The idea of nature, of a pristine wilderness characterized by its separation from man, is a widely accepted notion. We are told—and believe—that to "experience" nature, we must step off of the paved road, away from the comforts of civilization. Some environments are more "natural" than others like, say, New York City, but true nature is inherently separate. Bill McKibben perfectly defines our concept of nature in his book, "The End of Nature," as "the separate and wild province, the world apart from man."
McKibben sees this separation as essential, and claims that to lose nature by dominating every aspect of the environment is to lose the context it provides. The chief provision is our humility—that crucial reminder that we don't have as much control as we think.
But separation from nature should not be the impetus for pursuing sustainability. Separation from nature is the problem. The idea of a natural world and a human world is a relatively new concept, but it is certainly not the only way of looking at our relationship with the planet. For millennia, Native Americans held a different conception of the world; namely, a world in which humans were as much a part of nature as anything else. This is the world we should strive for.
While myths and fables justified it, the unity of nature and man was never forgotten in the everyday life of Native Americans. As Chief Luther Standing Bear of the Oglala tribe exclaimed, "We did not think of the great open plains, the rolling hills... as 'wild.' Not until the hairy man from the east came was it wild for us." By modern terms, they lived sustainably, but in their reality, they were simply exercising a form of mutual respect. By only taking what they needed and treating nature with the same dignity with which they treated each other, Native Americans could expect nature to be kind in return. These "sustainable" principles were not designed arbitrarily, but evolved out of experience, and are very logical.
The point is that our ostensible separation from nature is not a fact of life, but a choice that we have consciously or unconsciously pursued as a result of our industrialized behavior and perception of the environment.
Take the national parks system, for instance. The idea was to close off a pure, pristine landscape—to keep it for the future as it had always been in the past. McKibben fails to acknowledge that even Native Americans had been changing the land before Europeans ever arrived. If human contact makes something impure, then nature as McKibben defines it has long been extinct.
Furthermore, the idea that only untrammeled wilderness constitutes nature means that living off the land is no longer natural. And by zoning certain areas as off-limits, the implication of the national parks system is to suggest that everything else is fair game for development.
What we seek from these different definitions of nature are rules of how to behave towards the environment. The separation of man and nature is exactly why I have often found my own reasons for environmental activism so selfish. Everything comes out in terms of preserving nature so I can see it, or so my children will have a habitable planet. Preserving the human race is certainly important, but what about environmentalism for the sake of some other cause?
This new argument is something like holism, which is difficult to understand inside of our paradigm. While McKibben separates nature and man, I believe his solution to prevent the end of nature is also the first step towards holism. This solution is to move back toward a humbler setting, to sacrifice many of the unnecessary luxuries we have today, and perhaps more importantly, to remove our stamp from environmental processes.
But this is only part of the solution. The problem arose when we separated ourselves from nature physically and mentally.
To quote Albert Einstein, "Problems can't be solved within the mindset that created them." Only when we manage to blur the line between the human and natural worlds will we solve the core problem from which our environmental woes developed.
Still, through recent efforts toward sustainability, we will likely reverse the trends of climate change and prosper long into the future without ever fully solving the separation problem.
Peter Nauffts is a member of the Class of 2015.