The Femme Fatale As Avatar For Nature
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-I- INTRO
Progressive man wishes to save nature.
Conservative man thinks he can plunder her unlimited.
But both are mistaken.
For nature cannot be saved, nor can she be destroyed: she always is.
And though she cannot be destroyed, too much agitation is for our extermination…..!
Intoxicated with ambition of ceaseless societal prosperity, the right are delusional that infrastructural and socioeconomic ascent via plundering natural resource is limitless, and without the peril of agitated elemental forces that could obliterate human life — thwarting any of these economic ambitions.
But the doomy faction of the left who blame only government, corporations, and human misdeed, forget it is also our own salvation and even humanitarian spirit that — for all noble intention — also drains natural resource, and contributes to the possibility of environmental peril.
A common lament is that we are bringing about the end of nature, that humans are a blight — "a cancer" — on the earth, which I worry propagates a dangerously nihilistic attitude that is self annihilating due to its dampening, depressing effect on human morale — talk such as "let’s allow the end of humans… it will be good when humans are gone, the earth will be better off without us" — forgetting that we are Earth, and Earth forges on in calm and calamity regardless of our existence. It is never the end of nature, simply the end of us, as just one of Nature’s many species. To survive alongside Nature, and her two faces of brutalism and bestowing, we need optimism, pragmatism, ingenuity and faith in utilising the sciences and politics, to once again defy Nature’s nonstop conveyer belt (revolving on its newborn darlings and tossing back into oblivion its atrophy) on which we are bound like helpless grub, this time moving us further and further potentially into the engulfing and incinerating fire of global warming!
Conservation of our planetary forms is of upmost importance to survive us and the artful Earth, yet the attitude that combines noble saviour with pious, contemptuous condemnation, is somewhat of a false altruism and martyrdom.
What we really want to save is not Nature herself, who exists irrespective of bourgeoise humans and our overinflated sense of effect on her, but our bridge to the parts of Nature which sustain and benefit human survival. Burn our bridge via careless reap without sow, from overfishing to deforestation and — without the parts of her that protect us from her — we will perish in her capricious elemental forces.
It is the parts of nature’s ecosystem that benefit humankind, and other species that we fawn over for their aesthetic and curious existential delights that we fear ending: she has extinguished many a species herself like the (non-avian) dinosaurs under ice.
Others may even prosper on, or be reborn in her next Age in the same cycle of toil, pushing against Nature’s hard boundaries and physical laws to survive.
Such misunderstandings and their respective outrages, whilst noble, are born from the human supremacist delusion that we are somehow separate from Nature — forgetting perish and decay is as much Nature as bloom and life is; believing it is only wicked society corrupting humans’ otherwise "benign" natural condition (a romanticised view derived from Rousseau, as Paglia reminds us); blame deflected from the ultimate fascist dictator of all time — NATURE.
But naturally so: this is the romantic illusion she bewitches us with, coyly flattering and inflating the ego of humankind; letting us feel important, autonomous, wilful; fearing scarcity of her resources, thus inciting various factions and tribes to accuse and war against each other — just as the most skilful and clever femme fatale does. Conservatives and progressives wrestle futilely over her submission or liberation, whilst she looms omnipotent, and fuels the fight herself! It is herein that it suddenly seems uncanny and brilliantly apt that Camille Paglia, in her book Sexual Personae: Art & Decadence from Emily Dickinson to Nefertiti, cites the return of the femme fatale as an avatar for Nature, with her burgeoning force against our barriers of society and technology; the safe passageway through Nature’s storm in the form of houses and dams -- curating and redirecting for our survival the very same elements that can extirpate us. I cannot help but evoke and pay homage to Paglia in my descriptions of Nature through this essay. I will go on to extrapolate upon Paglia’s symbolic use of the femme fatale for Nature (whom she describes as "a return of the repressed", positing "the more that Nature is beaten back by the West, the more she appears") by donning literary Paglia drag, but also endeavour on my own rumination around the paradox of defining society and technology as their own separate categories from nature, as well as my personal thoughts on philosophically and pragmatically navigating the future with the phenomenas of nature, technology, animal kind and human civilisation in mind.
Though some may read my attempt at reconfiguring and reconceptualising our notions of nature and technology as pedantic (and even arrogant, radical or preposterous!) I emphasise these as — despite identifying the validity of perish, viruses and human extinction — not only do I wish for Nature and human life’s harmony and prosperity, but I also believe our fundamental misunderstandings about Nature from the outset mean we construct skewed social systems and ideologies that, regardless of their political position, cause us further problems instead of helping us; blundering in with cultural proscriptions or political legislations that have worse sociological (or spiritual) ramifications.
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-II- CONFUSE BAMBOOZLE INTOXICATION ROMANTICISM
We long to return to benign and harmonious nature, from metropolitan malaise. Even when right before our eyes are such blatant calamities as sky-storm sparking the forest into incandescent fire and perishing its animal dwellers; cruelties as the brutalising bloodbath of mauled and mangled ligaments that wild beasts must partake in simply to survive (since Nature has made us all edible and nutritious food stuffs!) We see demonstrated explicitly the violence of Nature, via the documentaries of David Attenborough for example, cinematically displaying all its savagery and elemental onslaught for our comfortable home viewing; though through a strange cognitive dissonance by virtue of our enduring romanticism, we fail to make the connection that society, despite its shortfalls, has also saved us from Nature. Cushioned in the bourgeoise world — overconfident in the intellect and immersed in the political — we increasingly overlook Nature’s own violent tyranny, and mistake it for society’s.
Rather, we need a balance of Nature and Society. We only see the beauty of Nature because the social systems and technologies we are ungrateful for have given us sanctuary and made us forget its iron fist, which indigenous peoples know well for living in her throws (often deifying her elements as Gods of Storm or Rain, Harvest or Fertility; the deification both recognising Nature’s supreme omnipotence and her danger). We overestimate ourselves, and oftentimes even attribute naturally occurring disaster to the wickedness of society. Coronavirus for example sparked many people’s outrage at their government’s handling of the epidemic, whether rightfully or unfairly vilified as incompetent (an understandable outrage, as we feel helpless and futile in the face of tragedy and disaster, making dubious governmental behaviour further exasperating. There are times too, however, where government, and science, can do either nothing or are extremely limited by Nature’s incessant creative regeneration and outsmarting of our systems i.e — virus mutation — something which in our age of medicinal and technological ingenuity we find hard to accept. The huge feats of science are breathtaking yet never fully comprehensive). We now see a government such as China’s, at one point lauded as a model nation for its efficiency in containing the virus, still continuing with zero-covid policy lockdown restrictions long after most other countries in the world have reopened, which begs the question: when do social controls attempting to quell Nature (sex, disease, human will) in the name of "greater good" become worse than the catastrophe itself? Governing bodies' strict suppression, whilst efficiently executed, comes at the cost of its people’s freedoms to the extent that another kind of disastrous, unhealthy epidemic of mental (and in turn, bodily) illness is born. (In contrast, the UK government's seemingly lackadaisical and careless approach, though widely criticised, has ironically been to our benefit in comparison to China’s, which continues to enact scary, brutalising and totalitarian clamp downs on its people’s freedoms. The old adage "the best laid plans of man go awry" rings true. Our outrage at government ineptitude and inefficiency is our self-soothing — a pacification against the horrifying, deterministic truth that Nature has the last call). As Paglia argues, society is the imperfect attempt to stem the storm of Nature, which has the power to break through all of our social and technological defences, with her ceaselessly spawning and highly creative repertoire of viruses and diseases in constant reincarnations. Her army is infiltrated everywhere within us, as our bodies themselves not only team with bacteria, but are bacteria upon the Earth. Social, medicinal, and technological remedies and defences are miraculous breakthroughs, but never a guarantee.
Of course one could argue that something as coronavirus was human-borne, whether believed to be humans' unsanitary and inhumane dealing of animal foodstuff at markets, deliberate bioengineering, or careless lab scientists. But such human acts of scientific experimentation originate from having to deal with Nature in the first place: amidst government commissioned sciences, like the Atomic bomb to ward off rival nations (which has too originated from Nature if traced back far enough to our tribal instincts and threat of outside invasion) is the altruistic notion of trying to alleviate human suffering at the hands of antagonising Nature, by using the very tools Nature has given us (brain, limbs, element) to provide food, medicine, clothing and other means of survival and comfort to the masses, which sometimes goes awry. This is the paradox that I will explore further on in the essay.
The charge that activists make (exemplified by such figures as Greta Thunberg, passionately galvanising us against the government and corporations, declaring "you have stolen from us!" in her U.N Climate Summit Speech) is a noble sentiment and true in many senses — but also forgets that it is not only megalomaniacal or morally bereft governments, but the salvation of humanity at large from tyrannical nature (beast, weather storm, dried up ecosystems leading to starvation) via ingenious technologies providing our own comfort, sanctuary, and means to lend humanitarian aid, which drains natural resource — since all of our technologies are built with Nature (though the innovation of technologies such as solar power and wind turbines, despite still having some adverse effects, are promising in their attempt to generate power more renewably). Once the parts of Nature essential for our inventions expire and our infrastructure falls out the bottom, society concaving — unless saved by some triumph of scientific and technological ingenuity — we return to Nature’s slavish womb and her existentially mysterious, cyclical, alchemical operations (as can be seen in CGI forecasts of humanity's expiration when all our hubristic constructions melt into the sea and Nature swallows metropolitan steel into its multiplying fur of green bed). Would civilised society be willing to go freezing cold, forgo long distance travel by vehicles in favour of nomadic foot, forage for food, or fight wild beasts for food hand-to-hand again in the completely non-egalitarian survival-of-the-fittest food chain game? As a society, it’s possible we would descend to being Nature’s anarchic children once again — a dog-eat-dog dystopia; as horror, scarcity, and brutality take hold in the absence of social welfare and technological infrastructure. Then, organised banding together of mostly patriarchal tribes (with a few amazonian queens here and there) — rival tribes committing pillage against the other to procure resources for their own; rape as exertion of unrestrained, self-satisfying animal instinct. Where we contemporarily blame everything on patriarchy and social constructs, we would witness plain to see that “social hierachism” and “patriarchy” emerge as a direct result and response to the scarcity, anarchism, and chaos that Nature beholdens us with. To only blame government does not confront the crux of the threat to our civilisation. That the technology and social orders created in an attempt to improve human quality of life themselves are what could once again return us to the tempestuous colosseum of blustering Nature, is much like the biblical fable of the Tower of Babel, in which human’s attempt to reach into the heavens by building a tower to it is struck down by God. Our "tower" (social welfare, technology, charity) relies on "God" (here, Nature): by building it up so high with various infrastructures of social welfare or economic development dependent on intwined, overwrought bureaucracies, it caves in at the route, as the Natural resources we need to sustain such systems run dry: our attempt to ascend into utopia topples and drags us back down into the vulgar froth of Nature’s procreative spawning (a portrait similar to most artistic depictions of HELL) once again.
Cities in dust is ultimately not evidence of human failure, since all of our actions or apathetic inactions are all deterministically choreographed — but is evidence of Nature's final say; returned to its laws, unshielded and unarmed, as our psychedelic smoke screen — our hallucination of society — evaporates away and flickers like a hologram, faltering between our present last days of decadence and the future-present; sucked into Nature’s cyclone and spat back out into a sudden new reality: revealing that once supreme superstate — convicted and complacent in its power — as in fact fragile, dreamlike, illusory, and ephemeral.
Perhaps the romanticisation of nature is even a lust to return to the animalistic, bestial cycle, which beneath our saccharine portrait, spumes with the dark animalism we latently recognise, from those whom are made dreary by modern comforts, usually stemming from our lack of creativity and imagination to enjoy the pleasures we are ungrateful for. A pathologised (and natural) obsession with more and more status mar and numb us to our luxurious society, which people from environments of scarcity may see as utopian paradise on Earth! The first-world society, for all its affluence, is spiritually bereft -- poor at navigating our psyches through the technological systems that have alleviated much of our laborious toil. Do we overlook ancient philosophical, spiritual systems and their forgotten wisdoms applicable to today’s dilemmas, in unbalanced favour of leftist or rightist mantras from the contemporary era, which focus only on the tangible surface warts of society, instead of the underbelly -- the virus -- that spawns them? Irrespective of a valid lust to return to the serene appreciation of not only Nature's beauty, but her violence (as an integral element of life; despite civilised protestations of pacifism, humans are in reality alivened, delighted, and excited by violence, as seen through history by humans gathering in morbid fascination to witness public hangings and executions, gladiators in the colosseum, bull-fighting, and modern day action horror gore movies & video games) one must first understand Nature for what it is.
(Returning to violent Nature is not without value or virtue — living in the elemental world and witnessing the visual splendour of lightening storm cracking across the sky as you are truly connected to it for living in the thick of her systems; relying on, observing and learning to ride the waves of her seasonal operations first hand; truly connected to other humans as comrades by the will to survive galvanising moments of altruism when not in battle against each other. Psychedelics such as Shrooms provide moments of metamorphosis, vision quest and cosmic travel in hallucination and dreamworld, as become alivened are Nature's patterns on plant or animal — warping, swirling and shapeshifting before and into your eyes! We presume such vision quests are a recreational feature invented in modern life, but many indigenous peoples had all of these sensory trances and psychedelias. I am sure at some points there would have been Shrooms to tribal drums that they enjoyed not so dissimilar to entranced technoheads of the metropolis in our modern age. But since Nature has willed us this far…. surely it would be a waste to throw handy civilisation away, despite this attractive portrait that may be ever more attractive to those dullened eyes fatigued from computer screens and modern, inert, artless living. If only civilisation could be upheld without enslaving many of its peoples. The idealistic in me thinks that capitalism could still exist without the excesses of labour that some suffer in a tormenting hamster wheel (so we can too avoid an imprisoning socialism in the name of "fairness" that can easily reveal its shadow face as a clipper of wings, as liberties or pleasures deemed "unfair " or "unequal" are capped or forbade. As Paglia cites though, regarding a "fairer" capitalism: the more egalitarian the system, the less productive and efficient it becomes. But, do we NEED that much productivity? I’d say no, especially given our dwindling environmental resources — where the danger may lie however is in competition between superstates: as the West (the centre of such discourses as identity politics and social equality, which Western progressives forget is of far lesser concern elsewhere in the world, let alone being only a small faction in the West itself) becomes fairer and alleviates the enslaved from relentless productivity, will rival war-mongering superpowers seize on a fairer yet weakened state and grab for stronger foothold? Overt brutal war or covert war using sneaky conniving tactics? Or does the fair society improve morale? How much are the progressive factions within the West influencing factions of people in other cultures internationally? Many big questions !!! And where will robots with less proneness to fatigue (though with the problem of malfunction and systematic error) play into production and economic growth? Would there be but no other relevant system than socialism once A.I does all the work for us? But anyway, whether bored and atrophied to inertia from spoon-fed comfort or slavishly overworked in soulless environments, Nature herself is a gruelling taskmaster as much as the exploitative fat-cat CEO and their fiendish bureaucratic managerial army, which progressives would soon realise if returned to Nature, and go on again to curse the sky like madmen and they would see the genesis of misogyny is from Nature’s opaque Mona Lisa smile that placidly looks on as her lower parts froth and create on out of her spawning more beings of various forms to toil and suffer as we all toil and suffer (And re: misogyny — intense hatred is so close to sublime love, and women are the everything the mother the goddess so no wonder shunned men go pathological and misogynist). But at least in Nature, one toils in the realm of the senses: sunlight bouncing from luminous grassy patches to ricocheting river-dance and emanating hot on stone — intoxicating and delighting us! Rather than slavish, philistinic cubicles devoid and stripped of any art or life. Nature is a sumptuous display in itself: full of theatre, drama, cruelty, beauty, tragedy and pathos — whether it is that of a plant’s life of proud exhibitionist bloom of love, display and embrace of the imbuing sun, into wither, retracting into resigned surrendering hunch of a stalk and wrinkled petals; or a lizard’s airborne leaps and bounds to a backdrop of epic rocky terrain escaping a clan of snakes! All constantly lit and emoted by sun or moon, soft buffer of mist, or desolate overcast cloud. Art, poetry, culture are all only drawn from the awakened consciousness interpreting and rendering Nature’s display. (One’s aesthetic enjoyment depending on the ecosystem the ovarian lottery has birthed you into that is — hopefully sea, jungle and seasons for good harvest rather than parched desert or blistering cold — such barren geographic conditions and their ecosystems being some of the variables that motivate WAR and generally aggressive peoples, since peoples who live in such conditions are in ultra-survival mode, agitated and harshened by the intolerable elemental forces. Progressives overlook this in their attributing of everything to men, patriarchy, and colonialism, which are recent phenomenas — and fail to identify the anthropological route in violent and violating Nature — which has traumatised us since the beginning of time. Both our subconscious memory of the trauma Nature has induced in us, and its continuing puppeteering and exploitation of our bodies, are the internal virus that sprout external warts on the societal, technological haven).
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-III- POETIC DESCRIPTION OF NATURE
Nature is a psychopath — laughing like a perverse chameleon, disfiguring herself regularly with hurricane, earthquake and sky-storm.
She would be quite happy with a barren terrain, which looks like destruction to us from our human-centric gaze. Other species might thrive in an ecosystem that is perilous to us; we see cockroaches, locusts and microbe viruses as negatives wrought about by human misdeeds — but surely they also have their right to life, as Nature’s creatures of the Earth? And though with the ability to bring human peril, also sustain human life i.e live bacteria in yoghurt that is good for the gut, and healthy bacterias themselves naturally occurring in the gut. The antidote is in the poison — the yin and yang polarity endures through the universe. Whether we could optimise darkness and light in the perfect amounts required to produce a “utopia”, is another grand philosophical question….
Nature mutilates herself with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes. She is a maniacal mistress, frightening in her contentment to be beautiful or hideously disfigured. Her repertoire includes female cannibal black widows that devour her male lovers, Venus fly traps that subsume the fly who dare afford themselves a moment of respite sitting, suddenly incarcerated in her prison of teeth— dissolved and absorbed by her super!-natural enzyme technique, parasitic worms that gobble through the eye from inside out, rousing Stephen Fry’s disdainful attitude on God if God is alive, or his hope that for such a cruel world a God with the power to end such suffering or not conjure it in the first place could ever exist….
(Perhaps they are my own projections, but my poetic attitude is that God is the passive father. He got Nature pregnant but now she is spawning uncontrollably. She is the unruly glamorous wife that goes off on her own accord and has many affairs. A tempting representation of Nature is in fact Elizabeth Hurley in her red catsuit in Bedazzled, in devilishly kinky, punishing humour. Nature's attitude is not kind towards the human race, but stylishly indifferent and independent as a cat. Though we are interconnected, her operations remain independent of human will. We are dragged through her deterministic undercurrents with each of her unstoppable and forcible shifts. Why we are placed conscious on this pleasure-pain spectrum is an unknown mystery of existence. Homosexual men’s mysterious worship of the great divas is an homage to the great mother goddess in their psyche -- that Jung calls Anima -- and the goddess aka Nature whom is metaphysically female).
She is a mistress of reinvention; the notion that it is us whom bring about the end is our inflated delusion — she is simply preparing for her next incarnation. We are pawns in her grand master plan.
Don't patronise GRANDE DAME NATURE with this talk of "we are destroying the planet!" It is NATURE HERSELF who programmed us with the capacity to prosper with technology, and then draw ourselves to natural conclusion, destroying ourselves with it. We destroy only our bridge to nature, and the resources that happen to sustain and be useful for human survival - not nature itself. There is no such thing as destroying nature. Nature is immortal. If we have potential to destroy nature it is nature’s own programming. She respawns limbs SUPERnaturally. We are servants of nature's odd survival of the fittest game, like warriors thrown into the colosseum — ripped nonconsensual-y and screaming from the womb, our consciousnesses each others’ spectres; voyeurs of various beings’ emotional and physical states, transmogrifying under the looking glass of situational changes, always transposing to alternate constellations of environment; societies into new temporary distillations that beca-ome legendary mythological archetypes; privy to ecstasy, despair, or existential aimlessness. We are made of her elements: water — our blood; that same electric from the lightening sky — as the electrical currents powering, generating, jump-starting, alivening our minds; wind and air — passing through our transformative mechanism of lungs (which is also bore from Earth and made spongey by water) breathing life into our cells, and that very act of transformation — alchemising oxygen out into carbon dioxide — providing us life. Are we provided life and consciousness for our part contribution in collaborating with trees and keeping going Nature’s system as her worker bees? She gives us recreation time too with our ability to ponder; to aestheticise and to feel pleasure…..? Whether the destructive wars we constantly wage with each other or the relentless creative, sexual impulse, they are all once again Nature exerting her force through us: boiling aggressive blood when she sprinkles a dash of testosterone in her bubbling pot; the throbbing emotionality (whether compassion and nurturing or menstrual rage) when oestrogen surges through (or mixes in a volatile reaction with the testosterone!). We wage war much the same as cells in the human body do constantly: red blood cells fighting off the white trying to invade the bodily constitution and usurp its host (like syphilis into the brain!).
She has programmed us to prosper, go too far, grow too large and swell, and then COMBUST!!! Like a balloon full of hot air expanding, twiddling the knitting needle in her hand: she decides when is our time to pop. Dorothy frolicking on poppers racing the egg-timer of her heart! The talk of "we humans are cancers on the earth!" is an overestimation of our position and effect (though we could be considered cancer in the way we are formed from Earth and eat Earth— but only in the same way that she has planned us to). And such is the delusion of man in the presence of the femme fatale — that he can create and creates anything of his own, when everything he uses to create is sourced from the Mother a/k/a the Earth womb.
After humanity is extinguished she may birth a new species in dank squalor and darkness, which must fight for survival ravaged by other beasts or elements; battle each other to create a society, one tribe RISING, and then spectacularly falling from supremacy to disgrace again. It is like how she draws a rose to first poke out as an innocent bud, see if it survives to full bloom, and then wither into disgrace and decay — defiled and rotten petals — only to set the cycle on, forever reborn into bloom and perish; excessively manufacturing like gigantic garment factories do for the fashions of next season.
She is a witch, an alchemist: she programmes machines, weaved together with all her sorcery and command of the elements, to let them fight each other in a futile battle, hubristically thinking that they are the self-determiners of their fate.
I wonder if technology (the dark side of it— with drones, war machines, and A.I run amok and usurping the human hand — the ultimate dystopian nightmare — technology going off on its own accord!) is frightening not in its threat to nature, but in its utilitarian similarity to nature; how enslaving and full of trickery she can be. That technology, which once offered us sanctuary and salvation, could return us to enslavement through human over-zealousness, reckless usage, and deadly, addictive fixation — and illude us as much as nature does (deepfakes etc. — a double whammy meta illusion, since nature already has illusions and obscures the mystery of existence opaque! We’re now simulating illusions on top of the illusions Nature’s already given us!). The wings and anatomy of the beetle, as architecturally structured as the robot drone: both created for slavish and psychopathically unconscious purpose. The breasts of the woman like the udder of the cow and slave to the parasitic but beautiful offspring babe. It is ART that is the psychedelic anomaly; the supernatural defiance by transformation of both nature and technology -- from fascist utilitarianism to existential contemplation and sublime modality. Object from purposefulness and necessity for survival to divine aesthetic appreciation; Aestheticism, and the mode of living and seeing life as art, is luxuriating in the fact of being alive, and for being materialised in form. Ultimate sensuality -- hyperconscious pleasure that is wise and playful enough not to be coldened by the Mercurial quality of over-intellect (for art is not only based in the mind, but begins in the sensitivity of the body). To see the beauty as much as the enslavement of motherhood: the bathing in the maternal afterglow, not only the pragmatic impression of servitude. Contemplating beautiful heartache and struggle in art; in painting — natural disaster for plaintive and reflective contemplation via the eye. Men at war as poignant, heroic and homoerotic, their particular male beauty of virile body and muscle flex a byproduct created from (and our appreciation of it created from) the sacrifice of life they have made for combat and physical prowess: virile, dangerous, HOT masculine strength. Of course in real life we experience many of these things as tragedies that disturb and upset us -- it is a tragedy to lose people to war and violence. Yet, one cannot deny that the dark elements such as male aggression, strength and dominance many of us are wired to be sexually attracted to -- a difficult issue to philosophically wrestle with. One could argue that to derive pleasure from such suffering displayed in art is completely immoral. Yet, paradoxically this art heals us and consoles us from suffering. The society without art, or art that is only allowed propagandistically, is utterly repressed and depressed. The antidote is in the poison. Progressives should be careful that in their didacticism and hatred of art that does not conform to their politics, they do not begin to mirror the fascism of the Nazis, or Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities beginning in 1495 in Florence, which burned manuscripts, paintings, and tapestries considered to be decadent.
Mother Nature is the true sorceress and alchemist of our biologies and psychologies, and humours us by impassioning our belief in free-will and self-determination; the conviction of grand importance given to our urgent pursuits, that are humorously and humbling-y frivolous in scale to the cosmos.
We grow too large, the camp who want to carrying on growing and denying environmental disaster battling with the camp who want to "save nature" — but it was only Mother Nature exerting her force through us all the whole time !!
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IV. NATURE TECHNOLOGY PARADOX
Yet, in the very language I am using, talking about nature as a separate entity from humans and technology, a universal trope of modern Western thought (inherited by philosophers such as Descartes) and built into the fabric of our entire understanding of our world — there is paradox.
The notion that man binds nature in chains gives man far too much credit.
For the paradox is this: that we are nature herself. The definitional separation of "nature" and "society" / "nature" v "technology"; the dichotomy between the "natural" and the "man-made" is a delusion. Man made nothing without nature — and can make nothing without nature. We and our technologies are merely her arms and further extensions. Meta? It is an illusion that humans can create anything truly of their own.
We think we create, let alone think things ourselves. Every tool you create with (limb, natural form, spoken word, ingenious thought arising from the elemental activities of brain) is Nature’s. We are mind controlled by all the raw materials she mixed us together with. Everything that we are is stardust in motion, seemingly solidified into flesh form from hideous planetary ooze (seemingly so because we are not solidified; only time relativity allows our experience of slowness — really we are the universe in kaleidoscopic liquid motion; fleshy cosmology expanding and exploding in warps, throbs and ebbs).
A beaver’s dam is a piece of technology as much as Elon Musk’s rockets are (let alone a human dam, surely based on the beaver's dam!); though we would consider a beaver’s dam to be nature and Elon Musk’s rockets to be technology. This is an example of the definitional dubiousness of our separate categories for "nature" and "technology".
One could argue it is human arrogance to place the rockets above the beaver’s dam — for complexity doesn’t necessarily mean superiority.
(For all of our social and technological prowess — have we wrought greater contentment than animal kinds, for example?)
Why is this distinction between what we consider to be Nature, and what we consider to be society, technology, human invention and thus self determination relevant? Because it is connected to our entire way of thinking pertaining to everything from the way criminal justice is enacted and executed by punishment based on the idea of human free-will, when really Nature determines us. (Or, though initially benign seeming, with“help” rather than punishment, which also holds dangers, for whom decides on what conditions are "dysfunctional", and whom decides on what the "help" is? Should be psychological or medical? What is the help is at the cost of?) Our strange and vague notion of "social constructs" — as if humans supernaturally wrought social codes out of nothing, for no other reason than to oppress society — which has no anthropological basis, or interest in our origins. Why tribes banded together; why (and where and where not) patriarchy prevailed; why Nature created alchemic hormone formations and brain chemistries to drive certain behaviours, and create certain imaginative conceptualisations to further drive us on top of our base form's codings and wirings.
An example of nonoptimal moral systems based on misunderstandings, are Conservative theocratic states and religious doctrines, which often repress sex to the point it creates psychosexual pathologies and even violence in people (the strong and naturally aggressive sexual force wanting to burst forth, encased in a constitution that represses the sex flow due to societal restrictions — whether one considers the restrictions understandable for social order, or inherited paranoia from religious thinking that was still developing, is nevertheless an explosive and volatile mix. It becomes even more turbulent, and the outlet when not allowed through sex must flow instead through the pathologised psyche, leading to hateful phobia or physical violence. The energy must come out somewhere, rather than with a kiss or a thrust, then with a FIST). The progressive side thinks it can regularly indulge and delve into the sexual underworld in orgiastic, Dionysian tableaux without psychological or physical repercussion, as if all of its demons are fictions invented by religious thinkers arbitrarily. The demonic and dark aspects of sexuality — its emotional phantoms and wounds, evidenced by our taste for sadomasochistic relief and the intense emotions like sexual jealousy and possessiveness that sex can incite, as well as the potential for disease — are very real (until our technology gets to a stage where it can defy all of these. Diseases such as chlamydia and gonorrhoea build up antibiotic resistance, and strains of HPV can turn into cancer. A balance of self-restraint and indulgence seems best: excess repression AND excess expression can be one’s undoing).
Technology comes from Nature and in essence is nothing but Nature. Since technology is often represented as male, is it much like how Men come from Women, not only from the womb but they START as females in the foetus — so are nothing but women with enlarged clitorises?
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V. THE FEMME FATALE AS AVATAR FOR NATURE
This is why the femme fatale is the ultimate avatar for Nature, as Camille Paglia cites. She is a glamour puss and plays the damsel, seducing progressives and conservatives to fight over her, hypnotised by her fine aesthetic repertoire: seemingly supine seas for example, that conceal not far beneath its placid, glimmering surface, perils such as ravenous riptide, or a lethal bloom of box jellyfish! She gives the impression of an apparent malleability and ease of manipulation — though she is the one truly in control, and who’s elemental reaction builds up with a vengeance (or perhaps a better, more amoral word — a momentum). Our very tools of "manipulating" her are hers to begin with (not only our arms that she has incarnated as flesh and bone, but even our ingenious inventions constructed using our mental faculties — both the thought and the tool is derived from her element to begin with — sharpened stick — but we make it happen with our thoughts, no? Well it is wet mass of brain alivened with her electrical element that allows you thoughts to begin with. It is all hers!). She fools us all that she is helpless, passive, subservient — conservatives wanting to exploit and harness this for glory of nation, and progressives wanting to "save" her as the knight in shining armour (blaming social injustice on human/governmental cruelty, without looking at what galvanises this human cruelty to begin with). Such is the delusion of hubristic human overestimation of their role: Nature seduces us all, whatever our political persuasion, into peril and perish -- all to continue her cycle using us as foodstuff for her other species, or nutrition for the Earth (that beckoning bed of gurgling soil — the ravenous yet inconspicuous swallower for she hides in plain sight, the hungry mouth of Earth!). We are Nature’s long harvest that she rears like a mother with her baby in the womb, who feeds parasitically from her, rips her flesh upon birth as we enter the physical world — but really is nothing but her and the mother is the goddess whom he returns to over and over. Obsessed and forever insatiable — and never reaching the sublime her that cradles him, attempting with every thrust again to reach but never reaching the womb in the sex act: his spear plunging deep like a rod into the great sea, in eager motions of attempted psychic retrieval. As he pulls out of her, he pulls out with him not only physical vaginal plasma, but imaginative pleasures and plasmas of the mind, plunging back in in cathartic rumination and indulgence of her wetness — wetness being the fertile condition for all creation: frogspawn, bacteria, virus, human! — which spawns existence (and transforms and reincarnates, from some other universe, ether to flesh. Inducted in woman’s goopy factorial cauldron of womb and vulva, woman’s biology is the conduit; pregnancy itself the art of transporting consciousness through multiverses. The vulva — the portal to the new world; the womb — the teleportation machine!).
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VI. WHAT POSITION SHOULD WE TAKE?
Though I have outlined the paradox of defining nature and technology as separate, I will continue to talk using these terms, as it is so entrenched in our thinking and makes for ease of communication. Similar to the fact that though I am a determinist, I willingly live under the illusion of and practice free-will. Though paradoxically, such seemingly “self-determining” free-willingness to pretend I have free will, is ALSO determined anyway.
The best position for humans to take is to regard her with both wariness and awe simultaneously; and learn the dance with nature practiced by the indigenous.
We in bourgeoise society have become forgetful about Nature because technology and society has far removed us from our origin — either with delusional romanticism that confuses our courses of action, or unsacred disrespect.
It is the idyllic romantic attitude towards Nature, that humans are the evil corruptors of "pure" Nature — that threatens to turn humans berserk through mind control; imploding what we deem as wicked capitalist society into the far more competitive and unforgiving terrain of food chain and dancing for rain from which we came.
However, despite my accounting of all nature’s peril, this is not a disavowing of nature: I worship nature, in all her sadomasochistic beauty and glory. The art of holding fear and awe all at once, without becoming resentful is a sophisticated one to be aspired to (usually by way of strengthening and cultivating your own talents or physicality through discipline and dedication — giving a feeling of pride in mastery within Nature’s systems, and respect for her and her mechanics). An imbalanced excess leaning towards either worship or fear leads to skewed social attitudes and platitudes. The man who can only fear a woman, feels a failure in her grandeur and futile in any attempts to entice her — thus resents her and becomes misogynistic. The man who can only be in awe of her, spellbound and willingly blind to her fatale side, can meet his untimely demise……
Our fundamental misunderstandings of Nature lead us to construct flawed social systems that, though well-intentioned, do not help channel the turbulent natural force well and lead us to further anguish, as we navigate confusedly with false understandings of our state.
We demonise capitalist society as the reason for all human ills, forgetting chimpanzee, homosapien, and former socialist and communist regimes that have also been full of violence, strife and conflict. But we also make capitalist society over-aggressive to a state where people turn violent because their esteem is stripped — particularly a faction of proletariat men who go on to antisocial gang crime, perhaps related to the fact that embedded in the male psyche (and physicality in terms of his sperm) is the role of provider— after being kings of the jungle in the schooling system, the less cerebral-based more brawny-instinct-macho-animalistic masculine types whom have not had the necessary educational experience are deers in headlights in the capitalist corporate world which requires cunning, calculation, and interpersonal skill, are stripped of the ability to have power and esteem and provide for their woman — a form of psychic impotency! And puffing up with bravado to compensate; scarcity and exasperated conditions lead to violence, people don’t have a chance to play the otherwise enjoyable capitalist game, and in turn some become apolitical anarchists of the street!
In many ways, is capitalism the closest system to Nature? Which isn’t an endorsement that our political systems should mirror the fascism of Nature. However, perhaps some political systems and their configurations are TOO AT ODDS with our internal nature(s) — like strict socialism dulls and dampens the fire that competition, combativeness and aspiration inspirits in human eyes; or aggressive capitalism burns you out and crushes you under its wheel. And there are various human natures: for some whom prefer to live serenely or as flaneur, aggressive capitalism is maybe far too heavy. Does everyone *really* like the thrill of the fight and competition however - even if capitalisms rules were fairer? Also, people whom are ill and cannot compete. Societies most likely should have AMOUNTS of capitalism socialism libertarianism etc etc. In Nature, we are all born with varying degrees of physical or mental prowess, that lead to our status in the tribe and our ability to manoeuvre through Nature. Jordan Peterson reacts negatively against the idea of “equality” because we are not equal, which I agree with (and mean inequality in the positive sense that we are all imbued with various strengths and weaknesses based on our archetypes). However, the very fact of our inherent mental and physical inequalities prevents us from ever being fully equal even in a socialist system that attempts to equalise people as much as possible! THOUGH the attempt to equalise men and women financially has liberated women in one way, but caused sexual and romantic ennui in another — as for many people, the instincts and subliminal desires (like for male provider) are contrary to our aspirational moralities (which hope for women to be liberated and autonomous, and not abjectly dependent on men. Earning money provides this, but also disrupts the psychosexual balance between many men and women).
"Life is the dancer, you are but the dance" — Erkhart Tolle.
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-CONCLUSION-
Nature is our ultimate Svengali, and we the marionettes; that ruminates beneath us always, and animates us clandestine!
That through all of our supposedly autonomous moves— whether maniacal man at the detonation button, or bureaucrat pushing new dubious legislation: it is Nature’s alchemic surge of hormone, electrical lightening storm powering the brain, and the will-to-power that is really controlling him.
Are humans Nature’s failed experiment? Has she gone as far as she can go with our capacities (like an old computer does not have enough bandwidth for state-of-the-art graphics and programmes, we don’t have the bandwidth to be harmonious and sustain pleasurable romanticism)? I have faith! And think we have come so far and should continue. Conservatives must realise that only in conserving nature can we continue, and leftist progressives must realise and accept the difficult, seemingly paradoxical fact that their progressive politics have only been afforded to them precisely through violent colonisation creating an empire that has the means to support activism and humanitarianism (as earlier occurring, egalitarian, possibly matriarchal societies, never had a chance to prosper as they would have simply been invaded, pillaged, and usurped by aggressive bandit type ones — unless protected by seas of such expanse no one could reach them, but environmental catastrophes would have brought them to an end sooner or later).
Ideally balancing third world nations’ right for economic growth with sustainable initiatives, though this is a complex geopolitical issue and has further implications to do with ethics, international competition and subordination to economic superpowers…..!
Of course, with this hope for human, animal and plant-life prosperity -- the paradox is whether human and animal and plant propagate into space via the intergalactic ambitions of such as Elon Musk, or perish on earth and get swallowed back into her belly before flight (the wilful, naughty son grounded!) is Nature’s call anyway. (Is the universe also considered part of "Nature"? What about when different Natural systems meet each other if aliens start exporting them intergalactically?)
However, using my illusion of free will — that Nature has determined me to have — I will will humans into space and beyond.
But that’s also determined anyway.
To address the nature vs technology paradox — perhaps a more apt definitional separation is to have Nature and that which has been secondarily created thru nature’s form….. Nature & meta-nature? We could still use the word technology of course, but imbue the word once again with a newfound understanding that technology is a part of Nature. We think we made programming, Nature is a master programmer and hacker and the dawning of human computer programming was just part of Nature’s code in the timeline she set for us to evolve in long development!
The femme fatale Nature continues to orchestrate us, and animate us clandestine!
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VIII- AFTERMATH
I lay on the Earth and feel the grassy bedding on firm compact soil so nourishing like radiating up through me from its beating core and substantial constitution of earthy soil I’m laying as a child of the Earth the sun feels so radiant sun. How could I have written about Nature so fatally?
Well of course, the femme fatale doesn’t just bring us to peril — we radiate in her beauty and her way. To radiate in beauty (so often maligned by modernists beauty) is a value in itself — gives pleasure such a contemplative sublime pleasure you feel physiologically even healthy for the body.
Am I being seduced and intoxicated, or recognising truth????
Probably a balance of societytechnology-aka-our-metanature and nature, keeping in mind yin and yang principle, is best………….as I contemplate the new increase of varicose veins on my right leg that could swallow it up from Apollonian beauty to gorgon of Nature, hereditary from my Grandfather on my English father’s side.
#cassandrasthoughts
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