The Prostituted Nature

The dangers brought about by man's domination over nature are too well known to need elucidation. Nature has become desacralized for modern man, although this process itself has been carried to its logical conclusion only in the case of a small minority. Moreover, nature has come to be regarded as something to be used and enjoyed to the fullest extent possible. Rather than being like a married woman from whom a man benefits but also towards whom he is responsible, for modern man nature has become like a prostitute--to be benefited from without any sense of obligation and responsibility toward her. The difficulty is that the condition of prostituted nature is becoming such as to make any further enjoyment of it impossible. And, in fact, that is why many have begun to worry about its condition.

Seyyed Hossein Nasir, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man, KAZI Publications pp 18

The analogy is apt. Modern man has stripped his world view of its metaphysical dimensions and thus the immutable and eternal realities of Form and principle are veiled whilst material and sensorial realities, the products of the temporal realm of the state of becoming, are worshiped as reality in its entirety. This cultural ignorance of ontological consideration prevents the inherent impulse of people to live in balance with cosmic and natural cycles whilst propounding a legacy of decadence and consumption without regard for consequences.

What remains of a "natural world" within modern civilization is in fact domesticated and unnatural, its only import being banal entertainment and the satiation and suppression of natural inclinations towards human involvement with immutable qualitative cycles. Meanwhile virgin nature becomes increasingly exploited for its endowments and destroyed to the extent that the survival of man itself is threatened.

Nature when viewed as a divine expression of formulaic perfection, the absolute manifestation of archetypical quality, reveals the cosmos as theophany. From this point of view the prostituting of nature is seen as a blaspheme against the connection of man to cosmic cycles and the Eternal as such. The proponents of such prostitution are enemies of the ascent of man to the Absolute and are thus among the highest order of infidel.

(Illustration by Boris Pelcer: http://www.borispelcer.com/thesis.html)

Shayne