77
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
77 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43945 readers
484 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Nature - by definition, are things found in the physical world that aren’t human creations.
Modern homes require electricity, clean running water, modern insulation, glass, smoke detectors, town governments oversight, corporate resources, insurance, etc. All of these things are human creations.
Man-made is similar to hand-made. Both are distinct from machine-made.
Nature is a bit of a spectrum. Something being handmade is closer to natural than something from a factory. Still, neither are natural.
But you see the arbitrary distinction that you’re setting up by differentiating man as separate from nature. I’d argue that humans themselves are “natural” creatures. But every human alive is “man made”
I’m not making a philosophical or physiological distinction.
I’m making a semantic and etymological one.
Nature, as its defined in the English language, is used to describe things that aren’t human creations.
Sometimes it’s used to describe things that, even if manipulated by humans, is distinct from an artificial, chemical or industrial process. Like “natural remedies”. Sometimes it’s just a marketing term, “natural flavors” in a soda brand.
Humans categorically can’t be nature - because we use the word “nature” specifically to distinguish our own creations from the rest of the world.
A human can choose to live in nature, meaning they’re living in a place that is plurality not man-made. An cabin in an unplanned forest, versus Midtown Manhattan. But even then, the human is the not-nature thing. They’re only surrounded by it.