 Sam. That's me. Benny. Benny Sam. Sam has these ideas. He came up with all kinds of philosophical breakthroughs like does nature exist and here I am, Benny with Nira. Planning on going to the English countryside to see all the places where Wordsworth and Coleridge and Tennyson worked and walked and Charles Lutwitsch Dargson who is better known as Louis Carroll or Jane Austen and you raised the question does nature exist? Of course it exists. We are putting all our money in going to that trip to see the nature. Sam. Which is precisely what's wrong with the concept of nature. You are going there as observers not as part of nature but as observers of nature. Benny. Definitely. Sam. It's as if men and nature are not the same thing as if there were some external entity which men has nothing to do with and men can observe. Indeed over the millennia there were three ways three ways had evolved to relate to nature. Of course nature exists in the sense that physical reality exists but men's relation to physical reality had acquired three one of three flavors. First there was of course religion and religion said men has dominion. Men dominates nature and men has the full right to exploit nature and to decide everything from naming nature to maiming nature. So men has a right to nature is men's property that was a religious approach permeates a lot of science as well because science regards nature as a resource in effect. When you say resource it immediately leads to exploitation because what do you do with resources you exploit them you use them it's a relationship of usage and you have even philosophies within science. For example the anthropic principle the anthropic principle says that the cosmos was designed to yield humanity. The anthropic principle has nothing to do with entropy. It's about anthropos men. So men at the center. Men is the center because the universe was designed to create men and to cater to the needs of men. It is a teleological view. Of cosmic teleology or divine teleology but these are scientists they're all physicists. The anthropic principle was created by physicists so we see that even within science we have this religious approach nature belongs to us it's our property and we can dispose of it any way we see fit. That's the first approach. The second approach is a romantic approach Jean-Jacques Rousseau the noble savage nature is perfection. It's ideal. It's beautiful. It's flawless and blemishless and blameless and this idealization of nature is of course counterfactual. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Nature is cruel and savage. Savages were very far from ideal people. The romantic view has nothing to do with real nature. It has to do with an image of nature which is essentially a fantasy. Even there there is a divorce between men and nature because it's about a fantasy and the third approach is what I call the decoupled decoupled approach like there is men the observer men the traveler in the British countryside men the physicist who observes nature and measures it and quantifies it and so there is a decoupling approach ironically the decoupled approach where men is active nature is passive like in a museum the decoupled approach started with idealism when the idealists from the car to Hegel when they said reality is actually only in the mind they denied nature they denied reality and they denied physicalism or materialism and so they went the furthest in decoupling men from nature because they said the only reality is in your head so there is only men there is only men the rest doesn't exist it's a totally solipsistic view whichever way you choose the religious domination narrative or scientific domination narrative the romantic narrative the decoupled observer observed schism whichever way you choose there is no nature there is no such thing as nature because if you dominate nature it's not nature it's a resource if you decouple yourself from nature then there is no nature only you exist and if you are romantic about nature then it's not nature it's your fantasy men has yet to come with a way to relate to nature actually believe it or not even environmentalism is an offshoot of the romantic movement it's a form of romanticism really of course environmentalism is a form of it's not a science it's romanticism it's idealizing believing that nature has some homeostatic equilibrium ideal state that can do with that that doesn't need men that would be better off without men either that that is what is called radical or deep deep environmentalism these are the extremists but the environmentalism has two elements in effect men has an agency to change nature to restore it for example to safeguard it safeguard it but if you stop to think about this patronizing approach it's the same old religious scientific domination narrative only you are benign dictator yes exactly you are an enlightened pirate you are not destroying nature you are nurturing nature you are restoring nature but that still means that you own nature and control nature to do it with as you please it's still this narrative and coupled with romanticism in all its strands even the deep environmental movement they say that there was a period there has been a period where nature was different and better like an ideal period and all we need to do is revert we need to just go back there and we need to go back there by eliminating human agency and presence or by modifying human agency and presence it is still anthropocentric still men is at the center it's like we decide everything we are the masters of nature question is is there another possibility the problem is that we had failed to relate to nature because we are nature as long as we refuse to accept that this distinction is totally artificial then we can revert to one of these three positions what you are saying is that we are we are nature this sounds like a shallow cliche but it's not as when I say we are nature I mean these cameras are nature a beaver a beaver builds dams ants build mounds we build high rises we build cameras this is nature all our technologies everything is nature our products are as natural as the products of bees they create honey you wouldn't say they are not natural they have a honey factory factories, cameras automobiles television sets, smartphones everything is totally natural when we start to look at nature this way then I think we will lose I hope we will lose these three dysfunctional ways of looking at nature which are essentially a power play these ways the romantic way, the domineering or domination way and the decoupled way, they are power plays who is in charge so how do we how do we mend our ways according to your view I am saying that there is not such thing as artificial that it's an artificial distinction to say there is natural and artificial everything humans creates needs to a prescription nature as long as we decoupled from nature nature is fighting back nature is fighting back in three ways a Malthusian way Malthusian way epidemics, pandemics, wars this is nature I like a food, this was the famine, yes this is nature's way of winnowing humanity out culling humanity and so on and so forth this is one way, one mechanism there is a mechanism of assimilation we assimilate the damage that we do if you pollute the air you breathe this air so you assimilate this destruction it becomes self destruction so nature is fighting back our negative agency entropic agency is fighting back in a Malthusian way reducing our numbers but it also forces us to digest and assimilate the outcomes of our pernicious activity because we are nature whatever we are doing to a tree you are doing to yourself but there is a third way and the third way is the cognitive way we are endowed with cognition so for example we invented the contraceptive pill contraceptive pill the number of humans more than all wars and famines and pandemics combined combined and it's our invention we invented it why? because we are part of nature if it is nature's interest to control our numbers because we are part of nature because we are nature we are going to control our numbers we are nature's agents and we are an integral part of nature if nature has a will metaphorically speaking if nature has a will we are that will if nature wants to reduce our numbers it will send us a virus but it will also send us the contraceptive pill it will also send us homosexual car accidents or homosexual or homosexuality or car accidents in other words wants to limit our activity and especially our nefarious activity it's going to use a variety of agents including us we are also nature's agents in this sense exactly like a virus so all you are saying is that we should be aware of the fact that man and nature are one and we are actually acting in the world that is one and this is two implications this is two implications one everything we do is natural everything we produce is natural enough with this nonsense this is artificial, this is natural factories are not good cars are not good this is nonsense everything we produce and do is by definition natural should nature wish to somehow limit our activities, redirect them transform us it has its ways and its greatest agent is us we nature is going to use us to limit us because we are nature so if nature wants us to limit the population it will send us a virus but it will also send us the contraceptive pill it is nature that send us the contraceptive pill not Pincos and Jurassic nature did it it used the agency of Pincos and Jurassic but it was nature that did this I have a metaphor strengthening maybe your theory if a Martian came along and looked at what happens here on the globe he or she would see small particles going along veins and stopping somewhere and then they would pick up this car and say oh this is an interesting organism it has a nucleus which probably controls this thing it's beautiful and this is the nature of this globe and should a Martian come here with a report of course to the Martian High Council their report will say there are numerous life forms on this planet and they will make a list and there will be gorillas and chimpanzees and one of the life forms will be humans or no cars with human nuclei they will I think ultimately realize that cars are manufactured by this life forms but let's assume that they are highly intelligent but they will list humans as one of the life forms they will say beavers create dams bees create hives and human beings create cars it will not occur to them that there is some privileged position to a specific organism so if we refer to the first question does nature exist you say of course nature exists but not the way we see it not as distinct from us but we are part of it we are nature whatever we do we should be does nature exist, yes of course it does, it's sitting opposite me of course enjoy your trip, thank you