Meta Finis: Taoist Nature

Two other metaphorical approaches to nature exist other than the Semitic one. It should be understood that the universe in some unsayable way has something within it that makes it possible. The something is a mystery beyond all solving by the human mind which hardly knows its own limitations. So we use metaphors and stories about that mystery behind the scenery.

In the Taoist metaphor, nature is not the result of external force. Nature does what it does by itself in the way that an apple tree apples without external force being applied to it. Similarly, some planets people as apple trees apple. We live on one of those planets. In this metaphor, humans try to adjust to nature's way rather than to make nature adjust to us, the more Western metaphor.

In the Taoist metaphor, the "individual" is an illusion, similar to the idea that a wave in an ocean is an individual that decides to wave. Nothing in this view is unconnected from everything else. The ocean waves like the apple tree apples.

The Taoist metaphor is more inherently ecological than the metaphor now dominant in the west.

In the hills of Kyoto the streets were built to adapt to the curves of the hills, in San Francisco a

rectangular grid was imposed on hills. In the West, the human was given dominion over nature and some people special status. In the East the human was expected to adapt to nature and neither dominate it or others.

If you wonder why elderly Japanese have volunteered to help with the clean up of the nuclear problems in their country, maybe it is a product of a consciousness of being part of rather than master of nature. The Chinese too are working very hard on solar power. The West resists solar largely because of the domination of oil interests.

It's generally not a matter of changing one's thinking but of changing one's consciousness. If the person without insurance is dying, let him die. It's his fault. Only the isolated individual is real. There's more than one consciousness possibility. That consciousness is mostly destructive and belongs more to the traditions of the West. Ecological consciousness much less so and belongs more to the traditions of the East.