Is Nature Against Us?

 In less than two months, two earthquakes have taken place very close to where I live… And I find myself wondering about our relationship with nature.

Our - meaning humankind.

When I was a boy, I used to be fascinated by what was happening around me and by how much we were able to build as a civilization. We built cities, roads, industries, machines… We transformed the world.

And, in the process, we destroyed almost everything - from animals to plants, from mountains to rivers, from ecosystems to… well, almost everything.

I suppose a sign of maturity came when I started to realize that something was wrong. The first time I consciously came into contact with this idea was when Ecology was introduced as a subject at school.

Today, we may see this awareness as a sign of civilization and wisdom. Only relatively recently have we begun to understand the damage we cause to Mother Nature.

And even today, not everyone understands it. It should have been obvious, shouldn't it?

After all, we have spoiled the water we drink and the food we eat. We have contaminated the air and the oceans. We have poisoned many of the very things that were supposed to keep us alive.

But, as I have mentioned before, a lack of individual and collective maturity prevented us from seeing what was happening.

For many years now, I have felt that our perspective should change. We should see nature as our partner.

We live together on this planet, and we are all dependent on one another.

We live from nature, and nature lives through us.

Nature does not exploit our species. So why should we exploit nature?

Perhaps what we have done against nature is not really “coming back to us” as some kind of punishment. Nature is simply responding.

And this reveals one of the most powerful lessons we may need to learn: nature is not against us. We are part of nature - and whatever happens to our relationship with it, eventually happens to us.