There are those among us—among you, too, I observe—who glorify the wonders of the natural world with a kind of glassy-eyed fanaticism and urge a return to that purer, more innocent state. This testifies to nothing other than the fact that those who recommend the satisfactions of living in harmony with nature have never had to do it. Nature is evil. Nature is conflict, violence, betrayal; worms that crawl through the skin and breed in the gut; thorns that poison; snakes that fight in writhing, heaving masses until all lie dead from one another’s poison. From nature we learned to tear the flesh off the bone and suck out the blood—and to enjoy it. Do you want to return to that state? I do not. ... I have known Nature. I have known Civilization. Civilization is better.
-- Donna Ball (writing as Donna Boyd), The Passion
This is factually false. I know the subculture of Americans who are most-passionate about going back to nature, and they do it. The unrealism in their attitude derives not from ignorance of nature, but from being able to go back to nature while under the protection of American law and mores, so that they don’t have to band together in tribes for pretection, compete with other tribes for land, and do the whole tribal bickering and conformity thing.
It’s all about population density. Primitive life is pretty great if you have low population density—one person per square mile is about right in much of North America. But the population always grows until you have conflict.
Spending 9 hours a day 5 days a week sitting in a cubicle staring at a monitor and typing in numbers is horrible in its own ways, which the author prefers to accomodate and ignore.
(There are no poisonous thorns in North America. And when you see two snakes in “writhing, heaving masses”, they’re probably mating.)
“This testifies to nothing other than the fact that those who recommend the satisfactions of living in harmony with nature have never had to do it.” That “fact” is false, and sets up a straw man in the place of the views and preferences of people who know what they’re talking about.
That “fact” is false, and sets up a straw man in the place of the views and preferences of people who know what they’re talking about.
In what sense is traveling with modern equipment, vaccinated and raised in an industrial society,
while under the protection of American law and mores, so that they don’t have to band together in tribes for pretection, compete with other tribes for land, and do the whole tribal bickering and conformity thing
all of which depends crucially on a vast technological economy and society, ‘living in harmony with nature’?
They aren’t living in harmony with nature because their brief highly sanitized encounters are structured and make use of countless highly unnatural products & tools, and so that is not a strawman.
Spending 9 hours a day 5 days a week sitting in a cubicle staring at a monitor and typing in numbers is horrible in its own ways, which the author prefers to accomodate and ignore.
I 100% agree with this. As a kid, I used to daydream about going and living by myself in the wilderness, partly because sitting in a classroom all day was so awful. (The other aspect is that I didn’t like people much when I was 10). I’ve compromised by finding a job where I don’t have to sit down and type numbers into a computer...at least, not much. Also I like people a lot more now.
Because the consequences of losing are so terrible, people tend to avoid serious fighting if they can. Being hunted—a far more likely state—is decidedly un-fun.
It’s definitely terrible and to be avoided if at all possible, but it is kind of fun. We can and do get back a small part of that feeling with roller coasters and action movies and fighting sports.
As a martial artist and as someone whose been in fear of getting the crap knocked out of them in the past this just doesn’t line up with my experience. There’s a degree of focus that goes on in fights that largely excluded feelings of excitement, it’s not like being on a rollercoaster. At least not for me. Fighting feels more like floating if it can be said to be like anything,I just get incredibly tuned in and a lot stronger than usual.
Admittedly I don’t think everyone experiences it like that, some people probably do enjoy it.
In the middle ages it was more respectable to talk about how much you enjoyed killing people, and some people did, though I can’t remember any references.
I would suspect that sparring in a martial arts context—the product of years of training and practicing specific, restrained moves, in which the objective is not to harm the opponent but to demonstrate superior technique—is rather different, emotionally, from a life-or-death struggle or even a fight between two combatants working off instinct and experience, neither of whom have been conditioned to associate that particular kind of fighting with a safe, controlled environment.
That said, I agree with you that there’s a matter of individual variation. The people who receive the strongest adrenaline high from fighting, however, are probably not the ones asked to return to the martial arts academy.
-- Donna Ball (writing as Donna Boyd), The Passion
This is factually false. I know the subculture of Americans who are most-passionate about going back to nature, and they do it. The unrealism in their attitude derives not from ignorance of nature, but from being able to go back to nature while under the protection of American law and mores, so that they don’t have to band together in tribes for pretection, compete with other tribes for land, and do the whole tribal bickering and conformity thing.
It’s all about population density. Primitive life is pretty great if you have low population density—one person per square mile is about right in much of North America. But the population always grows until you have conflict.
Spending 9 hours a day 5 days a week sitting in a cubicle staring at a monitor and typing in numbers is horrible in its own ways, which the author prefers to accomodate and ignore.
(There are no poisonous thorns in North America. And when you see two snakes in “writhing, heaving masses”, they’re probably mating.)
What exactly was claimed to be a fact and how do you know it’s false?
Um. Really? What do you call primitive life, then? Does it include contemporary medicine, for example?
“This testifies to nothing other than the fact that those who recommend the satisfactions of living in harmony with nature have never had to do it.” That “fact” is false, and sets up a straw man in the place of the views and preferences of people who know what they’re talking about.
In what sense is traveling with modern equipment, vaccinated and raised in an industrial society,
all of which depends crucially on a vast technological economy and society, ‘living in harmony with nature’?
They aren’t living in harmony with nature because their brief highly sanitized encounters are structured and make use of countless highly unnatural products & tools, and so that is not a strawman.
Me, I’ll take air conditioning, indoor plumbing, mosquito control, and antibiotics any day...
I 100% agree with this. As a kid, I used to daydream about going and living by myself in the wilderness, partly because sitting in a classroom all day was so awful. (The other aspect is that I didn’t like people much when I was 10). I’ve compromised by finding a job where I don’t have to sit down and type numbers into a computer...at least, not much. Also I like people a lot more now.
I have a sneaking suspicion that’s not what the OP meant by “Nature.”
That sounds like fun, from a LaVeyan-ish perspective. Fighting and killing are more exciting than singing Kumbaya. Does she just not like raw meat?
Because the consequences of losing are so terrible, people tend to avoid serious fighting if they can. Being hunted—a far more likely state—is decidedly un-fun.
Being hunted is just as likely as hunting. It’s just that being hunted is much worse than hunting is good.
Also, being in the state of trying to avoid being hunted is also un-fun.
It’s definitely terrible and to be avoided if at all possible, but it is kind of fun. We can and do get back a small part of that feeling with roller coasters and action movies and fighting sports.
Do you have data for prevalence in this respect?
As a martial artist and as someone whose been in fear of getting the crap knocked out of them in the past this just doesn’t line up with my experience. There’s a degree of focus that goes on in fights that largely excluded feelings of excitement, it’s not like being on a rollercoaster. At least not for me. Fighting feels more like floating if it can be said to be like anything,I just get incredibly tuned in and a lot stronger than usual.
Admittedly I don’t think everyone experiences it like that, some people probably do enjoy it.
In the middle ages it was more respectable to talk about how much you enjoyed killing people, and some people did, though I can’t remember any references.
I would suspect that sparring in a martial arts context—the product of years of training and practicing specific, restrained moves, in which the objective is not to harm the opponent but to demonstrate superior technique—is rather different, emotionally, from a life-or-death struggle or even a fight between two combatants working off instinct and experience, neither of whom have been conditioned to associate that particular kind of fighting with a safe, controlled environment.
That said, I agree with you that there’s a matter of individual variation. The people who receive the strongest adrenaline high from fighting, however, are probably not the ones asked to return to the martial arts academy.
“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
Winston Churchill (from his years as a war correspondent).
It’s actually from the prologue of a romance novel, and the narrator is a werewolf.