An ancient question, going back to the ancient Greeks (and probably much earlier) is: is nature fundamentally good or bad? Some ancient Greek and Roman philosophers thought it was good. It nourishes us. It provides for us. It’s beautiful.
If nature is good, then going with the flow of nature must also be good. It’s no surprise that, while Greek philosophers were considering this question in the west, Taoist wisdom texts, like Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching would say much the same thing. If we harmonize with nature, it would seem that there’s the potential for the human soul to also be good, by nature. Immorality might be explained as a sort of poisoning or polluting of the soul.
Later, Christian thinkers would emphasize the bad of nature, particularly human nature. (I don’t mean all Christians, just certain theologians and thinkers.) They wondered if the evils of nature didn’t come from the Devil, whereas they imagined God to reside in a transcendent realm. This is the origin of the term “supernatural”, which literally means above nature. It’s easy to see how human nature can be pretty bad. Any of us who have examined our dark sides, or studied history, knows that we humans have the capacity for murder, theft, violence, cruelty, arrogance, and vice. In nature, we also see the wolf kill the lamb. I’ve read nature articles on how chimpanzees, one of the species closest to us genetically, fight wars and even commit genocide.
This begs the question: were the Nazis natural or unnatural? Still, Christian thinkers see God’s grace in all of creation. There seems to be an order to things and a harmony. If we’re in harmony with nature, does that make us good or evil?
Today, I see movements that seem to follow both pro-nature and anti-nature philosophies. Both seem to lead to positive and negative results. Many of us feel at peace in a natural setting. To quote the film “Dreams”, by Japanese film maker Akira Kurasawa, “dirty air, dirty water, dirtying the minds of men.” I recall the beautiful final short in that film series, which shows a peaceful village in harmony with nature and the people there being good and wholesome. I certainly feel that when I get out of the nasty city. There’s something cruel and twisted about the urban sprawl.
Then again, I know of several instances in which following nature is the wrong thing. In my community, there was Wiccan priestess who had cancer, because she refused to use conventional medicine, and tried to treat it all with herbs. Our emotions can also betray us. I think we all, from time to time, want to punch somebody else in the nose, but we don’t because we know it’s wrong. It takes self discipline to keep ourselves from being cruel to others, even when they’re cruel to us. There, it would seem, going against human nature is the key.
Then again, there’s a more old fashioned concept that sex is fundamentally bad. I think this goes back to the idea that nature is bad. In recent decades, having gone through the sexual revolution, gay rights, and similar movements toward sex positive culture, we tend to see sex as being fundamentally positive. Immorality regarding sex has been re-framed from being immoral because they’re sexual to being immoral because they violate the sexual freedom of others. That is, they kill the blossoming of another human being’s sexual goodness, as well as their capacity to love and make love.
One problem with the idea that nature is good seems to me to be which nature? It seems like we defend the idea that nature is good by saying that nature’s good, but this bad part of nature over here isn’t “real” nature. Is the lion less natural than the lamb? I think back to William Blake’s poem “The Tyger”. “Did He who made the lamb make thee?”
However, the same problem arises in saying that nature is evil. Which nature? Again, the lion or the lamb? If we go with the Christian thinkers I mentioned, is eating fish more moral than eating red meat? Are lentils more moral than fish? It seems like Catholic practices seem to imply that eating some foods are more moral than others. Certainly, it builds character to deprive ourselves of red meat, and it’s more healthy, but is it really more moral? Is fasting more moral than eating? From what I know of Christianity, I believe fasting to death would be the sin of suicide, whereas short stints of fasting in a monastery is supposed to bring you closer to God, because it transcends nature and brings us closer to divine super nature. All types of food are equally natural. Fasting may go against nature. Food can sustain us, or be unhealthy. Fasting can be spiritual or kill us. It seems to me that, just as we fall into the trap of saying “real” nature is good and bad nature is “false”, we also fall into a similar trap saying “real” nature is bad and good nature is “false”. (I understand, too, that not all Christians see it this way. I’m only referring to certain Christian theologians who try to make a distinction between transcendent super nature, as good, and manifest nature, as tainted.)
My spiritual mentor, Valerie Voigt, teaches that everything’s nature. I wonder if this might be a way out of this conundrum. If beaver dams and beehives are nature, so are houses and cars. We are animals. What we make is part of nature. In Wicca, I think many of us think of divinity as imminent, rather than transcendent, and natural rather than supernatural. I don’t mean that the Divine is not magical, mystical, and powerful beyond human comprehension. The Wiccans I know think it is, and so do I. I mean that we don’t tend to understand the Divine in terms of being above nature, as much as being deep within it, while also generating it.
I’ve been thinking that maybe the whole question as to whether nature is fundamentally moral or immoral is the wrong question. To quote Alan Watts, “reality is an we won’t give it a name”. A better question might be how can we human beings bring the good aspects of our nature to the fore and control the bad parts of our nature?