 One of the biggest hurdles if you're trying to liberate your mind from the effects of modernism is the fact that the words that we know and love from today are used in a way totally differently from how they used to be used. Many words have changed in their definition so that they're unrecognizable. I want to talk about one of these words and that is the word nature. What we call nature in the 21st century is utterly distinct from how the word was used. Even a couple centuries ago. So if you read something written even in the early Enlightenment or the Middle Ages or antiquity and they talk about nature, you are going to misunderstand everything that they really mean. Now, the word nature originally comes from the Latin word natura which sometimes is translated as nature. Sometimes the concepts overlap but it ultimately at its core means something very different. Natura in Latin actually comes from the verb ganaschi which means to be born. If you wanted to literally translate the word natura it might be better translated as a birthing or a generation or something like that. Now, how the concept was understood was that nature is not like a snapshot of all the green stuff outside your window. Modern man divides the world into the natural world and the artificial world. That is not how people used to use the term at all. How it used to be used is nature is a kind of generative process of the universe. A general generative process. Something that's happening at all times and places. Humans perform nature as does do plants and even the universe itself. When people talked about nature it was something that happens, it unfolds over time and continues itself. That is when Lucretius, for example, wrote his dererum natura on the nature of things. He wasn't talking about the green stuff outside your window. He's talking about how the universe has come to be, how it continues to be, and how the elements of in the universe like for example mankind or animals, how they came to be and how they propagate themselves through reproduction and other kind of means. Now, this of course has overlap with our modern concept of nature because obviously all of the stuff that we see in nature, that is sort of part of a continuative process, but that's not how we look at that word. That's not how we really think of it. Now, why is this important? Well, it's important because if you're reading anything written only a couple of centuries ago, you are going to, and you have this modern definition of nature in your brain, you are going to misunderstand everything. You're not going to get the point. Let me give you a minor example. First off, a couple of weeks ago I did a video on Dante's Inferno very briefly. I think it was called Who's in the Deepest Pits of Hell, okay? In that video, well actually not in this video, I'll give you more about Dante's Inferno. In Dante's Inferno, of course, in his Divine Comedy of which the Inferno is the most popular book, there's a point where Dante is being led through, I think it's the seventh circle of hell by Virgil, of course, as his guide, and they run across people who commit crimes against nature. They're actually very deep in hell. That's a very severe sin. So what is a crime against nature? Now, if you read Dante's Inferno with the modern goggles on, you will think, oh, well, wait man, crime against nature. It's like Inferngully, dude. It's like cutting down trees, man. It's like putting out too much CO2 and like global warming, man. That's what a crime against nature, no, that's not what a crime against nature is in Dante's view or anyone else's view at this period. The people punished for crimes against nature in Dante are actually people like sodomites and usurers are the two big examples that he uses down there. Now, why sodomy, why usury, why are these crimes against nature? Well, sodomy should be sort of an obvious case because in the view of antiquity, in the view of the Middle Ages, and really just anyone before the 20th, 19th century, nature, as this continuative process, if you break the chain in reproduction, if you break the chain in procreation, that is a crime against nature. So sodomy is an example of using the human sexual outlet, which is really mankind's greatest asset in continuing nature because he can produce children. If you take that asset and you subvert it, oh, well, you know, I actually really like sodomy. Oh man, someone's going to take a sound clip out of that. But if you subvert it to some other end like sodomy for sexual pleasure or something like that, then that is something that is a crime against nature. It's misusing your inbuilt sexual function for something that is non-natural. Now, in this view, I want you to bear in mind how different our modern view of nature is, or what constitutes natural from this traditional view. That is, people nowadays will ask themselves, oh, is homosexuality natural or not? And when modern people say that, they mean do we see it in the animal kingdom? Do animals commit some kind of homosexual acts or something like that? To people in antiquity or in the Middle Ages, that is utterly not the point in saying something is natural or not. We might see something, we might see some kind of homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom. Actually has nothing to do whatsoever with whether it's natural or not. It is obviously, in this original definition of the word, not natural. It is non-procreative. So that's sodomy. Why is usury punished in the seventh circle of hell? Usury, if you don't know, I suppose I should explain. It really, that's just, I guess it's kind of an archaic word, but it is loaning out money on interest. That's what usury is. So why is usury punished? Well, it too was viewed as kind of a sterile activity. That is, instead of getting your hands dirty, instead of creating new crafts and doing new things, that is part of nature, you know, creating new things to continue the human process. Loaning out money was viewed as something sterile, especially if you loan out money and then expect even more money in return. That just seems like a big rip-off, right? So, users and sodomites were both punished in the seventh circle of hell, and actually the seventh circle of hell, at least this portion of it, is like a giant, I want to say a sand desert with flames in it and people are sitting in the sand and it's like raining down fire and stuff like that. All of it is symbolic of the non-lushness of a sin against nature. It's a sterile environment, right? It's a miserable place to be because they are committing these sins that violate the procreative and the continuative aspects of nature. On a similar note, if you read St. Thomas Aquinas, he of course wrote this Summa Theologiae, which is, you know, the book on theology, okay? It's like a bajillion volumes. But in that book, he actually, series of books, he talks about the different, what he calls species of lust, the different sexual sins that one can commit. And, you know, he basically ranks them in terms of how bad they are. Now, of course, they're all mortal sins in his view, you know, fornication, you know, adultery, incest, rape, stuff, all of these are mortal sins. But the worst species of lust to Aquinas is what he calls the unnatural vice. And if you're a modern person, you look at this and you're like, what does that mean? He doesn't really spell it out. And one of the reasons he doesn't spell it out is because it's so obscene to him. He doesn't like, you know, he doesn't really describe it. But it actually is a constellation of sexual behaviors, all of which divert man from procreation to sexual pleasure just for sexual pleasure's sake, right? And that includes something like sodomy. It might include bestiality. It includes contraception. It includes masturbation. All of these are aspects of the unnatural vice. And mind you, he views these as worse than adultery, okay? And that is because in all, at least in the case of adultery or fornication or something like that, at least there is, it is not a crime against nature itself. You still can have procreation in it. So crimes against nature, even if they are what a modern person would call a victim's crime, dude, that is viewed as something far more severe. And of course, these sins can be committed against people as well, you know, even in the modern definition. But I suppose the passing irony now is that in very many domains, the modern notion of what is natural goes very much against what the vision of nature and antiquity was. For example, someone nowadays, you know, let's say these like protest movement people who go out and march say, oh, I love the environment, dude, we got to save nature. We got to all get sterilized so we don't harm nature by having too many humans. That would be a good example of a domain where what is viewed as being natural now, which really just means diminishing the influence of humans on the earth, is exactly contrary to the vision of nature in the classical definition. Because in the classical definition, we, you know, mankind is not supposed to, you know, double think, oh shit, we actually have children. I mean, we're talking about, we have to remember like even things like contraception before the 1900s was viewed as something for prostitutes. If you used contraception, that's like, oh gee, I can't believe you just said that. That's disturbing because people had this vision that we cannot subvert the natural inclinations of, well, nature, which doesn't just mean the green stuff out there. It actually is a continuative process that we are part of that continues humankind. And yeah, so hopefully that makes it clear when you read these books, when you talk, when you read theologians or philosophers talking about things being unnatural, we, you have to understand that in the way that they intended it, not the way that modern people perceive it based on how the word has changed over the years. Anyway, that's about it.