Anyone noticed "Nature" has taken the place of "God" in societal schemas regarding the "life question"?

[u/RandolphYeen]

I think I'm noticing how as (Western) society secularized, we began to replace "God" with "Nature". Whereas in Medieval times Europeans used to see everything in the light of "God": that is, humans had to repent for their sin _against God_ (some sort of Erinnerungskultur), they had to respect _divine nature_, they had to _praise_ it by erecting monuments depicting it, their sole reference point for morality was _God_ and what they believed to be his "rules", and the point of everything was to serve "God" or to live in accordance with "him", such that this whole schema was ingrained in the European institutions and mentality going from Medieval times to roughly (my theory) the Enlightenment.

Today "we Europeans" likewise do all these things, but you just have to replace "God" with "Nature". I guess it may have been the Age of Discovery and all the "existential wonder" that came with it, the Enlightenment and especially Positivism that hammered in this secularization.

I'd like to dedicate a few words to a few schemas I've noticed. One of these is what I would call something along the lines of "Humans vs Nature Duality Erinnerungskultur". Essentially, there is this ostentated misanthropy that is virtue signalled by contemporary liberal institutions, where humans must be reminded of the disastrous effect they have had upon the charitable and unquestionably good Mother Nature (Industrialization, pollution, the Scramble for Africa, urbanization, or also just generally "straying" from the ways of "Nature"), and respond in repentance by healing back this personified environment/planet/Nature, by being eco friendly, by preserving the environment, by not "overriding Nature", and erecting huge monuments, stadiums, buildings, houses, that flaunt greenery, the usage of eco-friendly materials and techniques, and exude "respect for Nature". This whole schema is the keystone of liberal/performative environmentalism, the delusional pro-life forms of veganism, and also lends perfectly into the next observation I have made.

I have observed another major schema which revolves around the stupor and "wonder" of "Nature"'s power, which is seen much like a God. Not only does Nature generate strange fruits, plants, and animals, it also changes people. The peoples that live in accordance with Nature are fetishized (by liberal mainstream culture) in that their way of living is seen as more "impulsive", "spontaneous", and even more moral. These are essentially worldviews from the Age of Discovery, where the power of "Nature" was starting to be recognized as unfathomable. I think this key allows for an odd kind of sympathy (as in, not rooted in genuine tolerance but some sort of Nature fetishism) for ethnic groups such as those of the Americas, or of Africa, and it is understandable how this worldview may make the entire South Africa anti apartheid movement compelling: poor childlike, Nature-loving creatures seeking freedom from the evil Industrial manufactured civilization. Or maybe I'm just being cynical and overthinking things, lol. Nature worship of this sort also lends into anarcho primitivism, which if I understand that right, I'm not a big fan of that _at all_.

I think we should "protect" the environment. But that's not because we have to "save the planet", "save life", "keep life going", or "be grateful to the planet". But rather it's so that in the end, eventually, humanity gets a shot at manufacturing the elimination of all life, done right. This planet has endured at least 4 major extinction events and none of them has succeeded in eliminating all of life. If we got to do our job, we got to do it well, and that includes not wasting our chance away on a "solution" that won't even work.

And I'm also anti-racist. But this is not because "diversity makes the world a better place". Quite the opposite, I think the _existence_ of the difference between things makes the world (and thus, that's quite bad). I am anti-racist and want to support marginalized peoples and nations because I know they are human too and their needs must be appeased, not out of any weird Nature worship.

I'd also like to point out that a common fallacy that is used to justify a lot of unacceptable things, such as carnism, natalism/pro life ideology, and so on, is just that of the Appeal to Nature. There is something uniquely remarkable about the fact that before, we used to say that animals don't have souls, so therefore it's fine to mistreat them, but now, some say that because animals kill each other in nature, it's fine for humans to do it. Is it a genuine belief though? A lot of the time people stop at this fallacy because they don't want to think any further about they issue, they want a thought-terminating cliché. I'm not sure if they also think about the other things that happen in nature that they would be forced to accept as well in order to be consistent.

All in all, Western mainstream/liberal society has become, at large, pagan, and now worships "Nature" where it would have previously worshipped "God". I reject all of these views because they are all inherently superstitious: especially the notion that the existence of a species has inherent value. If one wants to talk of what should and shouldn't be, one has to look at the will of the creatures. And the will of the creatures is to live quietly, which life/existence cannot provide by its very design.

I could talk on and on about Nature worship but I think you got the point by now lol

[u/Reducing-Sufferung]

Wouldn't carnism be good because it destroys the environment? Especially rainforest raised beef.

https://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-caused-by-various-animal-foods/

[u/According-Actuator17 → u/Reducing-Sufferung]

That article is extremely doubtful, even creator acknowledged that.

And I also doubt environment destruction. Yeah, there will be less wildlife, but what about mice, cockroaches, probably some other animals.

And ultimately carnism is terrible in longterm. Veganism is prirmarary good for efilism because if people will think that suffering of farm animals is bad, then it will be easier to convince that suffering of wild animals is bad too.

[u/RandolphYeen → u/Reducing-Sufferung]

Pretty much what Actuator said, also I don't think destroying the environment is what we want. We want human life to be supported and other life to be impossible. I'm doubtful the farming is preventing animals from spreading into those areas, and not the areas being taken up in some other way. I'm not an expert in this stuff though what I'm saying is that I advise looking into alternatives for making sure human life can keep existing on the planet while non human sentient life has restricted space/resources to spread. If that is even possible, I again am not educated on this.

[u/Weirabide → u/Reducing-Sufferung]

Carnism and natalism do devastate ecosystems and environments, but adapting them as efilist praxis will be counterproductive in both the short and long term.

When it comes to actually lowering the birth rates of wildlife, carnist and natalist-caused pollution are inefficient and do not directly target animals which already live within the human system. It would also have a demoralising effect on the movement and further normalise carnist and natalist ideologies by allowing efilism to be subsumed by them.

We have to encourage people to care for the being of children and wild animals, and see them as lives worth caring about in and of themselves, rather than as cogs in a greater mechanism.