Guest guest Posted November 3, 2003 Report Share Posted November 3, 2003 >>>>Now people have an interesting notion of " natural " that seems to mean " without human interference. " People using this definition will tell you that birth control is " interfering with a natural process " or will believe that forests self-regulate and that cutting trees down is harm to the environment, when in fact anything including planting a plant or building a stone wall is as much interfering with natural processes as the former and forests only regulation mechanism is to destroy themselves over time. ---->i recall having a similar discussion with some college friends back...well...before you were born, come to think of it! LOL. in any case, i believe in a paradigm in which human activity, be it destructive or constructive or neutral (and anything in between) is viewed as natural, as i think we are a part of nature, and by extension or actions are natural. although i'm open to arguments against this logic. BUT, what i would argue is that, while many activities of human beings are " natural " within this context, they are sometimes *harmful* to the planet as a macrocosm. or you could argue that certain activities are harmful to a specific geographic area, or to a group of humans, or animals or whatever. i think mostly when i see arguments agaist human activities because they are not " natural " what the person actually means is that they perceive the action as being *harmful* to the planet, or to a specific ecosystem, or to people, etc. so i see " natural " as often being equated with *beneficial*. i have had this weird idea for maybe the past twenty years that the life and death of this planet is expressed best by the yin/yang symbol, with the seed of destruction being present in the birth of life...human life, which rose up from the dust of the planet itself and will ultimately destroy the planet in some sort of natural cycle of creation/destruction...birth/death. (i used to be fixated on the yin/yang concept so much that i even painted the symbol on my fingersnails! even before designs on nails became the fashion. LOL!) as heidi said, death is an integral part of life and one day we may destroy that which has given us life. is it " unnatural " ? no, imo, although i personally would like to postpone it past my, my child's, my grandchild's, etc lifetime. ah, there's no end, is there? LOL hmmmm...at about this point i can tell it's late and i'm rambling about weird college musings from a long time ago. so time to quit even though it's vaguely on topic :-) Suze Fisher Lapdog Design, Inc. Web Design & Development http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine http://www.westonaprice.org ---------------------------- " The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times. " -- Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher. The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics <http://www.thincs.org> ---------------------------- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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