37. On “Natural”
One of us thought we were going to talk about the nature of nature - what is it we’re thinking about when we think about nature? The other thought we were going to talk about barefoot shoes for strength training. This is our synthesis.
Barefoot shoes promise a return to a “natural” way of walking, to the way we evolved to walk. They’re made from “natural” materials. And “natural” is assumed to be a good thing, it contains a value judgement. The use of the categories “natural” and “unnatural” is fundamental to the way we see the world today, and it is interesting to interrogate where this categorisation came from, how valid it is, and what it means.
Isn’t nature beautiful, we think as we look at the English countryside - but it’s not natural. Fields are not natural. Crops are not natural. Sheep can’t give birth without human assistance. Even the species of “wild” flora would not be there in that way without millennia of mankind shaping that landscape. If we say that “natural” means “untouched by human hand”… nothing in this world is natural.
Perhaps the idea of “natural” involves a concept of equilibrium and harmony - without human involvement, everything would stay the same forever. But we know this is not the case. The climate is a dynamic system. Wilderness changes all the time. And even more poisonous is the idea that we can keep things in equilibrium by stopping doing things and reducing economic activity. Entropy being entropy, keeping systems in equilibrium requires a great deal of human interference.
Man is a product of nature. We are animals, and our evolutionary niche is using technology. A tech bro in Silicon Valley building an LLM is exhibiting natural human behaviour. It’s unhelpful to think of this as bad and unnatural. We are all as reliant on technology to survive on Earth in 2025 as we would be in domes on Mars.
So when did this start? In latin literature they don’t talk about nature. In fact the concept only arises in England during the Industrial Revolution, and through the Romantic movement’s rustic rebellion against it. When we moved to a system of mass production there was a fundamental change in how we saw the world, and as Heidegger might put it nature was split out into its own world picture. Mordor and the Shire became different things, occupying different spaces in peoples’ thoughts.
There might also be something in the fact that the Industrial Revolution removed peoples’ sovereignty - you were no longer growing your own food, instead you were specialised, worked a “job” and used your salary to buy food. And in its turn you became depersonalised - humans are fungible in a production line, their individual characteristics not relevant to the working of the factory.
We shall explore these thoughts in more detail in future episodes, hopefully with Artem’s help. And @vivobarefoot we’re open to any sponsorship opportunities you may throw our way. We’re open to it.