The Death of Nature

The Death of Nature – Caroline Merchant

186

so Ive followed the train of thought which much agreement so far… but I am feeling like my deep and passionate concern for the wellbeing of the earth, for the ideas of holistic and sustainable living – for a partnership with nature, etc. suddenly grind to a halt with the implication that genetic sciences are an obvious and antagonistic binary to this perceived “Shangri-La”.

My own health and lifespan waits in the wings for these mechanistic medical and scientific breakthroughs – so I’m stopped dead here. Literally. Ive considered it before, Ive even proclaimed my own willingness to have tossed myself to natural selection in the name of idealistic natural harmony.
To hell with that now, I’m not in one camp or another with this book – but I don’t think that it is so simplistic as to say that these ways are so evidently, and intentionally antagonistic to nature and women…are they?

I think that there must be some sort of balance – where we adapt our fervent drive for progress to heed a little eco mindfulness – and put reason to use in keeping ourselves “sustained” via our necessary connection to this earth and its sustenance.

I truly believe we are part of a connected living whole… not in an externalized spiritual destiny sort of way – but rather a we need it, it needs us – lets fix this sinking ship.

Really you simply wake up in your own generation as a newborn – and live to understand the world as it unfolds and is presented to you. So Bacon in his view of women, without forgiving him, is not solely implicated in the societal consensus. We understand the world as it is to us – and most contemporary scientists would have come to understand the “folds and secrets” of nature as ours to explore and manipulate.

Certainly I advocate for this extended leap of observation and contemplation of the philosophies in an effort to make a conscientious decision about our direction and where we take our participation on earth from here. It is a mistake however to imagine that we can wipe the slate clean, or that we can select from the most elite of ideologies and utopias. Or even arrogant to imagine that all others would oblige.

This and at the same time, I refuse to eat meat, I refuse to live a life driven by profit over meaning… and I strive against my own conditionings to find away to participate in my time in the least destructive way I am capable.

Pg 193

“As the unifying model for science an society, the machine has permeated and reconstructed human consciousness so totally that today we scarcely question its validity.”
Good point. I would struggle to erase this narrative.