Opus 2012-205, Green Pieces: Levels of Environmentalists, Level 3, The Naturals

I wanted to use the label “The Unwashed Naive” to go along with “The Unwashed Masses,” but I decided that would not be kind.  There are some people who are really into back-to-nature.  Often they don’t believe in deodorants or frequent bathing.  They aren’t dirty, just natural.  Part of their mantra is nature and living as close to nature as possible. 

These people are not violent or nasty.  Often they live as far away from the rest of us as possible.  They practice what they preach but don’t feel like they have the right to cram it down everyone’s throats.

I call them naive because the life they want to live is impossible without killing off the vast majority of humanity and would be violent and short for them if they did not have the resources of the society they reject. 

Take for instance organic food.  I laugh because it is hard to imagine inorganic vegetables.  Understand that this is a technical term, not a simple adjective.  It means food that has been raised and harvested without chemicals or artificial aids.  This is not a real problem in our culture if you have the money to pay for the special treatment, or shall we say, lack of special treatment.  There are some areas in which they have genuine insights and concerns because we don’t know what will happen in the long run as a result of chemicals and genetically modified hybrids.

As long as they are a small part of the population we can thrive with their input.  The problem would be if everyone had to live that way.  Unfortunately it is fertilizers and pesticides that make it possible to raise the large amounts of food that the population needs.  If everyone had to go back to the old days we would all need to move back to the farm and spend most of our day with a hoe in our hands.  The alternative would be to starve to death.

I was reading a blog of a family that had gone off grid.  That means that they are not dependent on society for anything.  They have no water bill because they have a well.  If they have electricity they generate it themselves.  They grow their own food, and so forth.  The interesting part was when they said they did not have cable but watched videos on the DVD in their lap top.  Last time I checked, lap tops were a product of our industrial culture.  In a sense they were still on the grid or the residual wealth of the grid.

It sounds wonderful.  It sounds romantic.  It sounds impossible.  We can’t all go back to nature.

To be continued...

homo unius libri