What is "Natural" ?

Sometimes, in discussions of social change, policy, technology, and all the rest, someone raises the question of "Well, isn't technology technically part of nature, because humans are part of nature, and we made technology?"

Typically, this perspective is offered as an argument meant to undermine any critiques of technology, or claims that we should limit the powers or amount of technology used in society, or that certain technologies are more harmful/destructive than they are beneficial. The idea is that, if being "natural" is a reliable criterion for desirability, then technology can't be critiqued in these ways because it is a natural part of human existence and creation. 

This supposed "argument," however, really just reveals the baselessness of an ideology of technologism/mechanism. This is because it relies on dubious reasoning and semantic trickery to make it seem like technology should be considered in the same manner as, let's say, trees or penguins. This, frankly, is stupid. I could dive into all sorts of technical nuances of the illogicity of such an argument, but I have much better things to spend my time doing. (For a primer, learn about logical fallacies, such as on this free website titled "Thou Shall Not Commit Logical Fallacies" https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/).

Moreover, even if we go with this idea that technology is part of human society, and humans are part of nature, therefore technology is part of nature and can't be uniquely critiqued as a unique phenomenon of existence, this in no way forbids us from identifying all sorts of problems with technology and determining that we should do something about it. Viral, bacterial, and fungal infections are plainly natural. Yet any sensible person would agree that it is totally reasonable for humans to try to prevent such infections and develop ways to mitigate the effects of such illnesses (among other illnesses). Cancer is natural. Yet, we spend billions of dollars trying to figure out how to prevent and stop cancerous spread.

So, even if something can be legitimately and unproblematically categorized as "natural" has no necessary bearing on whether we can take a critical, normative stance on its place within, and relationship with, humans and society.

The example of cancer is not random, by the way. The organizational structure and functional pattern of civilizational society is quite literally cancerous, when cancer is defined metabolically. This thesis is too complex to summarize here, but I will write an article dedicated to this and link to it here. The point is, when I -- or anyone else in permaculture circles, or generally in discussions of ecology, society, technology, etc. -- talk about relearning to live as part of "nature," or living more "naturally," I'm invoking an intuitive, simple sense of the concept of "natural." Intuitively, trees are simply natural in a way that AK-47s, atomic bombs, laptop computers, and plastics are not. We can argue all day about the technicalities here, and whether certain human creations or living arrangements should be called "natural." And, indeed, scholars and researchers have spent generations arguing about such matters, and there is nothing close to a consensus in site. Ultimately, there is a semantic dimension to these debates that will never resolve because language itself is fluid, flexible, dynamic, context-relative, abstract, socioculturally-historically contingent, and pragmatic.

And as a final twist in this brief tale of the "natural," consider that many (most? all?) indigenous languages do not contain a term for the English concept of "nature." So, if you were to speak, through a translator, with an indigenous person who knows only their traditional language, and you ask "What is your view of the human-nature relationship?" or some such abstract, concept-oriented question, the translator would not be able to directly ask the question. They would have to describe, in some roundabout, metaphorical, analogical way, what "nature" means to you, which would probably not make any sense to the indigenous person.

The point is, the very concept and idea of "nature/natural" is a construction of civilizational society, and not itself a natural part of human language! Chew on that one for a while. With any luck, you'll end up more confused and unsure what "natural" really means (or doesn't mean, or can mean, or can't mean, or shouldn't mean, or ....whatever).