Response 1: What is Nature?

The Marquis deSade, says Pattiann Rogers, is nature. This made me think of a disturbing anecdote, but for all it's ugliness, it's still true. Mallard ducks, the friendly and most recognisable duck species, is known to exhibit a behavior called "rape flight." Basically, when several unpaired male ducks (this happens in the spring, after the ducks pair and mate) are feeling the urge to spread their seed, they'll target another duck, female or male. They will chase her until she is exhausted, tag-teaming. I've watched this. Two ducks will sit on the pond while the other flies around, chasing the victim through the air. When he gets tired, he lands on the pond and another will take over. They do this until their target duck collapses from exhaustion, and then, one by one, they'll mate with her. Rape her. Or him. There's even a reported case of the target duck, a male, crashing into a building and dying; still, the other ducks mated with his dead body.

Necrophiliac ducks? Seriously?

When the question "What is Nature?" is asked the answer that springs to my mind, fully formed, is, "Nature is indifferent." Rather than trying to quantify all the things that are Nature (impossible, unless you're Pattiann Rogers), I wanted to qualify it. My kneejerk reaction is to define Nature as life in general, but there are other things. Tectonic movements, weather, forces totally incognisant of themselves and yet very real, forces that affect how life operates. One of the rules of biology is that form = function. Desert plants have evolved tough, waxy leaves because that prevents them from losing water. Moles are nearly blind because they don't need to see in their dark environment as much as they need to hear and feel.

So, why is nature indifferent? Because it's every man/plant/fuzzy critter/fish/paramecium for itself. The push of life is to spread genes, eat, and stay away from predators. I can see this in my backyard. Behind the garage is a tree, and while I can't get close enough to identify it (because of the Japanese knotweed, incidentally), it looks like a cherry. I have to make this call from looking at the leaves only, because the bark is entirely covered by a vine (I have no idea what vine). The vine uses the tree to climb toward sunlight, and will, eventually, block the tree's own leaves from collecting photons; this old cherry(?) is not far from death. The tree and the vine are locked in a battle for survival, albeit at a pace I can barely fathom.

How can that pace be fathomed, living the way we do? This is the age of instant gratification, and I fear that hinders us from understanding the delicate yet powerful forces around us. Men, perhaps, see themselves as separate from Nature because we are inclined to arrogance and self-absorption. We talk about saving the world from the harm we have caused, but even in this sentiment there is a measure of conceit. The world will not survive, we think, unless we, the men, the caretakers, do something about it. But what we really mean (whether or not we know it) is that we are doomed without our own intervention. "Life finds a way" is a concept anyone who has watched Jurassic Park is familiar with. After a nuclear winter, after a worldwide famine, men will perhaps be gone, but that doesn't mean everything will be. Life will survive somewhere, underground, in the tundra, and flourish. This planet has been through ice ages, violent and persistent volcanic eruptions, the formation and crumbling of mountains (the Appalachians used to be bigger than the Himalayas, I hear, but I don't have a citation), the disappearances of oceans. How vain are we to think that we have the power to destroy these forces?

I'll get off my soapbox now, but I think I've illuminated myself. When I see Nature, I see something that has the means to squash out my tiny little life without flinching. I see struggle - against wind, rain, sun, and cold, against other life forms, against dying without having reproduced. I am comfortable in my Greenfield apartment - is that because I am human? What about the children in Africa with round, distended bellies, suffering from malnutrition - are they not human? What about the rice paddy workers in Costa Rica who get snatched by crocodiles hiding in the water - are they not human? We are all Nature. To be above Nature is to be above death. That is the ultimate force to which we all succumb. Man has yet to pull that off.