Nature

The word "nature" is an artificial construct.

Humans are animals, just like beavers and prairie dogs. But, we would never think to call a beaver dam or prairie dog town unnatural. Why do we call a human dam or human town unnatural, a.k.a. technological or civilized or whatever your favorite descriptive term is that humans use to try and forget that they are part of nature.

I am not espousing human "progress", quite the contrary. I think nature is the sum of the earth and everthing on it. Humans tend to excuse their mess by saying it's not part of nature. In doing this, a subconscious hierarchy is established. To follow this theory, due to the development of the human ego, it is implicit that human constructs are superior to nature. But, of course, this is a logical fallacy since humans are a part of nature.

To me, that means to truly be superior, humans must elevate all of nature. Do we still get to have cities and cars and computers? You betcha. But, we need to make sure that we are not breaking the system and if we are, to fix it.

I've always thought the real shame of humanity is to be intelligent enough to see the harm that we are creating, but not wise enough to stop it.