Do we need nature

It’s time once again for the Shell/Economist Essay Contest, in whichyou can win vast sums of money by reusing those high-school expository writing skills. The question last year was “How much freedom should we trade for security?” The winning answer was “none,” and boiled down to the old saw, “boats in a harbor are safe, but that is not what boats are for,” complete with sailing metaphor.

This year’s theme is “Do we need nature?” which has, more or less, the same set of answers: Yes, no, and “trick question.”

Yes, we should give up the liberties a, b, and c in order to maintain safety from dangers d, e, and f. No, no amount of security is worth trading away one iota of our precious freedom. Yes, we need nature for air and warmth and undiscovered plant remedies. No, we don’t need nature, unless you mean some subset of it for raw materials from which we can synthesize everything else.

The third kind of answer argues against the question rather than for the answers it suggests most readily. It says that freedom cannot be traded for security as though they were fungible commodities, or that humanity is part of nature, everything is part of nature, there isn’t any question about needing it or not.

I can think of a dozen reasons why humanity needs nature, and I can certainly support the assertion that the question is unanswerable because humanity and nature are one. But since at least the early 1960s, I don’t think anyone with any serious intellectual ability has actually argued that humanity and nature are not only distinct, but separable, and that humanity controls nature or does not need it.

Although I normally gravitate toward “trick question” type answers, since those are the best way to show off my cleverness, I think that a “no” is probably the more difficult to argue.

Early reviews of Silent Spring accused Carson of alarmism, and stated that “man controls nature.” But that argument, along with the gender bias in its phrasing, has gone the way of the dodo, and for about the same reasons: it’s just too stupid to survive.

Today, there are throwbacks, living in special preserves of political isolation, like giant pandas in a zoo, too ineffectual to breed and preserve their species. For example, Secretary of the Interior James Watt thought conservation was a sin because God had given us just enough resources to last until the End Times, and that those dirty hippies were delaying the return of Christ by trying to save the forests.

I’m sure a “no” answer won’t win the contest– Shell is sponsoring, and they’ll want to burnish their environmentalist credentials. But is there anything even close to a legitimate or defensible “no” answer?

Dialog

Hey! Hey you! Quit playing that power game, that get-ahead game, that who-is-useful-to-me game. People can tell when you’re not on their team, you know. Not at first, not everybody, but it becomes apparent. They’ll tolerate you as long as they know your interests coincide with theirs. But they know that when there’s a sacrifice to be made, you can’t be trusted. I know that when the cards are down you’ll be exposed for the charlatan you are, and you’ll be dropped like a hot rock.

You don’t think I care about this as much as you do? I’m tired, you’re tired, it’s been a goddamn long day. And I do respect you, you know that? But I’ve been around this sort of thing longer than you have, and I will tell you this: the organization does not love you back. It can’t. It’s not a person. It will use you, because that’s its job. I know you’re angry because it’s letting you down now, because it can’t return your love. I’ve been there. It happened to me more than once. I gave everything to a team, to a job, to whatever, and when I’d given as much as I could, one of two things happened: either it was enough, and the org threw me away because I was used up; or it wasn’t enough, and the whole thing collapsed and everybody got fucked. I know how desperately you need to be loved and how much you hate yourself, and me, for it. Let me give you one serious, honest piece of advice: take care of yourself first.

You selfish fuck. You miserable, selfish, egomaniaical little shit. You’re a complete fucking sociopath, you know that?

Call me what you want. Self-preservation is your first directive. People help each other, and make sacrifices for each other, and that’s what makes a society, but you and I both know what happens when there’s two people left on the lifeboat and the society is long long gone. You can’t depend on that society to take care of you– use it, contribute to it, maintain it, but don’t depend on it because one day when you look for it, it won’t be there, and you’ll have to do without.

Sucks to be You

Woe is me! I have passed beyond the wake of venting, and mired myself on the shores of Poor-Me island. My charcoal jeans-cut stretch trousers from H&M, my anthracite DKNY sunglasses, even my soft graphite A|X buttonless polo cannot save me from the harsh words of rejection!

At least I’m not one of the poor bastards whose job is now on the line after the release of the most recent Viewsonic/Microsoft Tablet PC. Says one reviewer:

“Tablet is the wrong medicinal analogy: suppository more adequately describes the Smart Display experience.”

Bait and Switch

People refer to a Bait and Switch routine that Our Leader is perpetrating with respect to Saddam and those pesky WMDs. That is, we went to war over the weapons, but now that we’ve found none, we’re saying this was the right thing to do because Saddam is so awful.

Some people argue that weapons will be found, no matter what, even if we have to plant them there, because we need post-facto justification. I doubt it: we can find a justification that’s harder to disprove. After all, Saddam was awful. We know it because we propped him up and provided him with weapons for so long.