I couldn’t agree more, and here’s a little anecdote that I think speaks to your point.
I recently went on a camping trip with a bunch of teenagers, organized by one of them, let’s call him Elliott (his name is very much not Elliott). Now this kid is like 16 or something, and I have to say, if I were stuck in the woods in a survival situation, I’m doing everything Elliott tells me to do, I suspect he could live quite happily in the woods for months if he needed to. He clearly feels a great respect for nature and wild places and goes out of his way to learn about the plants and animals that live there, including diet, migration patterns, all the stuff I find dreadfully boring.
And yet, despite the deep love of nature that Elliott has, he clearly has a feeling of dominion towards the plants and animals living there. On our camping trip this showed up in several ways, the main one being that we were on a fishing trip. It was all catch and release (Elliott is a vegetarian), but that doesn’t actually make it a lot better; Elliott (and the rest of the teenagers) still traumatized multiple fish simply for the pleasure of doing so. Elliott also caught various small critters to show to the others, a water snake and a pregnant turtle are the ones I remember. These critters were returned, unharmed (well, physically, at least, who knows how much they suffered from being messed with and moved), and Elliott treated them with gentleness and care the whole time they were in his hands, but still, I don’t think picking up various critters to show them off to your friends is really an acceptable behavior!
In a better world, Elliott would enjoy nature no less than he currently does, but I do not believe he’d be catching fish and disturbing pregnant turtles
That whole “dominion over the Earth” thing has really fucked with people’s relationship with nature
We are a part of nature and as a part of nature, we should see ourselves as stewards and guardians of nature rather than as masters of it
I couldn’t agree more, and here’s a little anecdote that I think speaks to your point.
I recently went on a camping trip with a bunch of teenagers, organized by one of them, let’s call him Elliott (his name is very much not Elliott). Now this kid is like 16 or something, and I have to say, if I were stuck in the woods in a survival situation, I’m doing everything Elliott tells me to do, I suspect he could live quite happily in the woods for months if he needed to. He clearly feels a great respect for nature and wild places and goes out of his way to learn about the plants and animals that live there, including diet, migration patterns, all the stuff I find dreadfully boring.
And yet, despite the deep love of nature that Elliott has, he clearly has a feeling of dominion towards the plants and animals living there. On our camping trip this showed up in several ways, the main one being that we were on a fishing trip. It was all catch and release (Elliott is a vegetarian), but that doesn’t actually make it a lot better; Elliott (and the rest of the teenagers) still traumatized multiple fish simply for the pleasure of doing so. Elliott also caught various small critters to show to the others, a water snake and a pregnant turtle are the ones I remember. These critters were returned, unharmed (well, physically, at least, who knows how much they suffered from being messed with and moved), and Elliott treated them with gentleness and care the whole time they were in his hands, but still, I don’t think picking up various critters to show them off to your friends is really an acceptable behavior!
In a better world, Elliott would enjoy nature no less than he currently does, but I do not believe he’d be catching fish and disturbing pregnant turtles