Bio-phobia
On our separation from nature
I’ve been re-reading John Michael Greer’s “The Eco-Technic Future” as research for a novel. This quote stands out:
C.S. Lewis pointed out many years ago in a thoughtful study, The Abolition of Man, and with much greater force in his science-fantasy novel That Hideous Strength, that modern attitudes about dirt and biological waste have their source in what might be called biophobia - the pathological fear of the realities of biological life, coupled with an obsessive fascination with the sterile, the mechanical and the lifeless.
I think that pretty well describes where we are, in respect to Covid-19 and the transhuman agenda. The fascination with the latest iterations of Artificial Intelligence is more of that same.
But this is also nothing new under the sun, a long time in the making.
One could make an argument that our fear of nature in the West has it’s origin in the bible, and specifically in those passages having to do with the serpent, the casting of Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, and the general conception that the earth is the abode and the dominion of the Devil.
Fast forward to the bubonic plague and the subsequent Enlightenment and scientific revolution. The industrial revolution, born out of that local apocalypse and the scientific, materialist worldview it spawned, removed us from the land and into cities. Industrialism eventually removed even rural people from the land they inhabit. A people removed from the land and the means of making a living by the land gradually and enthusiastically embraced consumerism. Global supply chains have removed ever more people from the land, from the rhythms of nature. Fear of nature is like the fear of what we do not understand, fear of the unknown. All of us in the West suffer from it to some degree. Most of us live more comfortably than the kings of old, how could we assume there is anything wrong with our alienation from nature? It saved us from the plague!
Of course this scientific materialism, this consumerism, is the cause of a great many pathologies, largely obscured by the pace and breadth of progress but pathologies nonetheless, which unresolved metastasize and eventually overwhelm. Anti-bacterial soaps and sprays, the obsession with sanitation, is in the micro what in the macro looks like pollinator extinction and species extinction generally, and systemic toxicity of water, soil and the human body. Covid-19 was a fraud quite easily perpetrated on a people long primed to be afraid of bacteria and viruses. It’s not that difficult to see how such a fear of and separation from nature could turn into the denial of the biology of the sexes, which is turning into the transhuman sexual mutilation and sterilization of children. A people unhinged from nature might come to be hysterically apoplectic about climate change that has no basis in science, or renewable remedies that don’t pass remedial math. Such a people might say a person can’t drink alcohol until they are 21 but they can consent to experimental gene manipulation jabs at 13, without the consent of their parents. They might bare their teeth as they threaten you, if you don’t take the jab you don’t need, that won’t prevent you from giving the disease to other people, and call you a killer, say you deserve to die. Such a people removed from nature and accustomed to the fruits of industrialism and technology might assume progress-as-usual is eternal. The further removed we are from nature, it seems, the further we are from reason, logic and rationality (which latter is like the foundation of Western philosophy.)
John Carter recently wrote a fascinating article about what this sort of removal from nature, building a society separating people from nature, looks like eventually.
This doesn’t end well, this building systems to separate ourselves from nature.
Decades ago, a series of rat utopia experiments were performed by the animal behaviourist John B. Calhoun that yielded remarkable (by which I mean terrifying) results, which have become justifiably notorious in recent years. In case you haven’t heard of these experiments, the idea was to put a small breeding population of rats in an environment that contained all the living space, food, water, and so on that they needed, and then sit back and watch what they did with it. In every case the same scenario unfolded.
At first the population would boom, as the rats would breed like, well, rats, and enthusiastically fill the available space. Carrying capacity in these environments was not limited by food and water (which the researchers provided in whatever quantity required), but by physical space. When the environment became saturated with rodents, the rats would begin to exhibit certain neuroses and social pathologies which became more pathologically exaggerated and severe over time. Females would begin refusing sex, and would gang up to attack males. Bullying became savage. Some males would hide away in private spaces, obsessively grooming themselves, emerging only to obtain food, and exhibiting no interest in social activity with either sex: these were dubbed ‘the beautiful ones’. When every once in a while a female gave birth, she’d show no interest in her young, which would tend to die of neglect. Those babies that miraculously did survive were so horribly traumatized by this upbringing that they were utterly unable to mate.
This separation from nature is how you get an elite who have internalized this study and have come up with a plan to put the whole world in chains save the world.
The world over, we see a concerted, coordinated campaign to dismantle the productive capabilities in energy, manufacturing, and farming. This project, driven by elites and accruing to their benefit, is amounting to the largest Great Leap Backward in recorded history. If it is not stopped and reversed, it will lead to economic disaster, including dramatically reduced consumption and living standards. And it will almost certainly result in increased levels of hunger in the developed world and famines in the developing world. WEF Chairman Schwab may outdo Chairman Mao. If we let him.
This is why I have a job taking care of plants. I am planning and designing an orchard. I am planning a big garden. I am going to wade through the muck to build a dock through the cattails to build a swimming hole in a shallow pond. I am going to log in the woods. I ski and snowshoe, I fish and hunt. This substack is trending toward what is tonic, healthy and positive, about the present and the future.
It is imperative that more of us get right with nature, this biological world we inhabit, that through dissensus we chart our own path about that, find our own way and report back. Imagine a better, more inspiring future for all of us, for all the creatures of this world, and share it.
Don’t be afraid of nature, embrace it.
Never had that fear as a kid. I played in the dirt, dug holes, got my clothes covered in mud and clay, got my hands covered in spruce and pine sap from climbing trees. I was Pig Pen, the kid in Charlie Brown who was always surrounded by a cloud of dust. I had no idea people were bio-phobic when they became adults.
Do parents nowadays prevent their children from playing outside?
Very well said! I am thankful everyday that I grew up barefoot playing on the beach and in the ocean. I’ve recently learned about how important it is to get plenty of time barefoot on the ground and so I make a point of taking my shoes off to work in my herb garden.