Man against Nature?

I find myself drawn more and more to learning how to make simple devices by simple means. By ‘simple’, I don’t mean easy, in fact, quite the opposite is often true. A chainsaw makes the job of cutting through a log considerably easier than a bow saw but the bow saw is a simpler device.
But even a bow saw requires a blade that I could not make myself. What else could I use? An axe? I could probably make an axe – not necessarily a good axe but something I could hack through a log with.

What about boring holes? Immediately, possible designs for a simple device that could bore a reasonable hole spring to mind so I could probably do that.

My most valuable tool would be a blade. This I could make or, if necessary, even replicate with a flint blade, although I would need to learn the art of flint napping by trial and error.

I am drawn to the soft technologies of primitive crafts. The question is: why? Why would I want to? I initially found this hard to answer but I think I’m getting there.

It’s about taking the workshop within; in effect, becoming the workshop. If I can create everything I need from the materials that Nature provides in abundance, I feel somehow more complete as a human being.

Like every other human being, I am related in direct line to someone who had to live like this and the fact that he survived to pass his genes on along the line to me is testament to the fact that he was successful at it. Yet the skills and knowledge have become dissipated; replaced by a dependence on a system that provides so much without me having to think too much about it.

I remember once watching a documentary about a reservation – built with the best intentions of the West – for the threatened bushmen of the Kalahari. The final shot was one that has stayed with me long after any other details of the programme had faded from my memory. It was a shot of an elder standing at a water standpipe terminal and turning the faucet on and off. His facial expression was clearly that of someone trying to make sense of this New World.

There was no sign of joy that he need no longer to endure the difficult and often dangerous quests to find water for his family. No more would he have to dig up roots to squeeze out what precious fluid it secreted. Here, was water in abundance at the turn of a tap and, to him, it clearly made no sense.

We were once at the mercy of Nature, which, while providing for our needs, also set challenges that would threaten our survival. The secret was to adapt to our environment. We were prone to natural catastrophes, disease and predation that are no longer an issue. We have learned to conquer these.

Or have we?

When I say ‘we’ in this context, I mean we as a society that has, within it, the means to provide for the whole. But we, as individuals, remain dependent on this provide-for-all society. Can the carpenter cure illness? Can the doctor make the drugs and equipment used to treat the sick? Can the pharmacist or the technician make the tools and equipment they need? On and on it goes. Even the most able among us is dependent on the whole.

We are no longer at the mercy of nature but at what price? Nature does not seek to enslave us. Nature does not pursue power over us. More to the point: nature does not seek to control us for its own ends. Nature does not even demand that we give back what we take from it and we, as a society have exploited this generosity to the detriment of the very bounty upon which all life depends.

The concept that we are no longer dependent on nature, however, is a myth. We may have learned to utilise the Laws of Nature to the extent that we are less at the mercy of natural catastrophe, disease and predation but we have certainly not replaced nature.

Even our language implies that we have largely rendered nature redundant. We describe the materials we concoct and the devices we construct as ‘man-made’ to distinguish them from natural materials and resources. What about beeswax? Is that a natural product or a bee-made product?

You see the point I am getting at. The term: synthetic implies that it is something uniquely created by man when, in fact, all man has done is rearrange molecules that were already there. A chair is not a tree but without the tree to begin with, the chair would not exist. Whatever we create must be created from what is already there; in other words: from what nature has provided.

We are as much a product of nature as a bee and anything we make is as much a natural product as beeswax. The Internet is as much a natural process as pollination. We cannot disassociate ourselves from nature no matter how hard we try and we can only pretend to ourselves that we have become its master.

At the risk of alienating myself from those who devoutly worship a higher being, I contend that it is the concept of an all-powerful Lord and Master that is at the very heart of the atrocities we inflict on ourselves and the creatures with which we share our world. For the essence of this concept is malignant power.

It is, perhaps, significant that the atrocities that we condemn as inhuman are the results of behaviour that is exclusively human.

The power to bend others to one’s will is, in reality, an illusion; it depends entirely on the willingness of others to bend. It is a Power Game that we play in an attempt to conquer the gods we have invented in the way we think we have conquered nature.

There are no gods that rule over us. Nature does not rule over us and the powers within our societies that rule over us – the politicians, the military, the police and so on – do so only with our consent. Yes. These powers can put an individual in prison or into slavery or even put an individual to death and there is nothing that the individual can do about it. But the individual alone did not give them the powers to do so – neither did nature and certainly not the god that we invented. This power has been given to them by the collective mass of individuals we call society.

The only predators that modern Homo sapiens need fear are modern Homo sapiens. Such predators are the darkest, the deadliest and the most fearsome predators that any creature has ever had to face for such predators demand far more than the occasional morsel. Their objective is to become the Omni powerful gods that we, in our darkest fantasies, have created.

We all desire power. Having invented the concept of power over others, it has become an intrinsic element of our psyche. We want to win the lottery; we want to become famous; we want to prosper. But what do all these aspirations amount to? It isn’t simply the attainment of power over our own destinies so much as the attainment of power over others. We can become free of debt without winning the lottery. Although prosperity in essence, simply means the ability to live in comfort and independence, in our society, prosperity means perpetual growth; perpetual expansion and, ultimately, power over others. What is fame? It is public acclaim. It is having influence. In short: power over others.

All this has grown from the concept of a god who, although all-powerful, is suspiciously subject to the frailties of humanity: jealousy, anger, vengefulness and a megalomanic obsession with being worshipped.

The weapon of the powerful – be they gods or men – is fear. They have made us afraid of nature. It is interesting that one rarely hears expressions of praise for the righteousness of others in terms of being God-loving or God-respecting. Righteousness is invariably defined as God-fearing. Doesn’t this, in itself tell us something?

In nature we can learn to avoid or otherwise protect ourselves from that which can harm us or, in the face of inevitability, accept our fate. In society, we cannot even identify that which we fear, which makes it all the more fearsome. The objects of fear that are instilled into us include other nations, other ideologies, terrorists, war, debt, failure and, of course, God. What do all these terrors have in common?

We invented each and every one of them.

This brings me back to why I want to be able to make the things that I need including the tools with which to make them. I am still very much at the mercy of the society in which I live but the ability to live outside society, whether or not one actually chooses to do so, is empowering. It brings everything else back into proper perspective.

There is a vast difference between power in the malignant sense and empowerment. The former is to exercise power over others while the latter is the means to resist and, in some cases, even disregard such allusions to power.

Ask yourself this: where does the seat of power lay? Is it in the head that wears the crown or in the hands that place the crown upon the head?

The power to oppress is the offspring of consent.