What you call 'ability' is a biased view, isn't it?
Think that you were part of the 'controlled' nature.. Were you still
describing and interpreting what human has done to the earth, for
centuries now, and under his specific self-interested motives, as an
'ability'?...
Don't you think that it is us, (our specific social and thought
system(s) which have come to dominate today), who has created the
ideological value justifications, so that we can use our surroundings
as tools for our survival and comfort, and control all life and things
as we were in the centre or top of it?
You remember back in school those kid stories that we are the highest
creation, gods really made us and actually we look like them(!), and
then more stories for adults later, where we humans, 'scientifically'
now, identified again Nature as distinct from us, and we kept creating
various labels, such as 'Mother' nature etc.. All the peculiar mixing
of ideas of the present and echos of the past, so that we can
legitimate our spreading around to control and use everything as its
supposedly owner and superior counterpart....
We have preached ourselves so much of all those supposedly (god-sent
and self-proven) 'truths', so that we now take for granted all their
(our) assumptions and become blind to their (our) obvious bias...
But 'mother' nature (listen to the connotations, ohhh they're so
cute!) doesn't exist my friiend, outside its particular discourse..
and this label is used so easily and often today, nicely hidding under
the carpet what its assumptions are.
Nature has been historically viewed in many different ways, but always
as a justification for both, the particular way human wants to see
him/herself and the particular way with which wants to justify his
actions.. Nature is 'dangerous', is 'protection', etc etc sometimes we
are part of it, sometimes we are distinct from it. etc etc..
So, I wish good luck to the efforts of management of 'nature' which
you describe..
But I wouldn't eagerly believe that experts 'know better'. Not only
expert knowledge is itself much contested and divided, but maybe they
know 'just slightly better', nothing more, than the political groups
which you describe, which also use 'nature' for their own ends and
logic (the various, often competing, ways of rationalising nature as I
said and you have probably seen by now).
In the big picture now, let's call it as everyone likes it (protection
or power or ability or stupidity or pragmatic necessity or whatever),
the simple fact to start our thinking is that the human ''screws''
nature (including himself) consistently and systematically for many
centuries now; unfortunately mainly under the justification/support
of self-produced, anthropocentric and biased value-laiden ideologies
of himself and his place in it.
C.S.
On 02/09/06, James McBride <jnmcbr@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure what you are trying to say but man does have the ability to
> control the destiny of many animals.
> On Friday, September 01, 2006, Christos Stavrou wrote
>
> The biggest 'screwing' with 'Father' Nature has been by far the
> human.. and mainly his self-produced ideologies which are taken for
> granted today, that somehow he's on top of all other animals and
> things.
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