Nature in the common sense, refers to the essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.
-from the introduction to "Nature", Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836.
So then what is the "art of man"?
Have the essences of nature been affected? Emerson thought this not possible, and in fact many people today stand in this same attitude, even while they are unable to swim in polluted waters or breathe the air of their city or eat the fruit from the trees with out fear of cancers. Many of those same people who would say that we are meant to use the earth are the support of those who poison it, disfigure it, and mine it to the point that we no longer know what to expect from it, other than catastrophe, cataclysm and disease.
Where is Emerson to stop the oceans rise, and the temperatures increase, and to make the stronger hurricanes and droughts go back to the way they were by speaking aloud his words that man can only make art and not affect the rest of nature?
Maybe the essence if these things is still there, maybe he was right. Maybe part of the essence of "space, the air, the river, the leaf" was always with potential to destroy us. Maybe we are just exposing another dimension of Nature by the way we interact with it, make use of it, experience it, define it.
If nature refers to those "essences unchanged by man" and art refers to the mixing of man's will with nature then it seems that art is self destruction, slow and steady, not just for the individual, for that is in the domain of nature, but for the entirety of the race.
Making a fortune by tearing of the top of a mountain to mine coal does not elevate the mine owner, it just lowers the mountain top.
making a fortune by providing energies to people that causes their ill health and death does not elevate the CEO or the board members, or the share holders, it just puts the dead beneath their feet.
Amassing great territories by marching armies into other lands does not elevate the country, it just puts the indigenous on their knees or in the ground.
A good farmer is not measured by the amount of weeds he can kill or cut down, but by the abundance of fruit he can nurture from the earth, not once but over a lifetime.
Industrial agriculture is no great invention. It's measure can be equalled to that of a bird that eats a seed and leaves it as part of it's eliminations. From that grows a tree. But the bird is no farmer.
The amount of time that industrial agriculture has been successful is but a moment and by definition it is not sustainable. This is not farming. It will not last, it is not lasting. The only crop industrial agriculture grows is profit for the corporations.
The same can be said of fossil fuel and our current definitions of energy. A person could sit on the edge of a volcano and wait for the eruption to catapult him thru space to his destination. Our use of petroleum and coal and uranium and gas is just as explosive, destructive, self destructive and resultant in corruption of the rest of our environment.
We look for "answers" in technology and innovation. We need only look back and in the mirror to see a sustainable, harmonious, and sane alternative. We gave up an amazing gift and relationship with the rest of the earth when we let go the reins of the horse, mule, ox, and dog. We set ourselves on a course of solitude and degeneration when we traded the calories of energy in our body for that in buried deep in the earth. We fail to see the sun for all it's brightness and warming and feeding of the plant world. We fail to see the rest of living creation as an on going story that is ours to be a part of and instead burn it up, blow it up, pile it up and go searching for more as the supplies grow short.
When one lives in the woods it makes sense to burn wood from the fallen trees. When one lives near the sea or a lake it seems reasonable to be a fisherman. When one lives in the desert it seems sensible to seek shade in the heat of day. How have we lost or ability to make sense of our world, or situations?
Man's will being put upon nature seems to be more hubris than art. Art, as I see it, is man finding his path in, and as part of nature, and the expression of his appreciation of that journey and place.
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