Our Relationship With Nature

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I’m fresh off a holiday in northern England’s Lake District, and one cannot spend a week in a place like Lake District and not be provided numerous opportunities to pause and reflect on their relationship with the natural world. I’m no exception.

In this week’s edition, I’m going to be talking about the state of my relationship with nature. At the end, and I do hope you read until the end, I’ll assign some homework which I hope you’ll choose to complete.

Let’s start with a quote from Musonious Rufus:

How stereotypical of me! How like every city-dwelling dingbat who visits the countryside to come back with musings of simplicity and natural living. What a hackneyed nitwit, I am!

Or, perhaps the reason so many of us are predisposed to this predictable course of thinking after returning from such “escapes” is the clarity we gain when exposed to the true goodness of the natural world, and the subsequent struggle we experience when trying to keep that clarity mind immediately upon our return to the amnesia-inducing environments we live.

What a condemnation of the human condition it would be if these sort of follow-on thoughts of nature (refreshed ideas of simplifying our lives, and of being less “on” all the time, et cetera) are simply the death throes of our increasingly vestigial connection to the “real” world?

Can any one of us claim to be taking our Stoic practice seriously when not even an hour of our week is spent convening, in any meaningful way, with nature? Are we dedicated Stoic Prokoptôn, or are we just fans of the most popularized quotes and notions of the ancient Stoics? And if we believe we’re absolutely the latter, then how is it we live the way we do? Perpetually caught up in a seemingly unnatural existence, spoiled by conditioned air, microwaves, and instant gratification that too often comes at the expense of the natural world?

Maybe I’m just talking about myself — because I certainly am talking about myself.

I’ve always been an jubilant observer of the natural world, but rarely have I been a joyous participant in it.

I’m prone to heat rash, mosquitos seem to love my flavour, and the thought of not having easy access to a convenient shower or modern toilet pretty reliably activates my fight or flight response.

I once participated in a week-long humanitarian trip to Haiti (following the earthquake in 2010). While there, I suffered a mild attack of radiating chest pain due to an esophageal hernia — an unpleasant feeling of burning where the esophagus meets the stomach. I had experienced this before, on multiple occasions, but the degree of fear that consumed my mind (fear that I would die in the “wilds” of Haiti because I didn’t have immediate access to medical attention… or, you know, TUMS 😂 ) was so immobilizing that I had to lay down on the ground for an hour until the pain subsided and I could convince myself I was going to survive this bout of glorified heartburn.

It was truly ridiculous.

While I’m no longer such a baby, I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t still a bit of a baby. I don’t like spiders, I’m mildly allergic to wasps, I don’t like feeling dirty and…

You know what? I take it back. I’m exactly just as much a baby now as I was then.

The only difference now, is that I can mentally overcome the stress such environments encourage in me almost instantly. I can “mind over matter” the situation and keep my cool, but I still feel like a vulnerable alien in the natural world.

I know I’m not the only one who has this sort of relationship with nature

Too many of us are too spoiled by convenience and comfort not to feel some degree of vulnerability or alienness when left to confront the truly untouched natural world. Without a GPS enabled phone, sunscreen, bug spray, travelers insurance, and special footwear weatherproof gear, what chance would most of us have to survive even a few days “out there” — out in the vast untamed swaths of nature?

And what a massive black mark this is against we Prokoptôn! Scared of a spider? A wasp? A couple of days without a shower? The untamed natural world by which our cities and “civilized”, wifi-enabled enclaves are surrounded?

What judgements are we assenting to that a successful modern life necessitates such a tenuous, timid, and turbulent relationship with nature? How could we hope to “be Stoic” when the only comfort we have with nature is when it is viewed through the clear pane of, for example, our kitchen windows?

Here’s a photo I took during our adventuring around Lake District:

Is that not a stunning view? Is it not easy to admire and appreciate nature when it is framed, safely, in our web browsers, on our walls, or through our kitchen windows?

Yeah, I get it. It seems like I’m suggesting the only way for us to be truly serious Prokoptôn is return to the living standards of the Stone Age.

Let me offer an olive branch then, to myself and to you: it is not unnatural to make progress (technical or otherwise) as a species (and, of course, not as a Stoic!).

Certainly it would have seemed silly to the first caveman to figure out how to use a rock as a hammer to break things apart, if other cavemen had decried his idea as “unnatural”. Could you imagine his neighbor telling him to break open nuts the old fashioned way? With his teeth or skull?

It likely seems just as silly that I might seem to be saying that having toilet paper is divorcing us from nature and working against our Stoic progress.

But it is a given, and no “sin” against Stoicism, that our lives as human beings will become more complicated and comfortable as we advance as a species. Stoicism, itself, was a kind of advancement — philosophy itself, in fact! Certainly comfort and convenience are reasonable pursuits when the alternatives are discomfort and inconvenience. Medicine was an advancement, telescopes, mathematics, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, running water — all of these were advancements, and certainly none of them could be said to be “un-Stoic.”

However! Like any indifferent thing we choose to pursue, we must ensure that our choice to pursue such advancements, comforts, or conveniences reflect a character which is focused on pursuing the knowledge of Virtue.

But there’s a balance which is, both, hard to identify and different for everyone seeking it

Comfort with nature, and a steward’s disposition toward it, is likely not optional as Stoics. No Stoic could possess the knowledge of Virtue (or be, in earnest, seeking it) and despise the natural world — nor could they make choices in their lives which disregarded the health and wellbeing of it. For this reason, as I’ve said before, I believe all Stoics are environmentalists of a kind.

We Stoics must have a healthy and reverent relationship with nature in order to be living in accordance with Nature (big “N”) and with our own human nature — this is what is what is appropriate.

The thing with appropriateness, whether it is in regard to nature or anything else, is that it is always individually contextual.

Your homework: what does an appropriate relationship with nature look like for you?

This week I’d like you to identify the state of your present relationship with nature (small “n” — the natural world of trees, grass, and animals et cetera).

How in-alignment with your Stoic practice do you think your relationship with nature is?

Where do you believe the relationship can be improved, and how?

Then, lastly, what will you do to act on this identified improvability?

Please use the link in the top-right corner of this edition (“Read Online”) to comment your answers on the website — I’d love to read them.

Take care,
—Tanner