why it is important for so many people to say humans are not nature, — Nothing

It's a matter of convenience. People (should) like a baseline from which to start placing burdens of proof. The baseline is Earth without people. I hear people came into being about 200k years ago. But some folks, quite reasonably I think, push the baseline up to when we started making fire. Others push it up further, quite reasonably I think, to domestication of species (plants, animals). At that point we've kind of gone off the rails; relatively speaking, of course. It's all natural, yes. But a good baseline to help us in deciding how far off the rails we can go, without ruining the gifts that we were given, is the Earth with space, clean air, clean water, clean food, and without a parasite killing the host.

Anywho, that's my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

if you feel smth as you, no one has to tell you how to treat it, him,... So if it is true we are nature this mean you cant be given earth as gift, you are earth, its like you would give gift from your bank account to your banck account....it can be good managed or bad, but..
if true, we are nature, all we have to do, to make sure, this would be a living expirience for all people, maybe is simpler then we think.

Question: why people say, man made things are unnatural ? — Nothing

I think they simply mean that human made is not something that occurs in nature, like rocks or trees and is, by contrast, 'manufactured' and the process of consciousness. But I agree it is not as if anything made by people is unnatural.

Would we say then then climate change and plastic bags floating in the ocean are totally natural....?

So how to talk with them ?
why do you guys think we are nature, not partically, but are we ?

I don't understand what you just wrote.

So how to talk with them ? — Nothing

Like anything else, we define the terms of the discussion, working backwards toward a premise to be agreed upon, and then argue forward from there.

Thanks James I just got the question. Yes. :up:

why people say, man made things are unnatural ? — Nothing

Because human beings have an illusion that they are separate from reality. and because the human intellect divides everything into categories for comparison. Knowledge is nothing but copies and comparisons of the unknown.

Stuff made by man, insofar it replaces natural stuff, is unnatural. Viewed in this way, we live in an extremely unnatural world.

You die body goes to earth — Nothing

This'll be my key premise.

All things that fall under the category natural are recycled by the forces of nature - living/nonliving - and these processes occur in timeframes that's humanly appreciable (decomposition/putrefecation/etc) However, man-made stuff (plastic/metal) are not part of this reusing scheme of nature's. That's what makes man and man-made things unnatural.

There are, as always, exceptions to this rather simple rule but the rationale is statistical i.e. outliers are ignored.

So you agree plastic is nature, but it takes 450years to decompose. But this is my opinion if you make unreal image there is nature and unnatural, how you would not be exploitative ? The premise is there is not such a thing as unnatural - the unreal game in our heads are a problem. Do you agree ?

I suggest the categories "biological" and "artificial".

They essentially explain the same differentiation that is commonly understood between "natural" and "unnatural" but they are much more precise in doing so.

But your premise then would be, human are unnatural beings, which i am trying to discuss that we forget we are complete, 100% natural. If you disagre with premise and you agree "we are also 100% nature like tree for example", then would be very easy to feel, if you dismanage your rivers is like you phisically cut your finger off - i opologize for example, you would never do that even in short span.
Premise, if you are not playing a game nature, and man made nature - "unnatural", you would put much more recognition what is going on with "nature -non man made", like you check if you are doing enough for your, health, emotions,... Because you are 100% nature, even conciousness this is a premise.

So you agree plastic is nature, but it takes 450years to decompose. But this is my opinion if you make unreal image there is nature and unnatural, how you would not be exploitative ? The premise is there is not such a thing as unnatural - the unreal game in our heads are a problem. Do you agree ? — Nothing

A couple of months, perhaps half-a-year ago, I had a thought about man-made stuff. You know as well as I do that economics - money really - runs the show. Everybody these days, as I discovered to my dismay (not because it's wrong but because I'm not rich), valuates on the basis of dollars i.e. the immediate reaction to anything - from relationships to Mars missions - is to ask "how much is it?"

Mind you I'm not entirely certain about this but the economic machinery, and therefore our very existence, depends on the constant flow of cash. Ergo, we need people to constantly buy merchandise. One easy way of doing that is to make products less durable - fragile and, here's where it gets interesting, decomposable. That way, people will have to keep replenishing their stocks as household items have a shelf-life like food does.

Yet, what's puzzling, what sells is durability; a selling point for many products is how they're, well, "unbreakable". You can imagine what that would mean to many businesses/companies - less/no sales $\rightarrow$ bankruptcy (I'm probably oversimplifying but you get the idea).

This then is our dilemma: Companies need people to keep on buying their commodities year after year but then they have to make them robust and damage-resistant to attract customers which then causes sales to decline. Either regular revenues or make high-quality products (more durable). If companies opt for the former, quality will be affected. If the latter is chosen, revenues will fall. That's why many, actually all, companies that depend on sales have opted same strategy - keep upgrading the features, increase in every way possible the capabilities, of their products. Think iPhone!

Just a thought...

Lots of things happen can happen in nature that are disruptive of their surrounding systems. These things either disappear, or completely disrupt existing systems resulting in new ones. The question is, should we be disrupting our biosphere or harmonizing with it?

I'm not sure what you are trying to convey here. Man made nature is not natural anymore if it replaces the nature of man or the nature of nature. You can walk through the wilderness with veggie cloths and woody boots on a curly path the elephants already made for you. Or you can lay down a tarmac strip with computer- and satellite-connected sensors in it to autodrive your bullet-free, metallic-sprayed, state-of-the-art(ificial) electric motor drive, luxurious car with sound blaster, while a state-of-the-art(ificial) electric hart pumps your blood. I think you can guess which of the two examples is natural and which one not.

Plastic is an artificial material like a superconductor, graphene, or one of the zillions of other present-day materials. They say art imitates but what is imitated? Natural stuff. All artificial materials have a counterpart in nature. They have to. They are natural in the sense that they owe their existence to natural processes. But we could just as well had chosen not to make them and be happy with their natural counterparts, which are there not because we made them but because they have to (be there). And give attention not to art that not imitates but expresses.

Everything we do in life we are doing in pursuing happiness - so my premise would be all we do we do for harmony - but ofcourse in limited indentity from that ignorance comes and then disharmony, but at start is always harmony. You hit the guy, because he is bad, bad for limited indentity in us... Bad for harmony.
Polutted air comes from short viewed "harmony" not because we are bad guys. All wants good wealth,....

Thank ypu for your answer, but are human, are you a nature or unnatural being ? Is conciousness nature or unnatural ?

If you put 1 ton of plastic bottles in your yard, my premise is, you didnt do unnatural thing, but just nature is going bad, like if basketball player miss the shot, he didnt do it on purpose but he didnt figure it out yet.... Nature breaking bad. Not annatural, we just wont get what we want...

↪Cartuna
If you put 1 ton of plastic bottles in your yard, my premise is, you didnt do unnatural thing, but just nature is going bad, like if basketball player miss the shot, he didnt do it on purpose but he didnt figure it out yet.... Nature breaking bad. Not annatural, we just wont get what we want — Nothing

If that's your premisse then nothing is unnatural. But then, when it becomes bad? If it does harm to nature? But how can that be if everything is nature? Is there a good and a bad nature?

Question: why people say, man made things are unnatural ? — Nothing

It's a useful distinction. The artificial and the natural. If unnatural is meant in the pejorative, I would have a problem if every human-made object is considered unnatural AND unnatural is negative, then I think there is a problem. But if unnatural is either non-pejorative or unnnatural is a subset of artificial - more or less 'artificial and problematic' then I am find with it. Often we replace what is natural with something artificial and the result is worse. Often cosmetic surgery is like this. Lips that are flexible and human looking (but perhaps not a model ideal) are replaced/enhanced using an artificial process and we end up with a person who looks less human and who can feel their own emotions less well. We experience our emotions through our facial muscles in part. Make the face more rigid, the less we are aware of our emotions. Many artificial things are not a problem for me. I would use unnatural for that subset that I consider stupid, negative, dangerous, destructive to things that I value.

No, there is no bad or good nature, it was provocation. Very important for discussion is to say if human are nature 100% ? where did you get all "unnatural things", my premise is from nature, so how is possible for human kind to talk in terms natural unnatural, which let to explotation,... it is Just conciouss nature are changing nature. Or wind change sand, lighting hit tree,... Or being change eadt to metal and so... If premises are true, my next premise is, it would be very natural from us to take care of rivers,... Like we take care for our wealht, happiness, our relationship and so on...

Very important for discussion is to say if human are nature 100% ? where did you get all "unnatural things", — Nothing

By making them on the base of a certain kind of knowledge. Scientific knowledge. That knowledge is again based on an approach that situates people oppositely to the very stuff they interact with, i.e, nature. The knowledge gathered is artificial in the sense that it's obtained from situations cut loose from the nature people found themselves in before the scientific approach came to be.

The paradox lies in the fact that science claims to see nature as it is, while at the same time it introduces situations that were nowhere to be seen in nature before people started to investigate it scientifically. It is known how the universe looked 10exp-43 seconds (or a bit more) after the beginning (which itself could be a an intermediate), while it is claimed that a theory of everything is almost found. There is knowledge of all kinds of artificial situations created in experiments. There are terratons of stuff made on this basis. But at the same time the unperturbed nature it claims to investigate is further away than ever. It is known how DNA looks like but at the same time knowledge of plants, animals and people is more perverted than ever because interaction with them has been placed in artificial domains. Off course still natural, but at the same time unnatural as hell.

I suggest the categories "biological" and "artificial".

They essentially explain the same differentiation that is commonly understood between "natural" and "unnatural" but they are much more precise in doing so. — Hermeticus

How about "natural rock formation"?


Why is it that some people can't wrap their head around the fact that words can have multiple meanings/uses? Have they ever opened a dictionary? Merriam-Webster gives something like 20 distinct meanings of the word 'natural'.

sry, but there is 9 billions different meanings of "natural"...

if someone goes to a doctor, and say he has a liver problem, so they both are looking on liver, but he has a heart problem, nothing usefull will be done. Premise is there is not such a thing as unnatural, all is nature, space, car, tree, human.... If you play from start, Just to achieve some feelings, good and bad but unreal story, you have to agree a lot of harm work Will be done.

i agree. I hope we heat on in some discussion.

biological is nature, we agree, argument and my opinion is artifical does not exist in that meaning, artifical is a nature is premise.

biological is nature, we agree, argument and my opinion is artifical does not exist in that meaning, artifical is a nature is premise. — Nothing

Artificial does not equate to "unnatural". Artificial is defined as "something made by humans".

You can argue that everything is natural, that there is no such thing as unnatural.
You can not argue that there are no such things that are made artificially by humans.

Hence my suggestion that the differentiation between biological/artificial is more accurate and practical than natural/unnatural.

if someone goes to a doctor, and say he has a liver problem, so they both are looking on liver, but he has a heart problem, nothing usefull will be done. — Nothing

If you have a pathologist who finds scar tissue in the heart of a deceased person and considers this natural until he also find very high amounts, unnaturally high amounts of PCBs in the body, beyond even pollution caused levels, she may decide that this was an unnatural death.

Perfectly useful human language use. And it does not lead to any problems.

Premise is there is not such a thing as unnatural, all is nature, space, car, tree, human..

Yes, I understand your position. But what happened here is you restated your original position, but didn't really interact with the ideas in my post.