Nature and self-nature

Nature and self-nature

November 22, 2022

An interesting thought was uncovered in the 12/8/22 edition of the NYRB. Martha Nussbaum wrote that wilderness and wild spaces "offer people a genuine good that has vanished elsewhere." And the appropriate response is to ask why is that? - and what is that good? It is undoubtable that Nature offers people a consolation. In fact, that might be why people seek it out these days, through these wild spaces. I am also reminded of a certain American professor who cheekily mentions that "religion is the opium of the people," which is the famous phrase of Marx, is no longer true, because "opium is the opium of the people. It works better." I am reminded of this because to Americans, Nature stands in for what to Europeans is religion. American philosophy, in its earliest form, is Nature philosophy. Emerson and Thoreau are examples. Nature is to Americans, what is still there even when you are totally alone, and what you can assimilate into yourself at the most basic level, to grow in your own self-nature. It's the origin of a verdant, and not a desert, philosophy. It's this expansive destiny from the vaster interstices connecting our society, originating from the verdant ecosystem out of which American civilization sprouted, that allows Nature to take root in the in-between places of our way of life, and give rise to our thought. In this period of intense challenges to our ways of life, it is natural to turn to Nature again, to fill the void in our understanding. But do we turn to Nature now to find answers, or to find the unknown mystery, the sense that we don't have the answers? Is this a revanchism, an attempt to return to a mental state of nihilism, which means, a beginning point? This is the origin of the dark suspicions of our age. It is now that we have to cut a fine line of distinction on this paradigm. To seek Nature for a sense of mystery, can also be for the purpose, the objective, of explaining the world and way we live in it, in terms of mysteries, directly to our subconscious.