Naturality or Humanity
I am talking here of naturality and humanity as two life philosophies, as two basic value systems determining different attitudes and behaviors.
For some people, nature is a kind of a holy cow. What is natural, is automatically considered as good, as benign, as healthy, just because it is natural. Some people venerate their Mother Nature as a deity. The contrary of natural in this understanding is artificial. Everything artificial is in this thinking automatically bad.
This is irrational. The rational questions are:
Which artificial things are beneficial and which are detrimental?
What ethical paradigm defines humanity as being different from naturality being the blind submission to nature?
I am talking here of naturality and humanity as two life philosophies, as two basic value systems determining different attitudes and behaviors.
For some people, nature is a kind of a holy cow. What is natural, is automatically considered as good, as benign, as healthy, just because it is natural. Some people venerate their Mother Nature as a deity. The contrary of natural in this understanding is artificial. Everything artificial is in this thinking automatically bad.
This is irrational. The rational questions are:
Which artificial things are beneficial and which are detrimental?
What ethical paradigm defines humanity as being different from naturality being the blind submission to nature?
In my following thoughts, naturality as a philosophy means the acceptance, that whatever happens naturally, as a consequence of natural dynamics, is accepted as good. Naturality as a reverence to nature means implicitly the acceptance of individual suffering not only as an unavoidable aspect of life, but as a kind of duty in the service of the deity called nature.
- Nature means the priority of the survival of the species over the wellbeing of the individuals. From the subjective perspective of the experienced suffering of the individual, nature is cruel.
- Nature means suffering and pain to all beings, especially in the food chain of carnivores.
- Nature means the survival of the fittest, not only of humans, but also of the fittest viruses, bacteria, insects, vermins, pests of any kind.
- Nature is permanent battle between the fittest of all species, and the less fit of all species suffer automatically.
- Nature means that instinct driven urges cause suffering to others.
Humanity means a different priority:
- Under the paradigm of true humanity as an ethical imperative, avoidance of individual sufferings has the highest priority, much higher than the survival of any species. Already living individuals have higher priority than those who will live in the future.
- Humanity means therefore to conquer nature, where this spares pain, by fighting against all instincts, that lead to the pain of others, and by making wise choices between allowing nature to rule and overriding nature by artificial means of chemical, biological and technological inventions.
- Humanity means the clear basic value, that non-existence is better than a suffering and painful existence. This includes for example, that an abortion is more human than forcing a miserable life upon an unwanted child or a child, for whom there is not enough provision. It also includes the acceptance of the right to end their lives to people, whose life has become too painful for example in the case of an incurable illness.
- Humanity allows even to contemplate such provocative questions: What is more cruel, to let a baby die from starvation and disease, or to give just enough charity to the mother, so that the child does not die, but has a life of agony from the lack of all the basics of life, being forced into child labor? What is more cruel, to give insufficient help to 100 people, who live in agony and misery, or to give sufficient help to 10 and allow the others to die instead of suffering without remedy?
These questions concern the basic attitude and are of course independent of the outrage, that the misery in the third world has been caused by the exploitation by the rich nations, who then pretend to do charity, where they have in reality a huge material and moral debt to pay. See entries 52 and 53 for more about this. Entries 189, 21 and 57 are also related topics.
Naturality as the reverence to nature as benign is making it a deity. By the irrational glorification of nature, naturality has become a kind of religion. Being truly human requires a rational approach and the absence of religious commands blurring rationality.
Therefore naturality and humanity are in some important basic values mutually exclusive.
