Denaturing Duality

Arcola High Bridge connecting Minnesota and Wisconsin across the St. Croix River. Photo by the author, February 21, 2024.

A wetland in winter
is a vibrant place,
red twig dogwood
with willow's ochre-
colored airy stems,
umber edges of spirea
leaves and neon green
striped tufted grass.
Pops of cadmium orange
rose hips burst along edges
of cobalt blue water and sky.
Nature is painting.

--Hannah Elizabeth King
Painting of a Winter Wetland

There is a word that I don’t use in these essays and poems as much as one might expect, and that word is nature.

In part this is because it is exceedingly general. To say I have a spiritual connection with nature is a bit like saying I have a spiritual connection with humanity. I prefer instead to describe an ecological spirituality, a rootedness in home and family as the Greek origin oikos suggests, which is ultimately based on a web of relationships with all of the individual family members: yellow-rumped warblers, bushtits, orb-weaver spiders, honey bees, oak trees, winter daphne, Dunawi creek, the Marys River.

But there is more to it than that. Nature carries a meaning of “that which just is.” “Human nature” is that part of us that just is, which arguably cannot be changed. Nature includes all wild creatures as well as trees and mushrooms and rocks and mountains and rivers and oceans and wind and weather. It does not include houses and cars and roads and bridges and farms and gardens and paintings and concertos. It is often stated - in an attempt to bridge the divide - that “humans are a part of nature”. This is true. Our bodies are animal bodies. We are nurtured by and entirely dependent upon the cycles and processes and biosphere of this planet.

Yet the divide remains, because human/nature is not the central duality. The counterpoint of natural is artificial, and the counterpoint of nature - that which just is - is art or artifice - that which has been created. There is an assumed passivity; whether we believe our world arose by random happenstance or by divine intervention, our natural environment is viewed as a background, a canvas upon which humans paint our art and our architecture. Much of what is called nature writing or even nature spirituality maintains this passivity. From that perspective we can find solace, peace, beauty, and meaning in nature, but ultimately nature is just there and it is our eyes and minds that create those virtues.

What if that which we call nature is not passive? What if the matter and life of our entire planet is inhabited by the same divine essence that we call soul, when we see it in ourselves? What if the Cerulean Warbler is as much a masterpiece of universal creativity as the Golden Gate Bridge? What if the wonders of Yosemite and Yellowstone were sculpted with the same creative inspiration as Michelangelo’s David? That is a very different way of seeing, and one that feels true to me.

The beauty of nature has been espoused a thousand times over, and yet very seldom have I seen it asserted, as Hannah does, that “nature is painting.” One thing I love about her poetry is that she portrays nature as artist and teacher and lover not merely metaphorically but as an active, conscious, aware presence, trying to wake us up from our lonely separation. And I should note, lest anyone get the wrong ideas, that in no way do I intend this to be one of those “this word is problematic and we should stop using it” essays. “Nature” can be re-enchanted, re-awakened, and de-passivated, as meanings change to reflect our shared understandings. What I intend instead is to question the separation.

We take it for granted that natural and artificial (or synthetic) are opposite poles of some spectrum, and we attach values to those poles. The so-called “green revolution” in agriculture valued the synthetic - with regard to fertilizers and pesticides - and then the organic movement turned the tables and defined natural as good and synthetic as bad. There is certainly a benefit to banning the most toxic substances from food production, but peering under the hood the strict natural/synthetic dichotomy in organic regulations starts to appear confusing, along the lines of preserving ecosystems solely on the basis of whether or not they contain endangered species. Strip-mining rock phosphate and peat moss and seabird guano halfway around the world is allowable - these are natural products - but producing nitrogen fertilizer locally from sunlight and air and simple chemistry is not. Broad-spectrum insecticides are still allowed provided that they are extracted from plants or bacteria rather than synthesized in a lab, as if that distinction alone somehow vouches for their safety.

There is a similar natural/synthetic dichotomy in medicine, a similar attachment of values to the spectrum, and by no means a complete congruity of the folks who value organic agriculture and the folks who value natural medicine. Quite a few people in my hometown, perhaps even a majority, would prefer that their food contain no artificial ingredients and their lettuce is certified organic while at the same time eschewing herbs and tinctures in favor of the latest unpronounceable synthesized, patented, purified pharmaceutical pills. And in both modern medicine and organic agriculture, an insistence on rules and standard practices and certification has created a burgeoning bureaucratic nightmare that benefits the paper-pushers to the detriment of the farmers, the eaters, the doctors, the patients.

Why must we believe that that which nature has created is automatically better or worse than that which we humans have created? Nature can create both poisons and medicines - sometimes both at the same time - as can we. Nature is constantly exploring possibilities, as are our scientists, and both - in my view at least - are expressing a basic universal desire of all consciousness to create, to explore, to evolve.

“But,” I’m sure you’re asking me, “surely you’re not saying that organic and conventional agriculture are morally equivalent?” And I’m not, not exactly. There are differences that matter, but they don’t have much to do with the rules, at least not directly. A farmstand tomato is not healthier and better for the planet than the supermarket option because the farmer used feather meal instead of urea and properly listed all of their inputs on an Organic System Plan. That tomato is better because the local farmer values whole systems - healthy soil and healthy ecology and healthy workers and healthy human community - while the industrial farmer values only productivity and profit. And this difference remains even if the small local farmer uses some herbicide sometimes and even if the supermarket tomatoes have an organic sticker but are produced in massive, resource-intensive, hydroponic farms that exploit their workers.

I want to be done with this duality, with the systems and doctrines based upon it. I don’t believe there is any one right way to farm, or any one right way to practice medicine. What we need instead is an ethic, a vision, a mission statement of what will move us toward restored health and harmony in our soils and our communities and our bodies. Aldo Leopold was getting at this when he formulated his Land Ethic: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community; it is wrong when it tends otherwise.” But I would go further still, and let go of the attachment to right and wrong which is an invitation for the rule-writers and lawyers to step into the discussion.

We need a new ethic, the essence of which is to value whole living systems to the greatest extent possible, to the limits of our knowledge and expertise. For a farmer: closed nutrient loops from field to plate and back, nutrient-dense and toxin-free foods, healthy living soils that don’t wash or blow away, abundant pollinators and nesting birds, clean water percolating and flowing, farmworkers earning a living wage. For a doctor: a focus on complete physical and mental and spiritual wellness rather than on addressing symptoms, an openness to explore all modalities, a willingness to offer healing regardless of ability to pay. Nowhere in either of these lists is profit.

I want to live in a world where farmers are in the business of feeding people, not producing commodities, and where they are guided by ethics and values rather than constrained by rules or ideology. I want to live in a world where doctors are in the business of healing people, not providing health care services, and where they are free to provide herbs and acupuncture and Chinese medicine and the latest immunotherapies guided by their own wisdom and intuition and experience rather than the dictates of diagnostic manuals and licensing boards. I want to value the creativity and beauty of our living Earth and the breakthroughs and discoveries of our scientists and the masterpieces of our architects and artists.

Nature is painting.

So are we.

Let us see what we might create together.