Dichotomy at its Finest

Man - Woman

Reason - Emotion

Civilization - Nature

Mind - Body

Human - Animal/Nonhuman

These dichotomies characterize everyday culture and we do not really have any control over it. Subliminally we are told that one of the things in each of these is better than the other, and as a result the group with the positive image has more power than the other group. As long as there is a stigma attached to one group, they will suffer at the hands of the other.

As one of the above dichotomies points out, civilization is pitted against nature. Civilization dominates, controls, and, in general, is not particularly concerned with nature's existence. However, Bell suggests that once people become concerned with the rights of people and society, they also become concerned with the decent treatment of animals and nature as a whole. When this occurs, environmental exploitation just doesn't feel right.

I find it crazy that we have removed ourselves so far from nature that helping ourselves isn't the same as helping nature. Helping humans is demeaning and destroying nature and helping nature is demeaning and destroying civilization. Everything that is nature is exactly the opposite of civilization so it helps all of us to forget that we are as much a part of nature as it is a part of us. Even using democratic sensibilities skews people's perception of the environment: it is something different from humans, an afterthought that has to be improved in relation to it's civilized counterparts. "Fixing" things, particularly nature, implies that there is something wrong with them to begin with. Personally, I believe that something is wrong with us, the "civilized" ones, and we are blaming the environment and nature because we cannot live with ourselves if we screwed up so horribly that it is irreversibly damaged and it is our fault.

Nature wins in the end because nature is in all of us. Nature is where we came from. Nature is who we are. Forgetting that is where many of our problems stem from.