“If people think nature is their friend, then they don’t need an enemy.”–Kurt Vonnegut
Image credit: CartoonStock.com. Used by permission
Clearly, anyone who took the brunt of Sandy can identify with that quote. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts, tsunamis. Nature packs plenty of punches. Wait, you mean it’s organic foods and natural remedies you embrace? OK, I’ll counter with hemlock, radon, arsenic, curare. Good grief, there are easily as many natural ways on this earth to kill us as their are to enhance us. And most of the rest of the universe would kill us in an instant. Sure, there is plenty of beauty and benefit in nature. But anyone who hasn’t grasped the implications of the second law of thermodynamics hasn’t a clue what nature really is–or how amazing it can be.
The Millennium Conjectures™ 
Well, true, the law of opposites. I was out in nature today and it did me a world of good. Just wish it would have been warm enough to have gone barefoot.
Experienced every Miami hurricane since 1954. Some people blame God. But I don’t think Creator said to itself(gender neural pronoun) at the Creation “Gee, I think I’ll make the poor widow Mrs Johnson’s roof blow off a zillion years from now.”
Interesting post. And what comes to my mind is “we are one”
So if we find nature beautiful and amazing, and feel it should be respected, then we cannot have not grasped the second law of thermodynamics? It is not possible to both revere it and fear it?
Does this mean that wild things deserve to be hunted to extinction because they might threaten us? Or have their habitats destroyed beyond repair for the near term benefit of man? Because nature shows us its dark side when the wind and the sea periodically display their fabulous might? And at our own peril we defy it?
Who am I to argue with Kurt V. but his quote seems to indicate that he thinks man is apart from nature rather than part off it.
Aw hell, I just liked the quote. But my point is, I think, that the inevitable increase of chaos in the universe makes the parts of nature we revere all the more amazing, yet also make the parts we fear inevitable and relentlessly worse. As for Vonnegut, your guess is as good as mine, particularly without knowing the context. But I see his quote as suggesting simply that the universe (nature) is totally random in its treatment of mankind.
I agree. This reminds me of the most recent MinutePhysics video: Does the Universe Have a Purpose? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pL5vzIMAhs
But probably the coincidence of your article and this video proves that the universe is not that random 😉
Except that I had just seen that video on another blog before making this post, though the association if it exists, was subconscious.
actually, the word “nature” itself is a discrimination of ourseves from our origins, comparing our environment as “culture” to what is still untouched by man. Not only do we use tools, we can’t live without even the simplest of anthropogenic devices. Ever since we picked up a stone, sharpened it by hitting it against another stone, we became cybernetic beings
Reblogged this on Living in Phnom Penh and commented:
Read more:
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96895/CLIMATE-CHANGE-Natural-disasters-made-history-in-2011
Your perspective is refreshing . . . Too often we regurgitate pablum of whatever politically correct anthem we espouse. Thanks!
Oh, I can do that, too. I just try to avoid it here. 😉