There is no natural world

fdonadio said:

One thing that bothers me is when theres’s a pole right in the middle of an otherwise stunning landscape . It happens hear a lot, especially because we don’t bury our electric lines; as opposed to most of the USA or Europe, here they are “aerial”.

I even thought about including them in my compositions as a kind of protest, but sometimes they are way too distracting, to the point of making the other parts of the composition to fade away.

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Sometimes, they are the "punctum":

(easier to see on the postcard itself)

Robert Maxey said:

Let me ask ... aren't humans a natural outcome of other natural processes? And don't humans all have a fairly predictable way of going about things? Beavers build dams because it is natural. Humans build dams and it is not. Well, at least according to some folks. Isn't our world shaped by humans that are simply doing what they are hardwired to do?

Bob

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Your last sentence opens a whole other can of worms. I disagree with your statement, I believe we have free will to some degree. But as to what you write before that, yes, that's exactly what "natural" means - not man-made.

grain elevator said:

Your last sentence opens a whole other can of worms. I disagree with your statement, I believe we have free will to some degree. But as to what you write before that, yes, that's exactly what "natural" means - not man-made.

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Hey, it is fine to disagree with me. Not sure what can of fish bait I've opened, however. Actually, i fly fish so the worms -- caned or not -- are safe from me.

Bob

Sirius Glass said:

The OP needs to get out more and move out of his surroundings.

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Be careful, though. Bears will be bears after all.

Bob

Robert Maxey said:

Be careful, though. Bears will be bears after all.

Bob

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I hope he can bear the thought.

jnantz said:

nah .. just a realist. If we weren't overflowing with hubris, and listened to the universe we'd have a clue...

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Asking a serious question here: how the heck do we presume to understand what the universe is telling us? Talk about a place that "wants to kill us" it is the universe. We have much to do before we can begin to grasp the place. Heck, we can't even make it out of the Milky Way.

Bob

Sirius Glass said:

I hope he can bear the thought.

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I have a general rule: I wont bother the bears if they do not bother me. I know i will not win the day.

Bob

jnantz said:

... the Mayans invented television and the internet hundreds of years ago, its just modern humans that have screwed things up pretty much beyond repair because of their hubris.

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(cough) the Mayans invented the Internet and television? My, they were way smart. Then again, Philo was 1/64th Mayan. I knew they invented the eectric popcorn popper and the citronella candle to keep the huge bugs at bay.

Bob

Kilgallb said:

I have concluded there is no natural world. The entire planet has been altered by humankind. Not one square inch is unaffected by our activities.

Therefore, a cityscape is a landscape. Landscape cannot be restricted to scenes of just the so called natural world, as the natural world no longer exists.

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What? Aren’t we natural anymore?

Why is it human-like to deny who we really are: animals, natural beings?

Robert Maxey said:

Let me ask ... aren't humans a natural outcome of other natural processes? And don't humans all have a fairly predictable way of going about things? Beavers build dams because it is natural. Humans build dams and it is not. Well, at least according to some folks. Isn't our world shaped by humans that are simply doing what they are hardwired to do?

Bob

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Humans are a product of nature, but it is meaningful to distinguish human activity from all non-human activity, which we more or less call "nature". If you wanted to distinguish what beavers do in the same way, it could be said that we humans would then be part of the natural order (non-beaver) and all non-natural activity would be that of beavers.

It's all just ways to talk about things. But when people say, "Oh, I am inseparable from the natural world, since I am a natural human, and humans naturally occur on the world...." -- well, they're just being vacuous, aren't they? And also enabling the situation where humans can do whatever they want rightfully, since natural right would be all that matters.

However, in reality, human right is the more important concept. And it rests on a supposition that humans are at least ideally distinguishable from nature and are responsible for that they do.

Robert Maxey said:

(T)he Mayans invented the Internet and television? My, they were way smart. Then again, Philo was 1/64th Mayan. I knew they invented the eectric popcorn popper and the citronella candle to keep the huge bugs at bay.

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You forgot open heart surgery. Those Mayans certainly had that down to a fine art...

We certainly have a fine can of worms opened here. I tend to both agree and disagree (my #1 survival tactic in this house) with almost everything written in this thread so far, but it isn't really worth arguing over. A few of my usual lopsided comments will follow as it's all I feel up to posting today.

In a sense, there is still natural world left. But 'natural' in the sense that everything is constantly changing, and what was there a century or a decade or a year or even a month ago, isn't the same now as it was. One of my favorite sayings is "time passes, things change". As a personal example of this, twenty years ago I was 50 and a bit and still as active (so I thought) as I had been in my twenties and thirties. Now I'm 70 and a bit and still (surprisingly) active for my age, but age has wearied me and when I look in the mirror, I realise I can no longer fool myself. Time has passed and from what I see, one heck of a lot has changed. This is 'natural'.

Here in western Victoria (Australia) where I live, we still have some of the (very little) natural bush land left in the state, but whenever I venture out with one of my cameras in my backpack or a pocket I find human detritus everywhere, some of it going back a long time. More abandoned 1950s and 1960s Aussie cars can be found in that bush than in all the collections in this country, but in the condition these are now all of these rusted old motor (or mostly motorless) vehicles are not worth restoring anyway. My partner likes old bottles, so whenever I find some in a long-abandoned dump, I tend to pick them up and take them home, thereby helping in a small way to clean up and improve the natural landscape. I do what I can, even to the point of being uber-careful where I step to avoid crushing the local flora. The fauna I see consists mostly of kangaroos and wallabies and these tend to stay well away from me, so neither of us are in any great danger from each other.

We can only do what we can do in our own limited ways. At home we are slowly putting in a natural bush garden to try and keep some plants going as climate change accelerates and global warming takes over. It's slow but steady work. A few trees will go in next month and much of the suburban lawn and pretty-flower plantings in the back yard are being pulled up and a more natural environment developed as we go. Already many local birds are finding their way into our existing trees, to the annoyance of the elderly right-wing nutter next door (a retired farmer who basically considers all Australian birds to be destructive pests worth only blasting away with a shotgun. Like everyone he is entitled to his opinions no matter how blinkered or stupid they are, but for us the biggest annoyance with this worthy is his two big dogs which live in the back yard and bark loudly day and night but are largely ignored except for being fed when he remembers to do it.

Humankind is basically stupid and already we are paying a high price for this. In recent times we are starting to realise the natural disasters we and our future generations (however many will survive in the coming big mess) are moving towards now, are basically something we are responsible for and it is high time we begin doing some intelligent things before it's too late. Time will tell and we'll see - there isn't really much left of the former unless we wise up quickly-smartly and start doing some right things while we can.

Enough rant for today. We are out of lockdown today in Victoria state and I'm planning a bush walk on Thursday with my Nikon D800 and a Voigtlander Perkeo II loaded with FP4 in my coat pocket. After four days of lockdown I'm ready for some fresh air and maybe one or two 'roo sitings.

As an aside - for what it's worth we have a house cat named Schroedinger, an indoor mog of impressive dimensions who lives for his two feeds a day and long naps on our bed and is mostly unimpressed by all these goings-on. For him climate change is what I do with the heating thermostat in the living room.

I wonder what the world would be like if our ancient ancestors had been more like the altruistically inclined Bonobos...

Robert Maxey said:

(cough) the Mayans invented the Internet and television? My, they were way smart. Then again, Philo was 1/64th Mayan. I knew they invented the eectric popcorn popper and the citronella candle to keep the huge bugs at bay.

Bob

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yeah they were smart alright .. you've never seen the relief carvings of TV with rabbit ear antennae and others with people surfing the web ( with a desktop and mouse ) and the others with people talking on cell phones?. difference between them and. people now is they believed in a higher power and respected it. people now believe in nothing but themselves and greed and power. why do you think the planet is as screwed up as it is. gimme gimme gimme, me first me first me first, bunch of 4 years olds... ... oh well ... eventually people will realize you can't eat money when all the fish are dead from toxic waste dumped in rivers that used to have so many fish in them "you could walk across the stream without getting wet"...

ozmoose said:

You forgot open heart surgery

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they did brain surgery as well.

Where I live it was once covered by a shallow sea. The land rose and it became tropical forest with great reptiles living and dying. Great ice sheets came and went and finally the land become an immense grassy plain with giant mammals replacing the reptiles. People appeared and killed the biggest animals. Different tribes of people displaced the first group. Norwegians came and plowed up the grass and planted wheat, corn, soybeans. Now, it's my turn to roam this land. What's next--another ice sheet? Will the land once again become a shallow inland sea? I don't know. My plan is to enjoy myself the brief time I have.


Kent in SD

We are headed in the direction of the dinosaurs.

MattKing said:

Sometimes, they are the "punctum":
View attachment 282359
(easier to see on the postcard itself)

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You mean the power line tower at the distance, near the right of the picture?

Those also bother me…

Robert Maxey said:

I just looked and you can purchase a Saguro Cactus costume. Carry a few different sizes and decorate the pole.

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That would be a fun “intervention”, I don’t even think I would need to take a picture of it.

fdonadio said:

You mean the power line tower at the distance, near the right of the picture?

Those also bother me…

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Actually at both sides, and the power lines that run across between them.
Hard to see in the scan of this small print, but visible in the postcard, and easy to see in a 9.5" x 13" enlargement.
And the tension (pun intended) between them, the sky, the rivers and the mountains is a really important part of the photograph.

jnantz said:

yeah they were smart alright .. you've never seen the relief carvings of TV with rabbit ear antennae and others with people surfing the web ( with a desktop and mouse ) and the others with people talking on cell phones?. difference between them and. people now is they believed in a higher power and respected it. people now believe in nothing but themselves and greed and power. why do you think the planet is as screwed up as it is. gimme gimme gimme, me first me first me first, bunch of 4 years olds... ... oh well ... eventually people will realize you can't eat money when all the fish are dead from toxic waste dumped in rivers that used to have so many fish in them "you could walk across the stream without getting wet"...

they did brain surgery as well.

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It is an established scientific fact that they were in contact with space aliens. Please credit the space aliens for the BS. Er, i mean brain surgery. Geesh! Super-high tech needed neither rabbit ears or mouse, by the way. Dont you read the web? It was in all the papers. Geesh!

I am glad all of those fish are gone. Can you imagine the smell, for Pete's sake. Geesh!

Bob. Geesh!

Arthurwg said:

We are headed in the direction of the dinosaurs.

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I miss the dinosaurs. Not once did they ever try to eat me, and I respect that in an animal. Yabba Dabba Doo.

Bob

Robert Maxey said:

Asking a serious question here

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you just have to listen, problem is most people don't listen to what they don't want to hear.

Kilgallb said:

I have concluded there is no natural world. The entire planet has been altered by humankind. Not one square inch is unaffected by our activities.

Therefore, a cityscape is a landscape. Landscape cannot be restricted to scenes of just the so called natural world, as the natural world no longer exists.

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Absolute tosh. There are millions of square miles on this planet untouched by mankind.

MattKing said:

And the tension (pun intended) between them, the sky, the rivers and the mountains is a really important part of the photograph.

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I understand we can sometimes use these seemingly undesirable elements as part of the composition (when there’s no other way or even when they really add to the meaning of the image). But sometimes, when I’m riding my bike through some dirt roads nearby, I see some landscapes that would look incredible, if only there wasn’t a damn pole, power line or chain link fence (or all of them) to ruin the view.

Robert Maxey said:

It is an established scientific fact that they were in contact with space aliens.

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didn't say they were in touch with space aliens I said they invented the internet and television.
obviously you aren't reading scientific journals... ancient peoples were pretty much leaps and bounds beyond what we are doing. heck with all the modern tech and engineering they can't figure out how they made the hanging gardens of Babylon, or even more recently how Edward Leedskalnin made his "castle" ...

Robert Maxey said:

i mean brain surgery.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/news-trepanation-inca-medicine-archaeology
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...on-was-better-skull-surgery-civil-war-doctors
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237250981_Cranial_Surgery_in_Ancient_Mesoamerica

oops it was the Inca not the Maya .. sorry to offend anyone if I did.

cliveh said:

Absolute tosh. There are millions of square miles on this planet untouched by mankind.

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Yes, but they are filled with plastic.