cold but instead depend on AC and furnaces (or heat
pumps). More than anything else we have achieved domination over bacteria, viruses,
and microbes, so that the forces of nature that might otherwise bring us early death
(and thereby balance the human population with other biological populations) have
been overcome. People speak openly of wars against cancers, and scientists recently
held out hope that leukemia might be eliminated, as polio and smallpox have been
(almost) eliminated.
Looked at in this way it is not only mining and drilling and industrial agriculture that war
against nature. Our “armed forces” in this war against nature are primarily the medical
professionals. Medical professionals regularly speak of saving lives, though in fact they
do nothing of the kind – they merely postpone death. Postponing death is something
we all wish for, but it is always thwarting nature. It is a kind of greed to want to live
longer, greed that I share with all the rest of you. So I am in a quandary: while I make
constant use of medical professionals, and trust and admire them, I also see that nearly
everything they do upsets the dynamic balance of Mother Nature.
My sense is that rather than making “Peace with Earth” Friends heartily approve of the
medical profession, as I generally do, and thereby join in the war against nature, adding
to the widespread neglect of Psalms 24:1. Since the medical profession is now the
fastest growing segment of our workforce, it seems inevitable that the war against
nature will intensify.
I can envision “Peace with Earth” when the human population declines to two billion. I
believe that may eventually happen, or is even likely to happen, but I cannot envision
how. Meanwhile we all continue, in various ways, our struggle to dominate, control, reform and exploit the dynamic mysteries surrounding us, which all amounts to a war
against nature, that is, against the natural dynamic of abundant life and early death
Newton Garver
10 Aug 2011