on "natural"

Okay, this is going to be a long one, and may need to be broken into multiple posts. But I swear it's all on one big theme, so bear with me.

First, consider: the world is changing, faster than ever before, and not just in terms of technology but also culture. Much that goes on would have been unthinkable just a hundred years before - much as back then, what was happening was almost inconceivable, really, to all but the most visionary a hundred years before that. Some aspects of modern life are unnatural for humans, and we should strive for a more natural existence instead, more like how things used to be.

Or so we hear, usually in regard to urban/suburban housing, processed food, electronic communication, sexual ethics, and parenting. To wit: agrarianism, paleo/organic diets, opposition to facebook/google/computers, purity/anti-gay/"Biblical manhood and womanhood" movements, and of course "granola" or "crunchy" mamas. All are pretty hot-button topics and so I'll try my best not to step on any toes... but my overall thesis here might not let me succeed in that very easily:

"The natural way" is mostly B.S.

Humans have been doing unnatural things since the day that black monolith first appeared and we started hitting each other with bones. In all seriousness, we're an adaptable species and we've made it our specialty to be generalists. We're omnivores; we're social creatures yet very independent, we have a near-uncountable number of languages, and we've managed to rig it so we can travel almost anywhere on the earth and even to the moon. Our role in the ecosystem is that of "outsider" - we have brains that devise ways for us to stay warm when it's cold out, stay cool when it's hot out, and bend our surroundings to our own purposes. We've (mostly) exempted ourselves from being anything's prey, and we long ago simplified our own hunting and gathering to require a minimum of risk.

In regards to urbanization, then: you might as well say that farms themselves are unnatural. Sure, hundreds of years ago, a greater percentage of people had to be farmers. But nothing about getting up before dawn to milk cows, or plowing a field to plant tomatoes, say, is truly "natural." You might feel more earthy, doing it, and end the day covered in more dirt. But people were living in tribes long before farming had been invented - and they'd been dividing the labor, even then, so that some fraction of them didn't have to work on getting their own food.

Now, suburban life is indeed full of negatives: commuting stinks, energy use per capita is hugely unsustainable, and it can seem very ordinary and dull. But it's not unnatural, and it doesn't have to suck your soul energy. Quite the contrary - it's perfectly possible for humans to thrive in those circumstances as we have in so many others. And we've been pursuing the middle class existence as a species for a long time.

Which perhaps brings us to diet: nothing about what we were eating as cave-men is inherently better for us. In fact, poor diet was a big factor in the low life-expectancy and relatively malnourished state of ancient humans. As aforementioned, we're omnivores, meant to be eating... whatever's around. Of course I'm not advocating for unhealthy or gluttonous eating, but merely pointing out that there is potentially a huge difference between "it is scientifically proven to be more nutritious" and "it's more like what a hunter-gatherer ate."

You can see where this is going for the other topics, surely. The development of electronic communication has just been one more change for humans to adapt to, whether you start counting from telegraphs or texting. And we've done a pretty good job adapting (except for the whole texting-and-driving thing, though there is evolutionary pressure on us to stop that particular combination of activities). Communication is communication, whether it is by clay tablet or iPad - somebody had something to say and wanted you to understand it. Being able to read it within seconds instead of days or weeks is all gravy. And miscommunications definitely existed before autocorrect.

The amount of time people spend on computers is unprecedented, to be sure. And it can be unhealthy, of course. But it turns out that the way you are on the internet is the way you'd be off the internet - how's that for a little self-knowledge? Computers are just a tool; personally I find the benefits far outweigh the alternatives of spending my days behind a plow or on an assembly line, and computers are no more or less "unnatural" than either of those.

And it's funny, since privacy concerns are a big part of the anti-social-media movement, but I think it's the internet that helped create the illusion of privacy in the first place. Commenting and file-sharing were never truly anonymous... but once they found out otherwise, people felt they should be. Living in some small village in the 1500s, you might have had no privacy whatsoever, with everyone in the village knowing where you lived, everywhere you went, and all your business (and suspecting you of witchery). Sure, large-scale data acquisition and improved algorithms are part of the privacy problem... but if you're truly afraid of a pogrom, the answer is not going to lie in getting a better VPN. I think the internet has shown us a little bit of what secular society always had in the back of its mind as an ideal: a place where information is shared freely, everyone is judged for their contributions but not their skin color or gender, and people can be regarded as equals, whether they live in India or Indiana. Hopefully we can keep working on that both on- and off-line.

Anyhow, onwards to the good stuff: sexual ethics and "unnatural" behaviour. The idea of pressuring people to live up to a natural order is, to me, a holdover from the Greek philosophers and the "Great Chain of Being," which described a natural hierarchy to the world, with God at one end and rocks at the other, and kings, nobles, men, women, and children in the middle. It's especially odd that these ideas wound up folded into Christianity, where social distinctions and taboos were steamrollered by Jesus in a radical redefinition of what makes a person "holy," "pure," or "justified." But now, of course, we have remade Jesus into a conservative gun-loving gay-hating capitalist, so go figure.

For example, is gayness "unnatural"? Nope, it's definitely found in other species, and they don't seem to make a big deal out of it. (I suppose that IS one way in which our society is behaving unnaturally.) How about in other areas - gender roles, for instance? Far from being constrained by our genetics like the angler fish, all the theories about how supposed masculine traits (such as propensities for violence, wandering, liking big butts, etc.) have come about are fraught with handwaving and easily-observed counterexamples. The same goes for supposed feminine traits such as docility and love of flowers. Preacher-types with a desire to mold others into old-school roles will often invoke the word "unnatural!" in this toxic brew of nigh-heretical evo-psych mumbo-jumbo, tradition, Great Chain of Being stuff stolen from Aristotle, and rhetorical appeals to emotion. Even so, for the Christians out there, being a "Godly" man or woman shouldn't be that hard - according to Paul, you get married because you feel the need and desire to get married, you work on becoming united, and it's no more or less sinful than staying single. That's about it. But still, what is "natural" for humans? I'd say that, from observation, our capacity for variation (and that dratted free will) seem to be the only natural constants in how gender is expressed.

Whereas with gender roles, stereotypes from nature are promoted as law, with purity (virginity and abstinence) religious conservatives freely admit that these are "unnatural," and in fact go completely against humanity's fallen nature (the struggle against that nature being part of their (still kinda heretical when examined closely) spirituality). Sure, sleeping around is discouraged in the Bible (for both men and women, I'll note) but so is taking pride in any supposed extra purity you've achieved. All that stuff counts for less than garbage before God. So anyhow, I think we've covered the major ways "unnatural" gets used by some to try to look down on others' sexual ethics, and my advice is definitely for everyone to quit using that word in the hopes of someday having a productive discussion about all this.

Anyhow, the last topic is perhaps the one I dread most: baby-raising. Yes, I'm male, and thus inherently unqualified to comment. But I include "natural" vs. "unnatural" approaches to babies on this list because, while I recognize that every mom wants the best for her child, not every mom seems to also recognize that about other moms. And babies, like the rest of the species, are very adaptable, and very individual. Humans have grown up in almost every situation imaginable, and the vast majority end up as relatively well-adjusted adults. My main point in bringing it up, then, is twofold: first, that moms should cut themselves and each other some slack if they've had to "compromise" and not given their child an absolutely idyllic experience, and second, that maybe, just maybe, the ways that modern birthing and child-rearing (with diapers and iPods and vaccines) differ from the "natural" ways, may in fact be, if not better, then at least less traumatic and easier on all involved, which should count for something, right?

So there are my thoughts on the big "natural" movements. Perhaps in some way, I am part of them - my desire here is merely for greater harmony, health, and peace between people and the rest of the environment. It's just that I fear those fall as easily under the category of "unnatural" human behaviour. So let's all try to be more accepting, regardless, in the knowledge that there's very little certainty about the absolute best way to do these things, and our individuality and adaptability are among our species' strengths.