Let's All Return to Nature!

By Rich Kozlovich

People keep yammering about the need to “return to nature” in order to restore their humanity and save the planet. Return to organic farming.  Eliminate pesticides.  End the use of chemical fertilizers. Absolutely no genetically modified foods.  No roads, no cars, no running water, no electricity or modern central heating or cooling.  Having grown up on a farm in an area that had a substantial number of wells, springs and cisterns as water sources, and outside toilets for personal use, I am somewhat familiar with the concept. 

I remember well, and with great nostalgia, those starlit nights when I would lay on my back and see the great expanse of the Milky Way.  In the country, away from the lighted up cities,  you really can see just how expansive and magnificent the milky way truly is. You felt as if you were looking past eternity.  You would be surprised at how many shooting stars appear on a clear night.

There is a problem with that though.  Life isn’t lived that way. 

Those grand nights weren’t every night, and during the day those sights can’t be seen at all, and the memory of them doesn’t ease the burdens of everyday living. Just because these moments are prized and cherished by those of us who were able to enjoy them doesn’t alter the fact that the rest of the time was substantially more difficult. In other words; the farm is nice place to get away and visit, but I have no desire to go back.  It's interesting that the people who actually lived what they call a "back to nature" lifestyle didn’t quite see life in the romantic mythology claptrap way the greenies present.

• When one of the greatest advances ever for America ever was Rural Electrification, and very few said: "Oh, no,  forget it, none of that throwing the switch stuff just to get light for me.  I love my kerosene lanterns."
•  When running water was introduced into these areas, very few said: "Forget that, I would rather haul gallons and gallons of water up from the spring."

I had uncles and an aunt that did that. I want to see these "in love with nature" greenies do that on the first wash day.  The lunatic left are on a path to eliminate modern appliances and cheap readily available electricity over the false narrative over global warming.  On August 2, 2023 Jeffrey Folks published this piece, 27 Billion People, and Climate Change Not High, saying: 

My paternal grandparents were tenant farmers caught in the destruction of the Dust Bowl.  They survived, just barely.......... When, in her sixties, my grandmother acquired electricity and running water — and a washing machine — she felt privileged, and she was.  Around 60% of the world's population today goes without indoor plumbing, and 13% lack electricity.  The comforts of modern life depend on fossil fuels, which supply cheap and reliable power for all our needs.  Our goal should be to extend modern conveniences to more people, not to ban appliances and make electricity more expensive........... 

Does it ever occur to anyone to ask: 

• If primitive was so wonderful in the past; why did they ever abandon it? 
• If primitive is so great today; why do they abandon it so readily when the opportunity presents itself?

I've read about celebrities who raved about an outdoor experience as if they have had an epiphany.  But these epiphanies don't seem to last, because they quickly return to their highly electrified homes with running water, indoor toilets, central heat, air conditioning, swimming pools, manicured lawns, etc.   If primitive was so great, why didn’t they stay?  Forever! 

Clearly, there are some who really desire that life, and they might find contentment with this lifestyle, for those who wish to abandon modern life and revert back to nature, they have my blessing, but they need to leave the rest of us alone.  I think I absolutely assure you, this is something most people would really hate, and worse yet; I think few would survive.

This quote appeared in the Blog Café Hayek regarding this whole back to nature lifestyle mythology: 

“Consider, for example, Thomas Babington Macaulay's description of life in the 17th-century Scottish highlands -- before anything beyond rudimentary commerce and industry reach there:”

“His lodging would sometimes have been in a hut of which every nook would have swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with peat smoke, and foul with a hundred noisome exhalations. At supper grain fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied by a cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company with which he would have feasted would have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, and others would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch.”

I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t sound like a good time to me. The movies don’t really depict the true nature of life in ancient times. It was brutal, ugly, backbreaking, uncomfortable, unhealthy, and most importantly; very short lived.  When you abandon modern culture for the primitive life, that's the real embrace of nature.

We may wish to embrace nature in a care taking way, and I think this is a good overall attitude, but let’s not lose sight of reality. Nature has no loving embrace for us in return. Nature is unthinking, brutal, unkind, uncaring, unhealthy and will make life short lived for those who aren’t prepared to change their environment in order to survive nature's unthinking and uncaring efforts to kill us. 

Nature will shine on us one day and rain on us the next. It doesn’t care, nor is nature able to care. Nature is an environmental machine that operates under a set of laws, and those laws have no human concepts of reality or compassion. Let’s stop being anthropomorphic about nature. Nature has no human qualities, period.

How many of us really want to go back to those eras? If we did, how may would survive the first year? How many really know how to produce the food they would need to survive? If you were able to produce enough food to survive, how do you preserve meats, fruits and vegetables without refrigeration or canning processes? If you did grow enough grain to get through the winter how would you process it and store it?

It was done in the old days. Do you know how? How many really do? To some extant I do, but none of that has any appeal for me at all. I have no desire to embrace primitivism.  Furthermore, I don’t seem to see these environmentalist fools embracing it as a permanent life style either. They pontificate about the glories of primitive living from the comforts and well laid tables of the modern world.

The environment has to be properly cared for, but all things in nature must be used as a means of survival. I am not talking about abusing nature. Having grown up on a small farm I know and understand the concepts of conservation

for future utilization.  It is just like a bank account, if you deplete it there is nothing left.   Make no mistake, there is a difference between conservation and preservation. 

But have no doubt in your mind at all, nature does not think and does not care. Nature has no feelings, no concerns and no desires.   Nature is here for our use and our benefit, not the other way around. We are not imposing on nature. Nature belongs to us, but it's a war, not a love affair.

Clear analytical thought becomes very difficult when living in an imaginary world of serendipity.  In the Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, wonderful, valuable and agreeable things not sought for suddenly would appear. To embrace nature for its beauty and grandeur is fortifying to the spirit, but to embrace nature in order to humanize it as if nature was warm, wonderful and serendipitous; is to place it above mankind.

That's eco-religion.  That's eco-terrorism!  It isn’t very bright either!