Natural Law

[honest intellectual]

A commonly held belief nowadays is that what is natural is therefore good. Consumers are swooning over natural foodstuffs, natural cosmetics, natural pharmaceuticals. Nature is often invoked in ethical arguments (e.g. the argument against homosexuality) or used as the subject-matter for art.
Why?
Nature is entirely without design, purpose or intelligence. Nature is haphazard and random. Artifice is specifically designed for a purpose; natural things may accidentely be useful for a purpose. Therefore artifice is preferable to nature. for all purposes. Nothing that nature has made cannot be replicated or else improved upon by man.



"In fact, there is not a single one of her inventions, deemed so subtle and sublime, that human ingenuity cannot manufacture; no moonlit forest of Fontainebleau that cannot be reproduced by stage scenery under floodlighting; no cascade that cannot be imitated to perfection by hydraulic engineering; no rock that papier-mache cannot counterfeit; no flower that carefully chosen taffeta and delicately coloured paper cannot match!" - Joris-Karl Huysmans; A Rebours; Chapter 2

Obviously I don't entirely agree with Huysmans there, but we're getting better at it all the time. And any of her inventions that we can't fully imitate, we can at least improve on and correct.
Take the example of pharmaceuticals. Everybody now seems to be swooning over drugs derived from plants, rather than those synthesised in a lab. I think that's very unwise. If a drug is synthesised, at least you know what you're getting is chemically pure, whereas with natural drugs, you're taking a haphazard cocktail of thousands of compounds. Just because it's natural, doesn't mean it's good for you. There are thousands and thousands of naturally occuring poisons, right? And what about ephedra, an entirely natural drug which was marketed and caused several hundred deaths?

As for 'natural law' as a moral guide; that is sheer madness. Nature has no morality. Nature is savage and brutal and selfish. Like Baudelaire said, nature is what gives us cannibalism, rape (I saw a duck getting raped today, it was funny and weird and it proved my point :huh: ), murder and ruthlessness. It is only with the artificial imposition of civilisation and law that morality comes into being.

I've thought this through very carefully (and read a lot of decadent literature ;) ). Any responses, disagreemnt, criticisms?

[cubist]

i am a naturalist really, i use as much non synthetic things as possible its not becuase i believe them to be better its that nature serves its purpose, it may be haphazard, and random but its still fucking awesome, the term don't play god is what springs to mind, i am not a godly person and i don't want this to go down the god route,

playing with nature can stress the ecosystem introducing systhetics to enhance the consumer satisfaction and thus enhance profitability (its intended purpose) actually into nature like GM foods will wipe out everything weaker, a faster growing and maturing plant that is resistant to deseases will miox with non gm grops and will create an unbalance in nature.

my concerns are that the scientific advancements are for profitability faster growing better more economic to grow foodstuffs, are the purpose wether the food is better or worse is not the priority of the global corps.

synthetic drugs, what can be made can be broken, the deseases develope resistance to the drugs and then a new wave has to be developed.

Nature is savage and brutal, to us the humans the people who have eveolved to a level that the other unconcious animals can't comprehend what we do.

but wearing clothes, cleaning yourself with synthetics and beauty is something nature doesn't do, nature has adapted to avoid these "necessities" animals shed hair for summer, the golapagus tortoise on one island evolved its shell so it can reach higher cacti on the desert lands it lives.

the crocodile can close of artieries to keep oxygen going to vital organs only, so it can live under water for hours waiting for the perfect moment.

the black mamba can jump to get its prey, a snake has 4 jaws and claws its way up its prey using its top fangs to ingest the food,

to them we are the savages that don't play by they're rules,

[honest intellectual]

but wearing clothes, cleaning yourself with synthetics and beauty is something nature doesn't do, nature has adapted to avoid these "necessities" animals shed hair for summer, the golapagus tortoise on one island evolved its shell so it can reach higher cacti on the desert lands it lives.

the crocodile can close of artieries to keep oxygen going to vital organs only, so it can live under water for hours waiting for the perfect moment.

the black mamba can jump to get its prey, a snake has 4 jaws and claws its way up its prey using its top fangs to ingest the food,Those are all clever designs, indeed. But how long would it take a human engineer to overcome the same problem with an equally ingenious design. A few months? A day? An hour? And how long did it take nature? At least a hundred thousand years.


the term don't play god is what springs to mind, i am not a godly person and i don't want this to go down the god routeI know exactly what you mean there. The thing is, to a theist, nature is not haphazard and it does have intelligent and conscious design.


playing with nature can stress the ecosystem introducing systhetics to enhance the consumer satisfaction and thus enhance profitability (its intended purpose) actually into nature like GM foods will wipe out everything weaker, a faster growing and maturing plant that is resistant to deseases will mix with non gm grops and will create an unbalance in nature.Genetically modified foods are better than the originals. Better food is one of the most pressing needs of mankind. Your only objection here is "an unbalance in nauture", which I don't really understand.


synthetic drugs, what can be made can be broken, the deseases develope resistance to the drugs and then a new wave has to be developed.
That's equally true of natural drugs

[cubist]

yes in many ways you are correct,

but look at your precious scince and engineers,

the bee by science can not fly yet it does you and i both know it can fly,

flight is one thing man can not do with OUT man made engines, hundreds of years have been attempted in doing this and divinchi was still closer to many attempts in this century.

look at sky divers using the concept of flying squirrels.

the truth is how can we improve what we don't fully understand.

i don't disagree that natural drugs are equally as bad and have adverse affects on the body but that is unchangeable, what happens when we take the poisen out of poisness berries so we can eat them. how will that effect the ecosystem, we don't know and thats the problem, SCIENCE is TRIAL AND ERROR and ERROR WHEN PLAYING WITH NATURE IS CATASTROPHIC

[honest intellectual]

There’s another major point that slipped my mind when I was writing my first post. Which is that artifice overcomes Nature’s supreme cruelty: age and decay.
Nature may make this:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/david.dell/brigette/bardot55.jpg
But she turns it into this:
http://www.petaenespanol.com/at/page/actions/Brigitte-Bardotfinal.jpg
It’s grotesque. I think it has a really malicious, evil irony to it. All of nature’s beauty, such as it is, is ephemeral and will sooner or later become ugly and the hideousness is all the more sharp because of what it used to be. Plastic, though, does not decay and metal does not decay. Fake flowers are better than real ones because real ones turn to brown ugly pulp before the end of the day. Only artifice is immune to age and decay.


flight is one thing man can not do withOUT man-made engines, hundreds of years have been attempted in doing this and di Vinci was still closer to many attempts in this century.
Man can fly. It’s not logically correct to just add an arbitrary caveat excluding the use of engines. I mean, I could equally say that nature can’t achieve flight without wings


the truth is how can we improve what we don't fully understand.
What? That’s outrageous! That flies in the face of all the facts. The truth is that man can improve on everything nature does: plants, people, landscapes, food, amenities, beauty, everything. I challenge you to quote a single example of one of nature’s designs that man can’t improve on.


the term ‘don't play god’ is what springs to mind, I am not a godly person and i don't want this to go down the god route

ERROR WHEN PLAYING WITH NATURE IS CATASTROPHIC

playing with nature can stress the ecosystem

will create an unbalance in nature.
Look at those quotes. They’re pretty typical of the popular attitude. None of those quotes means a damn thing. A lot of people nowadays rever nature without having thought it through at all. This is the attitude that characterises the current craze for natural clothes, drugs and food.

[God of Imperia]

But you know, if it is so popular, maybe some of it is true, no?
What about the ecosystem is Australia, it got fucked up because people brought rabbits, cats and frogs to the island. People fuck up nature all the time, creating a fake one doesn't replace the real nature.
One thing people can't make are trees, we can manipulate them, but we can't create them do we. We need nature for that. We can make plastic trees, but without the real ones we would all be dead.

[cubist]

ERROR WHEN PLAYING WITH NATURE IS CATASTROPHIC

i refute that you think this is wrong,

look at miximetosis, and what it did, look at what happened when the grey squirrel came to europe, thesse are just minor little things.

As for aging, thats very vain of you, i think you should be happy that people get ugly when old then they experience uglyness at least once in they're life "make me feel better" thinks haha beckham and mr timberlake will have saggy asses and beer bellies!!! thats nice to know i think.

man can't do anything to help himsle with out fucking something up,

nature evolved into what it is with out mans interfierance and the more i think about it the more i disagree with you, the human body 23 pairs of chromosomes all indiviual to that person, the human body is the most fantastic thing. its not haphazard.


What? That’s outrageous! That flies in the face of all the facts. The truth is that man can improve on everything nature does: plants, people, landscapes, food, amenities, beauty, everything. I challenge you to quote a single example of one of nature’s designs that man can’t improve on.

oh dear me......

plants>>>yes the apachalian trails are full of wonderfull trees and plants!!! no wait theyre aren't becuase we introduced a type of algi which ate over 50% of the ecclectic selection of plants and trees.

landscape>>>yes i remember the coal mountains that fell down in england, and bangladesh!!! the place floods all the time becuase of human altered landscapes...

food>>>yes tasteless germ free food that grows faster and fatter!! how do we improve the texture of meat. let the animals run around!! not let them sit on they're own legs pumped full of oestrogen.. on that subject a man cgrow boobs and sued KFC for it.

people>> yes hitler tried that one!! the army tried using LSD to create hatred in its soldiers that didn't work!! most attempts to enhance humans have terrible adverse effects physically or psycologically.

beauty>>yes J-lo doesn't look nice at all with out make up lets encourage consumer spending and all look sexy>> and when the papers get hold of you with out make up they can bribe you not to put it out

or we can spend a few grand on making our asses like j-lo's and tits like jordan...um no


everything!! i think not all the things you mention are material and aesthetic, they provide no real benifit to the human race, capitalism premotes all of that to encourage consumerism.


You want me to list things we can't improve, what about asking you why do you need to improve the things you listed?

but the brain i would love to see improoved brains that you can by.

microsoft smartbrain 2010 LMAO

[Lefty]

Ah, yes. Human technology>nature. In fact, I don't see why we don't just do away with nature entirely! Just have cold, non-deteriorating plastic and metal, right?

By saying that everything that nature does, humans can do better suggests that you envision a world without nature, without animals, without forests, without everything that was here before us. If you disagree with this statement, then why?

[DaCuBaN]

I'd love to see an over developed world like the one you're intimating - it'd collapse :D

All that aside, metals and plastics are just us playing with the work of mother earth (or whatever you want to call it) We don't innovate - we learn. I always feel people have this so topsy-turvy. We build (primarily) out of lumber, stone and various metals - we manufactured it, but everything was laid on a plate there for us - we just realised it. We eat animal and vegetable matter - did we make that?


By saying that everything that nature does, humans can do better suggests that you envision a world without nature, without animals, without forests, without everything that was here before us. If you disagree with this statement, then why?

I don't agree with either side of this argument: We are an animal, part of this 'great cycle'. As for the animals and trees, we're talking about bettering what we've been given. So why can't we (eventually) make 400ft tall, 50ft wide trees that'd grow in under a year, and 40ft tall cows that'd feed hundreds?

[Hate Is Art]

The best thing about nature is it's beauty. Do I want to sit in a concrete jungle on in a green field beside a lake watching the ducks?

Science has answers for most things but you can't just reclessly interfer without destroying the balance that nature has been maintaining for billions of years.

[DaCuBaN]

You not think it odd that with all the stuff that MUST have happened on this ball of dirt in the last few million years that we are the first radical thing to hit it? this is pretty much where the evolution theorem, and everything that empowers darwinism comes in. I can't believe that we make as big an impact on the world as an ice age, or a meteor strike. We live in a constantly changing environment that adapts as we do. Those that are swallowed up on the way are those that cannot keep up with the rate of evolution (if you're into that kind of thing)

I think i'm rambling again...

[honest intellectual]

Originally posted by Digital [email protected] 18 2004, 09:50 AM
The best thing about nature is it's beauty. Do I want to sit in a concrete jungle on in a green field beside a lake watching the ducks?
What about the beauty created by humans? All the landscapes in the world can't match art:
What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have had no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.
-Oscar Wilde, The Decay Of Lying


Science has answers for most things but you can't just reclessly interfer without destroying the balance that nature has been maintaining for billions of years. That's a good point. No, of course we shouldn't do that. We do need to be prudent with regard to pollution etc. but we also need to realise that nature is beneath us and we can't let it hold back our progress as a race.


One thing people can't make are trees, we can manipulate them, but we can't create them do we. We need nature for that. We can make plastic trees, but without the real ones we would all be dead. Like I said, what we can't create, we can improve on. We can fertilise and prune trees and sculpt them etc. That 'manipulation' is an improvement.


plants>>>yes the apachalian trails are full of wonderfull trees and plants!!! no wait theyre aren't becuase we introduced a type of algi which ate over 50% of the ecclectic selection of plants and trees.

landscape>>>yes i remember the coal mountains that fell down in england, and bangladesh!!! the place floods all the time becuase of human altered landscapes...

food>>>yes tasteless germ free food that grows faster and fatter!! how do we improve the texture of meat. let the animals run around!! not let them sit on they're own legs pumped full of oestrogen.. on that subject a man cgrow boobs and sued KFC for it.

people>> yes hitler tried that one!! the army tried using LSD to create hatred in its soldiers that didn't work!! most attempts to enhance humans have terrible adverse effects physically or psycologically.

beauty>>yes J-lo doesn't look nice at all with out make up lets encourage consumer spending and all look sexy>> and when the papers get hold of you with out make up they can bribe you not to put it out
What I challenged you to do was to name something made by nature that can't be improved on by man. What you did was list examples of man destroying nature (as did God Of Imperia). That proves nothing. You do not 'refute' my argument at all.
Man can improve landscapes by irrrigation, forestation etc. Meat can be improved ny feeding the animals certain things and raising them in an appropriatle environment. As for improving man, that's what everyone is trying to do. Education, exercise: half our society is geared towards self-actualisation and self-improvement. It's as outrageous as it is cliched to equate that with Nazism. What nature created wasn't Man, it was a simple beast, a sort of primate that lived in caves and hunted to survive. We raised ourselves above that.
That last paragraph is overpoliticised and irrelevant and I won't bother refuting it except to say that "those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming."


i think not all the things you mention are material and aesthetic, they provide no real benifit to the human race, capitalism premotes all of that to encourage consumerism.
That may be so. What's your problem with material and aesthetic things? Are material benefits somehow non-real?


By saying that everything that nature does, humans can do better suggests that you envision a world without nature, without animals, without forests, without everything that was here before us.No, it doesn't. It means what it says.


We build (primarily) out of lumber, stone and various metals - we manufactured it, but everything was laid on a plate there for us - we just realised it. We eat animal and vegetable matter - did we make that?
We didn't make it all from scratch but we did carve it out from what was around us. I'll borrow Descartes' analogy: "By this argument you could prove that Praxiteles never made any statues on the grounds that he did not get from within himself the marble from which he sculpted them."

[BuyOurEverything]

The problem with both sides in this argument is that they both rely on the assumption that humans, and thus all their creations, are unnatural. Humans are just another animal that have been created through evolution (yes, nature) and this whole science vs. nature is a bullshit dichotomy. If a moneky uses a bone as hammer, is it unnatural? No. So then, why when humans take a natarraly occuring metal, mix it with other naturally occuring metals, and mold it into a hammer, does it become unnatural? At what point does nature become unnatural? Even if something is created in a lab, it is still created using natural ingredients. How can there be any other kind?

[cubist]

well you give me a list of improvements that haven't been fuck ups and that nature doesn't do perfectly well.

over politicised i maybe, but i fail to see that science should take obver mother nature mother nature introduced us to science bettering it and ruling it out will have negative effects, look at superbugs from not completeing drug courses the doctor puts you on, nature evolves and will evolve to overcome any enhancements we make or worse will reject the enhancements and become unstable inside the ecosystem.

i gave you a list of things man has done in the name of improving nature and fucked up horribly, iwhich is what you asked for a list of things taht man didn't do better than nature, and population ocntrol of rabits is something nature taught man a valueable lesson

[honest intellectual]

well you give me a list of improvements that haven't been fuck ups and that nature doesn't do perfectly well.
Medicine - Man is not naturally immune to smallpox (just one example of many), but artificially he can be made immune to it. That’s an improvement, isn’t it? Naturally, one would die from contracting influenza.
Habitation – Nature provides us with nowhere to shelter apart from caves and holes. Man can create for himself comfortable, warm, safe, pleasant environments.
Agriculture – Nature, left to her course, grows a random jungle. But when Man intervenes, we can grow the plants we need in large amounts without the plants we don’t.
'Golden rice' - By genetic engineering vitamin A has been added to rice. This has significantly reduced blindness (caused by vitamin A deficiency) in the Indian subcontinent.
Fake flowers - They look better than the real ones and don't die.

Seriously, how can you say Nature does everything “perfectly well”? Think about it! Nature would have us living in caves, ravaged by diseases, beasts and starvation. Now, obviously, Nature won’t magically solve these problems for us, so we improve things for ourselves. Nature has had her day.


look at superbugs from not completing drug courses the doctor puts you on. Nature evolves and will evolve to overcome any enhancements we make, or, worse, will reject the enhancements and become unstable inside the ecosystem.
You originally had a valid point on this issue (i.e. that diseases develop resistances to drugs). Now you’ve taken it way too far. If I understand correctly, you’re saying that all medicines and drugs will be outstripped by Nature. That is untrue.
The fact of the matter is that medicine (which is artificial) cures disease (which is natural).


i gave you a list of things man has done in the name of improving nature and fucked up horribly, iwhich is what you asked for a list of things taht man didn't do better than nature, and population ocntrol of rabits is something nature taught man a valueable lesson
That paragraph makes no sense to me. Rabbits?

BuyOurEverything, you raise a good question. I have two good answers.
When Man opposes or destroys Nature, that’s unnatural. If Nature creates a species and Man destroys it – that’s unnatural. If Nature makes sea and Man turns it into land - that’s unnatural. If Nature creates a virus and Man eradicates it – that’s unnatural.
Unnatural means against Nature, contrary to it, disrupting its design.

From a more philosophical viewpoint, Nature can be said to end where free will begins. Animals and plants act as Nature dictates to them whereas Man can choose how to act. Anything done for the sake of instinct, survival or reproduction is natural, but the things Man does by free will are artificial and unnatural.

[BuyOurEverything]

Yes but you're still operating under the assumtion the 'Man' in unnatural. What if one animal destroys another animal, or another species. Is that unnatural? You also seem to be implying that 'nature' is in itself an entity, in that it creates animals, viruses, oceans etc. 'Nature' doesn't 'create' animals, they evolve due to genetic variation and survival of the fittest.