I AM not a misanthropist and would not, were it ever to become a reality outside the delusional mindset of your average rent-a-mob protestor, wish extinction on anyone purely on the basis that he or she happens to be human. Saying that, none of us have a ‘right’ to anything. Least of all survival. This is demonstrated by the huge contradiction one finds among those who consider themselves experts on ‘natural history’.
As a result of the mechanistic Newtonianism that pervades the post-Enlightenment world, we are led to believe that everything that happens in nature happens for a reason and that nature itself has its own set of ‘laws’. These ‘laws,’ it seems, only exist in the minds of those humans who can reconcile them with notions of morality. The reason so-called ‘natural laws’ were so conveniently equated with morality in the first place, is because the idea of nature being in control of our lives apparently removes the possibility of freedom. To ensure that people did not take this as a sign that we should immediately plunge into the treacherous waters of nihilistic chaos, Enlightenment thinkers brought things into line with philosophical reason by insisting that nature ultimately takes its lead from a ‘noumenal’ realm that is beyond its own control.
Consequently, ‘natural history’ became nothing more than a chronology of events that are shackled to particular rules that somehow justify ‘natural law’ on human terms. However, the huge contradiction I mentioned above lies in the fact that the fossil record tells us that any species – including our own – is prone to extinction at any time. As Iain Hamilton Grant explains in his 2006 work, Philosophies of Nature After Schelling, “the reassuring certainty of a mechanical entity is removed by the fossil remains of vanished creatures”.
Nature, therefore, has considerably more power than the Enlightenment thinkers were prepared to admit and who is to say that periods of mass extinction are not simply demonstrable proof that nature withholds freedom altogether? Given Schelling’s view that there is no fundamental difference between nature and humanity, he is forced to conclude that the
“intellect is itself the legislation of nature, that is, without the intellect there simply would not be any nature, that is, the synthetic unity of the manifold according to rules.”
In short, those moralists who frame their discourse within the context of mechanistic ‘laws’ inevitably discuss nature in past tense – perhaps within the safe confines of a ‘natural history’ museum – and much prefer it to lie dead at their feet like a mosquito trapped in amber and, thus, frozen in time. Alternatively, as Jason M. Wirth suggests, they should base their studies on “the contemplation of the mystery of life [and] not the accretion of dead images”.
Living nature, on the other hand, is inevitably perceived as a threat on account of possessing its own sense of unlimited freedom and one that is completely unrestrained. This, like it or not, is precisely why the notion that we have a ‘right’ to survive any kind of natural catastrophe is so utterly laughable. I certainly hope we do survive whatever is thrown at us, at least in the foreseeable future, but reminding ourselves what took place during the Permian-Triassic extinction event of 252 million years ago – something that resulted in the disappearance of 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species – might prove to be a very timely reality check indeed. Finally, we need not fear the idea that nature is wild and unfettered. Comprehending this is the first step to freedom itself.
