The view humanity holds towards nature has a bumpy record, full of superiority and misinformation. Nature, as is now clear, is not a separate section of the world or on the other side of some human-made line. Our human actions have a direct impact on nature, but nature’s activities are not dependent on humans. In other words, nature includes humanity but is also other things and is not reducible to only humanity. It’s made up of all life, including life that may not be categorized as alive in most people’s mind. The reading from this week brought up some interesting and valuable points about humans’ perception of nature and the differences between sentience and consciousness.
It’s interesting to think about what we’ve learned about from all of the readings so far in this class and the common theme that humanity has a skewed view of nature. This outlook on our environment can be deemed as the root of our current environmental crisis. In all these readings it has been asserted that nature is everything, and though we’re included in its bubble, we don’t really matter to it in the long run. This is an intriguing argument to think about, because despite the claim that we don’t matter to nature, we still have an immense effect on it. Humans are the ones that have caused this current crisis, so couldn’t it be said that we are indeed important to nature? Although some claim that humanity’s impact will eventually be washed away by the force of the environment, humans are also the only ones who can turn around the climate crisis in the present moment, in a manner which wouldn’t take a millennium to complete.
The points made about sentience versus consciousness were also thought provoking. Some things which most people wouldn’t consider alive are sentient, which is a word that most people would relate to life. This reading, however, explains that sentience is something that is widely seen in nature, with some organisms requiring perception to survive, and perception in turn requiring some degree of sentience. Consciousness, on the other hand, is seen much less in nature, and is usually only in those things which most people would consider alive.
