The Environment, or Nature

What should we defend and save?

By Arpad Szakolczai

Today, we take it for granted that it is vitally important to defend and save the environment. But what is signified by this abstract term ‘the environment’? In concrete terms it means the air we breathe, the earth under our feet, rivers and oceans, animals and plants. In other words, what we should indeed defend, and in a certain sense save, is not the “environment”, but nature. So the real question is: why the agenda is not put in this way?

Over the past couple of decades, what used to be called the green movement has become concerned less with defending nature – protecting concrete landscapes and species, preserving the rainforest and saving the whales – than with ‘saving the environment’, which increasingly means the ‘ecosystem services’ required to maintain complex hypermodern societies. What is more, ‘saving the environment’ turns out to require covering remote hills with industrial-scale wind farms and paving deserts with solar panels: i.e., destroying actual, concrete nature.

The question indeed should be pursued, and extensively: who are, or what is, behind the shift of perspective, this change of terminology from nature to the environment? Which agencies, politicians, journalists, scholars, etc., are responsible for this grave alteration? Of course, a blog cannot fully serve this purpose, can only call attention to the necessity that this be done – and offer a few ideas about possible sources and origins.

As so often, the rightly decrepit communist regimes offer some hints. Here again, I’ll rely on personal experience.

I remember distinctly that when, around the age of ten, we had a new subject introduced in school, its name created quite some perplexity for me. It was called “Knowledge about defending the environment”. I was wondering, in particular, what was this “environment” that we are supposed to defend, as the word was only familiar for me as signifying things that were immediately around us; and why it needed to be defended. Given that I was living in a communist regime, and was already aware of its manifold absurdities, I was quite apprehensive about campaigns calling for “defending” something, as the terminology smacked sinister political motivation. But when I perused the book, due to curiosity, I became even more perplexed, as the book was mostly about “nature”, and so this was what has to be defended. This was fine, but I became still more perplexed, as there was a perfectly standard Hungarian expression about the “defence of nature”, and could not imagine a reason why the strange expression ‘defending the environment’ was put as the title of the textbook.

Then I completely forgot this incident, until this theme was brought out again in contemporary politics, where, over the past decades, the concern about “nature” was replaced by the discourse about “defending the environment”. My suspicions re-emerged, leading to the following formulation: what could possibly be wrong with the word “nature”?

Let’s turn, then, to etymology and semantic history, always a reliable starting point for an investigation. The word “nature” has a very straightforward etymology in the Latin word for birth, or being born, and indeed, the most elementary, or “natural”, process of nature is being born: nature is mostly about life and living beings, and every living being had to be “born”, in one sense or another. What it really means is that nature is not a construct; it cannot be fabricated or made; living, organic processes are not mechanical.

Here the etymology of nature recalls the etymology of an evidently cognate word, “nation”, which is again unequivocally traced to the same Latin word for birth or being born. The direct political significance of this word is evident, and similarly plain is the consensus of the current left-liberal academic establishment that the “nation”, every nation, is a construct. But simple etymology seems to problematise such a claim, bringing “nation” closer to “nature”, jointly reinforcing that neither are constructs, rather givens, or gifts, the outcome of long-term historical processes. So, the hostility to nature, and the hostility to nation, are most probably connected.

But let’s turn to other, non-Latin words for nature. In modern European languages it is not easy to find other terms, as in most of them the word for “nature” is a derivate of the same Latin root. In Slavic languages, the situation is very similar, as it is traced to proto-Slavic природа (priroda), which again is traced to birth or being born.

The root of Greek φύσις (phusis) is slightly different, but the meaning is basically the same, as the root is the verb for “grow”, and everything that was born indeed then grows – and only living beings grow.

The Hungarian word, while again slightly different, adds significant further connotations. “Nature” in Hungarian is természet, from terem “bring fruit”, which is almost the same as “grow”, or “bring forth”, which is a synonym of “giving birth”. The significant novelty is that in Hungarian teremt, which is a derivative of terem, means “to create”. The way the latter word is derived is most significant, as the verbal suffix “-t“ in Hungarian implies an activity; or is a way an active verb can be made from a passive word, capturing an event. Thus, the processes of nature just take place on their own; require no human – or other – activity; the active, creative human activity is derivative of nature; might take it further, but can never replace it, or stand in its place.

This is quite significant, as this Hungarian etymological excursion has its theological implications; one only need to recall the expression “generata non creata” in the Nicaean Credo.

Hungarian also offers a further illuminating point, tying back to Greek etymology: the Hungarian word for “grow” is nő, and the exact same word, as a noun, not a verb, means “woman”. And, needless to add, only women can give birth. Still further, nature is feminine in languages that have gender in this way. Another circle is closed around “nature”.

All this has acute relevance for the central issue, the need to defend nature: the need to defend the processes of nature from excessive human intervention.

But what exactly does this mean? Who and what are the enemies of nature? Most of our fellow sociologists have at hand the ready-made answer: it is capitalism, stupid! This answer, however, is a non-starter, even concerning the basic roots and principles of Marxist thinking. For Marx, the problem of capitalism was exploiting men, not nature. This can be seen particularly well in a famous quip of Sartre, suggesting that instead of exploiting each other, men should unite to exploit the natural world – which is exactly the problem right now.

But if the culprit is not capitalism, than what is? It is technology, to be sure, not the solution but the problem, pace Marxists, and many others; but even this is not enough, as technology, modern technology, is only a handmaiden of something else, which we call science. Thus, the main enemy of nature, our nature, the surface and the atmosphere and the upper regions of the Earth, our planet, is nothing else but science.

This, of course, is an enormous claim, and one must tread most carefully here, recalling the advice-title of Gregory Bateson, as here even angels fear to tread. So let’s progress by small steps.

The first such step concerns the immediate paradox: what we now call “science” has been called in the near past – and to some extent even in the present – natural science. Even the title of the main organ of contemporary science is nothing else but Nature. So how could “natural science” possibly be against “nature”?

The answer would require a serious engagement with the history of the “natural sciences”, and the semantic history of the word “nature”, which evidently cannot be done here. I can only offer three short points. First, the “natural sciences” grew out in the early modern period of what then was called “natural philosophy”, as a kind of evident, “natural” development, but it was nothing of the sort. This can be seen by a simple history of the word “philosophy”. The term was invented by Plato, in Phaedrus. The reason, usually, is attributed to Plato’s effort to draw a contrast with the Sophists, and their pretence to possess wisdom (sophia). Instead, Plato placed the emphasis on the quest or striving for wisdom; and on a very specific kind of striving, which is motivated by love (philia). However, and at the same time, the term was also designed to distance his way of thinking from his predecessors, now called “Presocratics”, who called their branch of knowledge physiologia, or the knowledge of nature. From this perspective it is of great significance that the word was introduced in Phaedrus, as in this dialogue, at a key moment, under the great plane tree, Socrates explicitly claims that he appreciates the knowledge that is to be gained by, about, and with, humans, and not about “nature”. And even concerning the knowledge of nature, Plato never lost sight of the centrality of the Earth as the place where for us nature is. It is in this strict sense that we must understand the presumed writing above the entrance door of the Academy, valorising the knowledge of geometry, as “geometry” literally means the measure – another absolute key word for Plato! – of the Earth.

Thus, “natural philosophy” as an expression is seriously anti-Platonic, just as the expression ‘political economy” is anti-Aristotelean. Modern thinking is based on the radical rejection of classical thinking.

But what is put in its place? This is the second point, and here I will just shortly refer to the works of Frances Yates and Agnes Horvath: magic and alchemy, Gnosticism, Hermeticism and Neoplatonism. Modern science does not represent a gradual improvement over the thinking of Plato and Aristotle. No, it amounts to their wholesale and radical rejection, and replacing them with a kind of knowledge which made – here indeed, made! ­– magic and alchemy scientific. Which means that the orientation, the intention, the aim, of modern science is exactly the same as was that of magic and alchemy; except that this now has become “scientific”, meaning universalistically valid. This orientation, which contrasts radically with that of philosophy in its Platonic or classical sense, involves fixating the mind on some specific method, by which things, taken out of their living context, can be deconstructed or destroyed, in order to be reconstructed in a purportedly ‘better’ manner.

The third point concerns the proper meaning of this seemingly self-evident, and evidently positive term, “universalism”. Well, universal knowledge seems to mean a knowledge that is valid everywhere, for everybody, at any time, and so must be universally good, isn’t it?! Unfortunately, no. Universal knowledge is simply generalised alchemy; which means to despoil every single concretely existing entity of any particular feature that is uniquely and specifically its own, whether by ignoring it or by actively destroying it; and then to apply to what was left some generalising and mechanical procedures. Universalistic knowledge is thus inevitably violent, and transformative. And so I must declare my opposition to it.

Science, in the sense of this technologized alchemic science, which developed out of “natural philosophy”, is easily the number one enemy of mankind. Perhaps the time will come – if we are not destroyed by science – when we, humans, certainly by some aid from “higher powers”, can make some sense of this science, keep of it what can be used for our benefit, and discard the rest. But we are not yet living in such times. In our times, the main issue is trying to survive the lethal impact of science.

But science, technologized alchemic science, is not acting alone. It has three main allies. They are, needless to say, all extremely universalistic. One is the stock-market. The stock-market is the real problem behind what is usually called “capitalism”. It is not “private property” – stock-market actions, just to become familiar with elementary facts, are not private, but public. If a private enterprise decides to increase its capital by going to the stock-market, it ceases to be a private company, and becomes public. The entire history of the modern world, and its presumed “progress” and “development”, must be reconsidered in this light. If you’d like to understand what it means, Dear Reader, watch the film of Norman Jewison, Other People’s Money (1991). Economic theory certainly does not understand this, as it simply ignores the stock-market, since its foundation by Ricardo – who, by the way, was a stock-broker, before he founded modern economic theory, and so really knew what he was doing, or ignoring. Economic theory has the further disgrace of considering any impacts of money-making economic activities on nature as “externalities” – closely corresponding to the similarly false and misleading terminology of the “environment”, seconded by the non-sensical terminology of “economic growth”.

The second is the media. The stock-market and the media historically developed together, and in close cooperation – best visible in London, and its ‘Change Alley. They both have an identical universalistic claim, and this universalism has the same foundations: the flux and the void; the flux in the void; theorised by Immanuel Kant as time and space being the universal categories of the transcendental mind. All together, they move to the same direction: universal, total control, where everything is integrated and connected, directed by one central power.

The third ally is more complex, split, schismatic, though it complements, from two sides, the previous three. It is the secular state, the Leviathan, a monster of the sea – a very important particularity, as it captures both the infinity of space, and the flux, the liquidity. The state, on the one hand, captures legal power, and so is both subject to restraints, and required to work visibly, in the open. Yet the ultimate power of the state, through the doctrine of the reason of state, is secret, and thus is yielded by its impenetrable, secret organs, called usually the “secret police”. Such a combination of utmost openness and legality and uncontrolled secrecy reproduces – or is reproduced by – the media, where a seemingly complete openness and transparency is also combined by the complete impenetrability of its actual operations. The state, the secret police, the public sphere and the media constitute the four poles around which modern political power operates – complementing the well-oiled joint workings of the stock-market economy and technologized alchemic science nexus.

We seem to have travelled a long distance from nature, and the question of what it needs to be defended from, and yet, we only completed the description of the mechanism which threatens it – which, in fact, pretend to replace it as the referent points of our life. As the reference point of homo sapiens, for all its history, no matter how many million years we count it, was nature, meaning life on Earth. This, supposedly, is changing now, and we are even living in the Anthropocene. But this is exactly the threat to nature, which the discourse of the “environment”, a base ideological lie, pretends to hide.

In short, the shift from ‘protecting nature’ to ‘saving the environment’ reflects the capture of ‘green politics’ and its associated discourses by the very forces – technologized science, the stock-market economy, the bureaucratised ‘police’ state, the mass media – which are most anti-nature and threaten the living, breathing planet which is our home.

Not only is this discourse dishonest and misleading; its analysis helps to identify the similarly deep dishonesty behind current gender and sexual politics. As this discourse is only made possible by denying the value and relevance of nature. Certain “sexual acts”, as they are now called, belong to nature, as they are necessary in order to reproduce and move forward nature. Other such acts do not have this character, and so they do not belong to nature. But this cannot be acknowledged now.

Everything belongs together, always, forming not a universally valid system, but a historically concrete whole. The inference is self-evident: we live in the lie.