Anxious Activists and Nature’s Essential Resilience

In spring 1919, farmers across Belgium and northern France ploughed their fields for the first time in five years. Over the past four years their fields had been subjected to repeated heavy barrages, estimated in total at one tonne of high explosive per square metre of the battlefield; the soil had been impregnated by poisonous gases including phosgene, mustard and chlorine gas; the farmers’ fields had been extensively trenched; mines had been dug, packed with explosives and then detonated; woodlands and orchards had been destroyed, the trees blown to shattered stumps and then, with the advent of tanks, farmland had been repeatedly traversed by heavy machinery. Despite all this environmental devastation, the farmers sowed crops and within a few years the rich productivity of the region had returned. One hundred years later the productivity of this land continues, although farmers are still unearthing dangerous gas and high-explosive shells, such was the intensity of the destruction unleashed on their fields.

In Nagasaki’s Urakami valley in 1945, hungry survivors of the Tall Boy atomic bomb cleared the debris from their small allotments and planted barley. The survivors hoped for a harvest to keep them from starvation. There was no precedent for this crop, never before had seeds been sown into such uniquely baked, blasted and irradiated soil, but the barley grew and much-needed grain was gathered.

The catastrophes of the Western Front and of Nagasaki occurred before the environmental awakening of the 1960s and 1970s, so the French and Belgian farmers and the Nagasaki survivors were not familiar with the new and soon thereafter widely popularised view that nature was fragile, always on the brink of irretrievable collapse and exhaustion because of man’s activities. Instead, these farmers had found what every generation of humanity has found: nature is tough, with prodigious powers of recovery and fruitfulness.

Observation and experience testify to the resilience of the natural world, together with its immense fecundity and ability to bounce back—and bounce back quickly—from disaster and depredation. Despite this obvious fact, the tearful environmentalist, the artist concerned with the survival of the reef near his seaside villa, and the activist eager to sway public opinion against coal seam gas all emphasise that the natural world is fragile and threatened—perhaps ly—by man’s activities, even if those activities appear common or benign: clearing land for houses, dredging a harbour, irrigating broad-acre crops, mining, growing an economy to provide jobs, or having children. We are bombarded with the view that if the natural world is to survive, then man must keep his grasping hands off nature’s delicate parts; man has no right to change and manipulate what is considered a tenuous natural world to provide for human extension and amenity. At the very least, man must minimise his mining, agriculture, manufacturing, lessen the spread of his infrastructure and reduce his population. In the view of some people, it would be better for the earth if man did not exist at all.

It is no surprise that the widespread environmental awakening of the West in the 1960s and 1970s followed the widespread influence of French and German existentialism in the 1940s and 1950s, because there is a vital connection between the doctrine that existence precedes essence—the core affirmation of existentialism—and the idea that nature is fragile. For most of human history, the common presupposition was essentialist; that is, people believed that essence preceded existence: the universe was the result of intention, a creation of deliberation and forethought through some divine agency. Broadly speaking, religions are essentialist, as are most of the defining philosophies of the Western tradition, including Platonism, Thomism and Hegelianism.

Since the Second World War, with the championing of existentialism and the growth from it of postmodernism, which shares the view that existence precedes essence, existentialist presuppositions have determined the discourse of the commentariat, secular universities and media. This dominance is now being violently challenged. The church has long passively resisted the belief that existence precedes essence, but more recently Islamists are challenging—with shootings and suicide bombs—this central belief of the postmodern West. It could be said that, in part, the intensifying clash of civilisations we are witnessing today is a conflict between the relativist values of the existentialist West and the essentialist convictions of Islam.

These presuppositions are dogmas, but that is no snide denigration. It is an honest acknowledgment that our presuppositions are matters of faith; it is best to admit that fact because it is better to have a conscious faith that can be articulated and discussed than an unconscious faith that can’t be articulated and discussed—and amended if necessary. G.K. Chesterton highlighted the value of consciously-held creeds. He said, “There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.”

Three thousand years ago the divide between the presupposition that essence preceded existence and the presupposition that existence preceded essence, as they pertained to man’s nature, was articulated with stunning precision by the Hebrew psalmist: “It is He who made us: we did not make ourselves.” Nietzsche, postmodernists and nihilist philosophers like Richard Rorty say the exact opposite: “He did not make us: we make ourselves—and we can remake ourselves.”
Two thousand years ago, the essentialist presupposition as it pertained to all creation was stated: “By faith, we understand that the things which are seen were not made by things which appear.” In other words, existence had a non-material, spiritual origin which we cannot currently see in direct action.

By contrast, the modern secular presupposition may be stated, “By faith, we understand that the things that are seen were made by things which do appear.” According to this creed, reality is only physical and was made by physical processes that are still discernible. However, no human was at the origin of the universe to observe and verify the nature and conditions involved in the initial creative or chaotic conception, so it can only ever be a matter of faith. It is with commendable honesty that each statement begins, “by faith”. It is an honesty which is rarely practised, and as a consequence unconscious dogmatists are often unable to understand the position of conscious dogmatists and in their frustration seek to advance their agenda by manipulation via the media, ever more restrictive legislation, attempts at shaming and sometimes abuse. Again Chesterton noted, “There is no end to argument if there is no understanding of beginnings.”

While humanity is proclaimed to be free to make and re-make ourselves (including human sexual identity), the contradiction is that this freedom does not extend to the natural world: it must be left alone, preferably in a pristine condition. There is no basis for this call if existence precedes essence; it is an arbitrary absolute. There seem to be vestiges of a vague essentialism here, a leftover perhaps of Hegel’s concept of a World Spirit although now re-imagined in the rainbow tie-dyes of Gaia. A consistent existentialist would have no qualms about re-making nature as well as man: whatever is possible through genetic engineering, for example, may be explored and exploited. H.G. Wells’s character Dr Moreau is the model for a consistently existentialist view of nature: we humans have evolved to be powerful and manipulative, therefore might has given us the right—and there is no authority to instruct us otherwise—to determine nature’s non-given essence. And we can change it again if we want. A consistent existentialist would not protest against GMO foods, eugenics, vivisection or whaling.

But the ardent environmentalists’ demand that nature be left alone as much as possible is perhaps only based in part on the leftover essentialism of Hegel’s World Spirit; more likely it is panicky reaction to the transitory view of nature inherent in the existentialist presuppositions of Darwinism. All we delight in and enjoy in nature, together with all that we battle against (some bacteria and parasites, for example) is a product of chance and the competitive purging of natural selection. According to this view, life on earth is freakish, a wondrous monstrosity in a universe that has so far shown no evidence whatsoever of biological life elsewhere. The earth, humanity, the entire biosphere is in no way a product of choice but a product of chance. This formula is well known: we are the Cinderella planet that just happened to have the right set of conditions for life to somehow, inexplicably, flower and develop. No giver of essence was involved or remains involved, only the existential conditions of chance and natural selection.

To add to the existentialist’s anxiety, there is plentiful evidence of mass extinctions in the past even without the baleful influence of humans to make things worse. And the universe is silent; it provides no guarantees of continued existence and does not speak to us with any guiding wisdom. Troubling too is the fact that human wisdom has no unanimity and is in many ways problematic. With no other responsible agency, saving all of this fragile life is, by default, if we want it, our responsibility. No wonder, given the conviction that existence precedes essence, that there is alarm and urgent calls for the flame of life to be preserved at all costs; no wonder its being is seen as unbearably light and brittle. It is perceived as contingent rather than intended; an unstable product of chance rather than a stable entity born of purposive deliberation.

But the call to protect nature even at the expense of human amenity is itself another arbitrary absolute; by what authority could such a call be made imperative? Why not let man do what he wants and let natural selection sort out which species survive and which do not? That, at least, is consistent with biological history. Indeed, if man is only another part of nature, why not consider his activities—some of them destructive—his natural behaviour? Instead, the existentialist seeks to “absolutise the relative”, which is Kierkegaard’s descriptor of the secular world’s inconsistent mode of thinking. It decries the absolutes of religion as oppressive and attempts to “relativise the absolutes” of other faiths but then “absolutises the relative” values of its own faith. No coal. No gas. No nuclear power. No whaling. Do the activists with existentialist presuppositions mean that these activities must be banned forever, no matter what the circumstances? It seems they do, and if so they are demanding that we absolutise particular values which, on an existentialist’s own basis, can only ever be relative.

The presupposition that existence precedes essence is not the only basis for our understanding of the reality that confronts us, or better, the reality that embraces us. The reverse of that formula—that essence precedes existence—provides the basis for a different view of reality, including environmental issues. At once, it appears that all that exists is the result of deliberation and decision; its essence is given. Here, I am assuming the giver of essence and existence is personal essence since reason, forethought and choice are involved; moreover we see evidence of personal essence in the personhood of every human.

With this presupposition, we see the natural world—and ourselves—as intended rather than accidental. Things have an inherent value simply because they have been brought into being. And part of the telos—the purpose that drives every living thing—is the capacity to reproduce, to colonise, to find niches, to thrive in good seasons and to survive, as a species, adverse seasons. Life’s given essence is to be resilient, to adapt and to persevere. Every farmer knows that nature is immensely tough; he must work hard to control the spread of pest animals and weeds. If he neglects to control them, they flourish, colonise and spread. In ancient Rome, Horace observed, “Though you drive nature away with a pitchfork, she is quick to return.”

Of course, not every species that ever existed has survived. Immense, unique cataclysms, about which we can only speculate, wiped out dinosaurs and the megafauna of the Pleistocene. This is a problem for the essentialist. We ask why many things were given existence which no longer exist, and we have to be content with mystery. The inexplicable features in the existential view of life are matched by the inscrutable features of the essentialist view of life. There is, however, a big epistemological difference between what is inexplicable and what is enigmatic. Likewise, there is a significant difference in seeing the natural world as given and seeing it as contingent. Roger Scruton highlights this in The Face of God: “There is surely a great difference, which we all understand, between seeing something as just there (there for the taking) and seeing it as a gift.”

What is obvious is that the essentialist faith expects that the intended natural world has—even in the face of earth-shattering events—prodigious powers of recovery. This potential is not expressed perfectly in every situation but it is still astounding. This does not condone treating the natural world with contempt, knowing that it can recover from almost any disturbance. After all, it is as intended as we are and, like us, shares a common essence. Thus, Francis of Assisi could call the sun his brother and the moon his sister without lapsing into pantheism. Scruton observes, “By remaking human beings and their habitat as objects to consume rather than subjects to revere we invite the degradation of both.” Thus, there is no basis consistent with essentialism for wanton abuse of nature; for example, by hunting the thylacine to non-existence. But when human folly has greatly diminished the numbers of a species, as has often happened, but has stopped the destruction, then the natural world shows its fecundity and powers of recovery provided some remnant habitat remains and the depredation ceases or is greatly reduced. The increasing populations of wolves, cougars and bison in North America, the increase of whales in every ocean, and the prevalence of crocodiles in northern Australia are prominent examples of dramatic population increases in just a few decades from perilously low numbers. The recovery is what an essentialist view of nature would anticipate; it will not come as a surprise.

Nature can recover despite both low numbers and extremely hostile conditions. Bikini Atoll and Chernobyl both provide stunning and encouraging examples of the resilience and prodigality of nature. At Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, twenty-three atomic bombs were detonated on a tiny lagoon in only twelve years, from 1946 to 1958. One of the bombs, the Bravo hydrogen bomb, was one thousand times more powerful than the Tall Boy bomb dropped on Nagasaki. It vaporised three small islands in the atoll and created a crater two kilometres long and over seventy metres deep. Temperatures in the lagoon were estimated to be 55,000 degrees Celsius. The coral reef ecosystem was obliterated.

Scientists were so concerned about the radiation levels that it was decades before they returned to study the lagoon. They expected an underwater “moonscape”. What they found was an underwater garden that Ringo Starr could have sung about. The reef ecosystem was extensive and vibrant. Huge corals thought to take centuries to develop had developed in only five decades. The devastated area, it is thought, was quickly colonised with the aid of currents from nearby reefs, although some coral species requiring particular niche conditions have not yet been observed.

It is common for environmental activists to oppose some development by crying that the forest/reef/groundwater system will be “ruined forever”. The evidence from nature itself is that this fear is unfounded: nature recovers if given the chance, with relative speed, even after extreme disturbance.

At Chernobyl, in 1986, a nuclear power plant exploded, releasing radiation across Ukraine, forcing the government to move over 100,000 people out of a 2600-square-kilometre exclusion zone. Given the chaos that followed the event and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was some years before any extensive survey of the effects of the blast and lingering radiation on animals was conducted. What became unexpectedly but immediately apparent was that with people removed, nature flourished. Biologists have concluded that there is minimal evidence of radiation effects on the flourishing animals. Now, populations of wolves, for example, are much higher than in other nature reserves in the region. Red eagles, otters, roe deer, elks, bears, moose, beavers, stoats and owls are just some of the animals that are increasing in numbers in what was thought to be a nuclear wasteland. Nature recovered so quickly and to such an extent that ecotourism is an emerging industry.

Scientists who examined Bikini Atoll and Chernobyl delighted in the recovery of nature, but the conclusion that was drawn in both cases was that humanity destroys nature, which otherwise prospers in our absence. This is a justified conclusion, but it is not the only possible conclusion. Another conclusion, reflecting an essentialist expectation of resilience—and much kinder to humanity—is that if nature recovers prodigiously from extreme devastation, then we can pursue our necessary activities and many of our desirable activities—with care—and we don’t destroy things forever. There may be a season of harm, but then there will be recovery. Obviously, the shorter the season and the less the harm, the better. Prudence, good stewardship and need rather than greed should be guiding principles, but activities including mining, broad-acre irrigated farming, road-building, harbour-dredging, expanding the economy and having children can all proceed.

Brian Coman identifies two streams of environmentalism. In significant ways, they represent ecological expressions of the two radically different faiths highlighted in this essay. What Coman calls “Resource ecology” is consistent with the presuppositions of essentialism, while “Radical ecology” is consistent with the presuppositions of existentialism. He writes:

Resource ecologists constitute the mainstream group since most governments espouse the basic tenets of their ideas and they enjoy widespread public support. Put simply, resource ecology views the natural world in an anthropocentric manner, but seeks to place constraints on human use of natural resources.

It sees humans as having certain obligations towards the natural world but those obligations are essentially to secure the present and future well-being of humans, both in terms of the maintenance or improvement of aesthetic values as well as the more basic, instrumental requirements of natural resources (food and water, clean air, etc.).

Radical ecologists completely reject the notion of a human-centred cosmos and call for fundamental changes in the way in which humans view their place in the natural order.

Drawing heavily on evolutionary theory, they see humans as no more than intelligent apes whose activity in nature since Paleolithic times has been such as to “unhinge” them from the rest of the natural order in a way which is potentially disastrous, not only to themselves as a species, but to the whole of the living world in general.

[For radical ecologists] the transformation of nature through human work is a wholly negative development, separating humans from the rest of nature. They see the root cause of this separation as being a fatal dualism in which humans have set themselves apart from and above the natural order.

Every person sees the world according to what they believe about it, especially about its origin. We cannot see the world except through the particular lens of our presuppositions. But we can be conscious of our presuppositions and the effect they have of focusing attention on some features of the world to the neglect of other features. And we can make our presuppositions a matter of careful thought and decision, although this already assumes that an essentialist agenda is the best one. Otherwise, we can leave them to chance and afterwards discover where we are and what we’ve become.

Chesterton, an essentialist informed by Thomism, said, “There is a time when we must firmly choose the course we will follow, or the relentless drift of events will make the decision.” Our culture is drifting towards a common but unconscious acceptance of the existentialist presupposition, which has already shown evidence of a disturbing misanthropy. This drift gains much of its speed and sweeping momentum from a significant degree of misapprehension and a state of chronic anxiety; and at the same time it helps to reinforce these crippling conditions.