One Nature to rule them all — Letter #6

Dear Francisco,

Thank you for your answer! I was looking forward to it.

Indeed, we agree! Let’s book a ticket to Elesmera, now?

Also, I agree with you when you say that the same people who want to force us to reconnect with nature are the same ones who want to end private cars. That’s sad. Unfortunately, it seems that lately people with good intentions tend to have their own agenda… We may cover this later, but let’s not get into politics. It’s usually boring. And repetitive.

But going back to the first thing about this theme. What is “unnatural” after all? Back then, we focused our discussion in the industrialization of our products as opposed to the “raw materials”, but what about the “unnatural behavior”?

Often, we tend to categorize some behaviors as “unnatural”. A specific group within society tends to say, for instance, that homosexual behavior is “unnatural”, meaning that it would be against Nature, even though it also happens in other species in Nature… Why does someone call it “unnatural”, then? Is it because it is outside the norm? Because if it is, the argument they’re using is not related to this… It seems to be related to trying to say that the behavior is against some set of values, which are creations of humans (and thus unnatural too?)

So why do you think this happens? Why do we — humans — tend to categorize things and behaviors and sometimes people (like murderers and serial killers) as “unnatural”?

And will we reach a conclusion?

All the best,

Ricardo Gonçalves

Read Francisco’s response here.