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Vol.66
What Is Nature? |
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Jul 19,2022 |
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This is a story about a TV documentary program featuring Amazon primitive tribes in South America I watched in my 50s.
When the interviewer started talking with "This place is full of nature...," the tribal elder stopped him and said, "We have no word for what you call 'nature.' It is simply our life."
His remark was quite convincing. The word "nature" must have been created during modernization when nature was replaced by so-called concrete jungles.
I tried to find other words that were created while something was lost, but there are surprisingly not many.
These include "extinct species," "global warming," and "air pollution," all of which are categorized into "nature".
Most of our words were created during transitions, such as from hunting to farming and industrialization, and each is called a "civilization."
It has been a long time since the back-to-nature movement started when mass consumption and plastic waste became problems. Under the current social systems, however, it is impossible for us to go back to an age where people went with pots to buy tofu to save packaging.
I cannot deny I am living in a civilized society. In such a life full of convenience, the least I could do for nature are the following: Not buying unnecessary items, repairing electrical appliances to make them last longer, and using fallen leaves and vegetable crumbs as fertilizer for flowers and vegetables.
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