Oct 02 2008
Philosophizing Nature
Yesterday my wife reminded me that I’m weird. I don’t hold down a full time job. I wander alone for days on end, grooving with the wild. I sit around pondering the universe, then write down my thoughts. Okay, I admit it – I’m an odd duck, and not just because I have no fashion sense and listen to avant-garde jazz. Lately I’ve been spending a great deal of time philosophizing about nature and it’s only widening the chasm between mainstream society and me. So I make it a point to do something normal each day, like surfing the net or watching TV. That helps.
Immediately following my four-day retreat in the Adirondacks, I started revising a new set of philosophical essays that I committed to paper last spring. Three weeks later, I’m still at it. But I should finish this particular draft soon. At the risk of mislabeling the work, I’d call it existential naturalism, even though I’m not really an existentialist or a naturalist. I don’t particularly care for “-ists” and “-isms,” and that makes describing my worldview somewhat problematical. But this label gives the reader some idea what my work is about, anyhow.
No philosophy worth taking seriously can be adequately expressed in bumper stickers. That people even try is a tribute more to their sense of humor than to their wisdom. But simplicity is a virtue in this day and age, so here are a few statements that characterize my worldview: 1) The mysteries of the natural world (the only world there is) are greater than our ability to comprehend them. 2) God, nature (in general) and human nature (in particular) are inexorably entwined. 3) I, Homo sapiens, am entirely responsible for what I make of myself and the world.
Do you see any glaring contradictions here? I certainly hope so, otherwise I’m just wasting my time. To be useful at all, philosophizing has to bring fresh ideas to the table. Everything else is mere apology for the same old, worn-out worldviews passed down through the centuries, or meaningless blather. I’d rather be thought of as a walking contradiction than someone who has nothing new to say.
The word “nature” means a thousand different things to a thousand different people. Like the words “truth” and “love,” it defies easy definition, and that’s probably why philosophers find it so attractive. But I am certain that such a thing as nature exists when I go for a long walk in the woods. Only when faced with the countless abstractions of human society – things like dollar bills, contracts and “-isms” – do I start having my doubts.
As soon as I’ve completed this draft, I’ll disappear into the woods for a while. I’ll wander about aimlessly, grooving on the wild and clearing my head. Then brand new ideas will crop up. It’s a vicious circle to be sure. This is what makes me weird, I guess. I keep going back to the well, even though this constant re-visioning only complicates matters. Good thing my wife loves me for it, otherwise I’d be in deep trouble. There’s not much call for woods wanderers in either the personal ads or the employment pages these days.
