Wild Nahani
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Natural Man
On the concept of the value
in itself of nature
Notes scattered around
a social ecology and an ecology of conservation
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Cover photo: Yanomami, South American tribe (from the Web)
"You are tired of these years of civilization.
I come, and what do I offer you? A single green leaf ".
Gray Owl
"Remember you
belong to Nature
not it to you "
Gray Owl
Nature is dead, but first
that it is buried and thrown on it
the last handful of earth,
it is good to say something
There is a charm in the woods without a path,
There is an ecstasy on the lonely beach,
There is a kindergarten where no importunate penetrates,
on the shore of the deep sea water;
and there is harmony in the breaking of the waves.
I love men less, but more Nature
And in these my talks with you
I free myself from everything I am
and from what I was before
to confuse me with the Universe.
And I feel what I can not express
and that I do not know how to hide completely.
George Gordon Byron
To what remains of the wild world
and its free continuity!
Synopsis
Is there a value in nature that is entirely independent of the utility humans can derive from it?In an era dominated by economic profit, technological rationalism, and ecological plundering, author Wild Nahani has produced a monumental work of over 300 pages: a concrete, philosophical, and social journey aimed at dismantling the “mental monocultures” of Western anthropocentrism. The Natural Man is not merely an environmentalist manifesto, but a critical anthology and a holistic guide that unites social ecology and conservation ecology. Through a carefully curated collection of notes, reflections, and authoritative contributions—including exclusive chapters by Guido Dalla Casa and references to intellectual giants such as Aldo Leopold, John Muir, C.G. Jung, Murray Bookchin, and Henri Laborit—this essay addresses the human-nature conflict as an extremely complex puzzle for which the West has lost the guiding image. From a radical critique of the “principle of domination” to the rediscovery of wilderness—untamed and uncorrupted nature—the author guides us through a profound personal revolution. The book explores the affinities between libertarian philosophy and radical ecology, proposing an urgent shift from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism: protecting nature for its intrinsic value, and not merely for the sake of humanity.
Why read this book:
Beyond modern dualism: Understand how detachment from the earth has increased human suffering and discover the necessity of a vital, symbiotic relationship with the environment. Overcoming “specialist blindness”: An invitation to break free from the conceptual boxes of traditional science to rediscover a global, holistic, and spiritual vision of the cosmos. An ecotopian ideal: Learn the practical value of ecological utopia to guide collective decisions and personal life choices toward simplicity. A visionary and libertarian work, far removed from academic dogmas, suffused with a lucid and blameless pessimism that nevertheless does not renounce a faint but unshakable hope. As prophesied by Leonardo da Vinci, human hubris risks destroying all living things; this book is the necessary cry to reverse course before it is too late.
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Preface
"As you read these words, packs of wolves are running long leaps through the forests and wilderness of North America. Sniffing the wind, they hunt and play, they feed and rest, just as their ancestors did for millions of years. There are still thousands of specimens, wild as the immense regions in which they wander ......
The wolf, Canis lupus, was once the most widely distributed terrestrial mammal in the world, and could be found throughout the northern hemisphere, wherever the large mammals it is able to hunt were present. Now the species is extinct, or almost, in a large part of its natural habitat .... " (Savage, 1989).
"There is only hope of rejecting the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer every place on earth. This hope is the organization of the people most sensitive to the values of the spirit, so that they fight for the free continuity of the wild nature " (Robert Marshall).
The vast scale of the ecological problem, which has clearly come to the fore in the 20th century, has pushed me to this work that collects my writings and thoughts on ecology and nature in general, also seen in the social aspects or aspects, in an attempt to contribute , albeit minimally, to the development of a different philosophical conception of the environmental problem. Aldo Leopold, an acute American conservationist, affirmed, in fact, that environmental problems are fundamentally philosophical in which the solution of a new relationship with nature must be sought (Hargrove, 1990). The need to deal with the environmental question mainly from an ethical / philosophical point of view, is based on the fact that in the West all philosophical speculation has been practically deprived, from its origins to the present day, of substantive arguments on the subject (the exceptions are counted on fingers of one hand). Indeed, Hargrove (1990) writes: "Despite the many monumental results of philosophy, it has never succeeded, throughout the West, in providing a basis for environmental thinking. This failure involves all the major branches: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of science and, of course, aesthetics ......
Environmental ethics is an opportunity for philosophy to correct its greatest error, the rejection of the natural world which is experienced concretely in real life ......
We hope that conservationists and conservationists of the nature of the beginning of the next century will have better philosophical theories to make a choice ... ".
The intent of the work is also to disseminate the concept of the value of nature in itself so that they begin to spread, albeit in an embryonic form, the "real" topics on conservation. The writings, even if in an apparent logical order, must not be strictly understood as such, nor do they claim to complete the discourse they open, but in any case they should provoke certain reflections and ideas on the same subject in the reader.
The work is enriched by numerous quotations taken from works by qualified authors who have deepened many of the issues treated so much that the publication became almost an anthology (by kind permission I also included some exhaustive chapters of Guido Dalla Casa) . A new environmental ethic can not be recognized with dogmas and specialized scientific rigidities, but above all with a maturation of the spirit, of sensations and therefore of thought. Hargrove (1990) answers to the question of Darwin on the loss, by the evolutionist, of aesthetic tastes towards nature, affirming that this loss "is a natural consequence of his attempts to be scientific, to deal with facts alone". The development of scientific specialization has led to a sort of "specialist deafness" (Boulding in Pignatti 1994), ie the inability to perceive the general characteristics of a system due to the obsessive concentration of attention to details (Pignatti, 1994). The holistic notion of landscape (nature) tends to overcome this particular "deafness" by seeking a global representation of the system (Pignatti, 1994). In fact, Kuhn reminds us that "normal science is a strenuous and determined attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes provided by vocational education".
However, what is written in the work does not claim to be absolutist and unilateral, but simply indicative and relative. In every sector there are always exceptions and differences. Among other things, for reasons of clarity, some of the causes hypothesized in the text that are believed to originate the distortion of the relationship between man and nature, refer to a few fundamental factors, even if in reality the variables on the topic are very numerous , often antithetical and almost always intertwined with each other. The work, therefore, as mentioned, wants only to draw an indicative line of thought and certainly not a universal and all-encompassing groove. However I think the most important part is that which was not written ....... Wittgenstein said in fact (Hargrove, 1990) that "the things we can not talk about are more important than those we can talk about".
Perhaps the endless battle for the preservation of nature is a battle already lost at the start, but nothing and nobody will prevent us, paraphrasing Rousseau, to cry out to the world that the moat is too deep to get out, but we were made strong enough not to we could fall!
Before the civilized man made his "appearance" on earth, the whole world was "wilderness", an immense wilderness where only natural truth reigned. Then the civilized man arrived and, little by little, he took from the world and himself the unpredictable and "chaotic" harmony of nature that was the spirit of life.
Man is therefore responsible for providing for the preservation of nature (because he is the man who destroys it and therefore it is he who must preserve it); unless one wants to consider it as a simple component of dialectical materialism, which would have been entrusted with the task of subverting completely the natural environment: only this could be, in an ironic key, the essence of androcentric philosophy. In truth, human interventions on the territory are devastating and do not spare any element of nature: water, air, flora, fauna, inert matter, etc. Faced with such degradation, the defense of the environment, through a wilderness vision, must become a primary and global goal. But in conserving the natural world, the field must be cleared of a preliminary ruling that is of such importance that it assumes the value of a contradiction in terms, since this is precisely the claim of those who insist on considering the environmental problem exclusively in relation to man . Man is a part, a piece of the ecosystem, is not the navel of nature, so it is in grave error who subordinates the protection of the environment to the primacy of man. In short, there is the risk that our inveterate androcentrism is always present in our speeches, everything and always for man. It is necessary to overturn such a concept to place the global interests of nature at the center (ecocentrism). The rule must tend to preserve nature for its value in itself: in the end even man will take advantage of it but it will be a reflection, not the purpose of that rescue. An ecocentric vision would bring enormous benefits and rebalances also from a social point of view. Civilization can not ignore the wilderness, the wild and uncorrupted nature! (John Muir).
But to elaborate the profound disagreement of man with nature is a task that is anything but easy, even if one simply wants to reach the pure awareness of the fact. It is partly like trying to recompose a complicated puzzle made up of many unequal elements without having a leading image in front of them. This is also due to the fact that it is necessary to eradicate a form of thought that in recent centuries has been progressively directed towards an all-encompassing disjunction where the mental monocultures, based on the deep groove of dualism (man on the one hand and nature, well distinct, on the other), they are strongly perched in a vision unilaterally turned towards the only truth and existence of mankind. A new thought, libertarian and broad-minded, must therefore face a double obstacle; the first is to eradicate globalized thinking on the dominance and one-sidedness of man (thought that even in the unconscious form is now inherent in the minds), the second will be to unsaddress the false certainties so strongly set to glimpse, albeit in the distance, a holistic view of everything. How many authoritative figures with their saying and their actions have tried to carry out this immense task, but, at least in the first instance, they have seen themselves in the difficulty of being metabolized by "mental monocultures" to the exact opposite. But perhaps one day what for now, in some respects, still seems distant, will be understood and practiced in total awareness and understanding. At the beginning the acute "prophets" of a profound change have not been understood or even completely ignored, but even if the time is very limited, a cautious optimism on the inversion, even partial of the route, could hang in the air (? !). Understanding, understanding, self-examining seem to be terminologies and concepts difficult to digest, but it is not excluded that they instead make their right path in order to eventually be acquired. Hope, even if weak, is always the last to die. But for the moment until exploitation, looting and destruction of the planet earth (on all fronts) will still represent a huge economic advantage, extremely difficult will appear the way to proceed to the right operation and vision of things. So far the man from his blindness has begun to see something, but only the smoking remains left behind his devastating path and will be so wise and far-sighted to reverse the route? The doubts remain many and largely unresolved. Many actions that now seem positive are still a small drop of water in a large ocean that is excessively dirty with "oil"!
"When it can no longer fight the wind and the sea to follow its course, the sailing ship has two possibilities: the cloak gait (the bow at the neck and the leeward bar) that makes it adrift, and the escape in front of it. to the storm with the sea in the stern and a minimum of canvas. The escape is often, when you are far from the coast, the only way to save the boat and crew. And in addition it allows you to discover unknown shores that appear on the horizon of calm waters. Unknown shores that will forever be ignored by those who have the illusory fortune of being able to follow the route of the cargos and oil tankers, the route without the unexpected set by the shipping companies ... " (Laborit, 1990).
"The battle for nature conservation will continue indefinitely,
because it is part of the universal battle between right and wrong ".
J. Muir
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PART ONE
For a social ecology
Here is the moral of all human stories; it is but the same proof of the past; first the Freedom and the Glory - when this is missing Wealth, Vice, Corruption - Barbarie finally - and history with all its volumes has only one page.
G.G. Byron
The social contract
"In this world, the best of all possible worlds, every event is interconnected" (Candide, Voltaire). "Man has lost the ability to foresee and prevent. It will end up destroying the earth " (Albert Schweitzer, in Rachel Carson, 1963, a precursor of the problems related to environmental destruction).
If, as Hegel says, the creation of the state is God's entry into the world, it is true that Hobbes affirms that it identifies the state matrix in the mutual fear that pushes men to associate, inducing them to renounce the right natural. Rousseau observes: "The first who fenced a land thought to say" this is mine "and found some people stupid enough to believe it, he was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and errors would have saved mankind who, tearing the pegs and filling the moat, had shouted to his fellow men: "Beware of believing this impostor! If you forget that the fruits belong to everyone and that the earth belongs to no one, you are lost! "........... From the moment when a man needed the help of another, from the moment when he realized that it was useful to one only to have provisions for two, equality disparve, property was introduced, work became necessary, the vast forests were turned into laughing campaigns that the men had to wet with their sweat and in which they saw soon sprout and grow, together with the messengers, slavery and misery .......... From free and independent that was first here is the man, because of a multitude of new needs, enslaved, so to speak to his fellow men, who in a sense becomes a slave even when he seems to become his master. If he is rich he needs their services, if he is poor he needs their help, and mediocrity does not put him in a position to be able to do without them ........ ". We are therefore faced with a social contract that does not derive from absolute values but which instead has its source in mutual fear and in the instinct of "conservation". These aims, it is true, appear achieved, at least in their essence, in the state aggregation, but we can not avoid remembering the lacerations that took place within the states themselves, among which we want to emblematically remember the struggle between Caesar and Pompey, or that between Octavian and Anthony. But the most resounding failure of the constitution of the state is represented by its inability to transfer its ethical principles to relations with other states. It is with horror that the scholar must pause to consider what happened in the course of history, marked as it is by violence, by wars, by massacres, by overpowering, so that it appears written in blood, because too many Arges have dyed red. What optimism can sprout before such horrors? It is, in essence, the transfer of Hobbes's "homo hominis lupus", from the sphere of individual relationships to that of relations between states that are confronted in immense conflicts (like what Benedict XV defined as "the useless slaughter" ", Or like the other world war, still close to us, but not enough cautionary, see the many wars scattered throughout the world. How is it possible to accept the thought of Locke and his "homo homini deus"? At this point, the irony of Voltaire, which in Candide, traces from its own the shipwreck of Leibnitian optimism before the harsh reality of the world.
However, pessimism must not be identified with the philosophy of despair, but must instead strive to find new ways of living, a new "Weltanschaung". But in reality you can not fight today's people. Man's lacerations on man have also included the relationship between man and nature, and pessimism inevitably takes the upper hand. "Society and the laws .... They posed new obstacles to the weak and gave new energy to the rich, definitively destroyed natural liberty, fixed forever the law of property and inequality ... and, for the benefit of some ambitious, they subjected mankind to labor, servitude and misery " (JJ Rousseau).
The class struggle, the overwhelming of man over man, develops man's overpower on the environment. Conceiving the value of nature in itself, in a non-utilitarian vision, would achieve a reconnection with nature and, consequently, the birth of an egalitarian and "human" society: "... most of our ecological problems have their roots in social problems and that the current disharmony between humanity and nature can essentially be traced back to social conflicts. I do not believe that we can achieve a balance between humanity and nature if we do not find a new balance - based on freedom from domination and hierarchy - within society " (Bookchin, 1989). Urges Hosle (1992): "... the state of social and democratic law must be at the same time an ecological state. By this I mean that one of the most important tasks of the state must consist in preserving the natural foundations of life ... ".
But unfortunately, the hegemonic classes "entirely" orientate the thought of the masses, with the most subtle and penetrating means. The ideology of the blind logic of profit is the mental characteristic of our times, now firmly rooted in broad layers of public opinion and the social fabric. This makes even more difficult the proposal and the subsequent affirmation of a new ancient, extremely practical ideology based, as mentioned, on the reconnection of man with man and man with nature, intimate union and a real time essence of life . A totalizing contrast comes from the triggering and prevaricating forces of capitalism and therefore of Westernism, all projected towards the unlimited accumulation of money and decision-making power. About capitalism writes Bookchin (1989): "One thing must however be clear: it is a system that must continually expand to the point of destroying all the bonds between society and nature, as the holes in the ozone layer demonstrate and the increase in 'greenhouse effect. It is literally the cancer of social life ".
An ideology of the intrinsic value of things must therefore be confronted, in an unequal struggle, with the utilitarian value of Western current thought, a value supported by strong economic pressures. Among other things, it should be remembered that the strongly articulated social contract progressively reduced the "real" individual freedom. Kaczynskj (1997) reminds us that "Freedom means being able to control (both as an individual and as a member of a small group) all aspects relating to one's life-death; food, clothing, shelter and defense against any danger there may be in your neighborhood. Freedom means having power; not the power to control other people but the power to control the circumstances of one's life. No one is free if someone else (especially a large organization) has it in his power, no matter how benevolent, tolerable and permissive this power is exercised ... ".
In this immense dialectic, the economic-social development, initially limited, necessary and controlled, gradually takes on an invasive and prevaricating character. The economic needs of the working classes, now inserted in a degenerative social fabric, push the States and even more private entrepreneurs (in society or in their own), to "invest" the capital in the production of goods, often useless, with the only logic of profit. Society then gradually sinks into a "productivistic" illusion with the intent of having and accumulating more and more. The bourgeois classes are assured of "having", while the business classes are the accumulation. Logic is that of profit, as we know, and then the parameters of common sense and mediation lose all meaning. The consumerist society, with the ideology of false necessities, pushes the individual to ask for things, which the system gives birth at a rapid pace (the concept of development is a definition that is repeated incessantly like an enchanted disk). But the parable at first illusively ascending bend its curve, because the perverse logic of capitalism lays its foundations in the looting of the environment, both in the sense of withdrawals (energy, raw materials, etc.) and in that of the releases (waste pollution).
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.....The circle closes and the human system sinks into the swamp and unfortunately with it also the elements of nature. Marx asserted that the exploitation of nature is one of the contradictions of capitalism; more generally, I would say that the destruction of nature is the result of "civilized" human society! Man is capable of ruining everything he touches because in the end the "civilization" has in itself the germ of its own destruction and of the destruction of the world.
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