I view myself as a more spiritual person than religious person, and sometimes I find religion to be a little overbearing and selfish on the side of human beings. I mean, who said that humans are superior to all animals and nature? We claim that God had relayed this information, and that “he” speaks to us and “created us in his image” but who told us that? Our ancestors, and theirs before them? What if it’s like the game “whisper down the alley” and by the time it gets to each generation, the message is already altered and changed to favor those in power?
It truly irks me to think of all the damage humans have done to the earth that we share with so many other creatures and beings. Lynn White’s section on “Medieval View of Man and Nature” made me really think about how humans simply use everything in sight to their advantage, and if other species are harmed by it, so be it. White describes how the tilling of land changed over the years as more efficient methods were discovered and used, and when White states: “Formally man had been a part of nature; now he was the exploiter of nature” it stirred up my own frustrated emotions about how humans are raping the earth everyday with our constant deforestation, pollution, overuse of fuels, raw materials, and daily ignorance of our effects upon nature. As Moncrief put it in the beginning of his article “One hundred years ago at almost any location in the United States, potable drinking water was no further away than the closest brook or stream. Today there are hardly any streams in the United States…that can safely satisfy a human thirst without chemical treatment.”
We are no longer part of nature when we think or believe that we are above it, and when we treat it the way we currently do.
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