Why do so many human endeavors get labeled "unnatural"?

[Prometheus]

The real fact is that nothing is unnatural, but there are indeed things that are against nature: bad bacteria are natural, but at enmity with life. Viruses, death, disease, these are natural, but at enmity with life.

 

At one level of magnification things might seem like chaotic arbiters of death, when at another they are part of the natural order of life.

 

Take earthquakes and volcanoes: they bring nothing but death and destruction, right? Take a different perspective though and you see they are necessary manifestations of the planet having a healthy geo-system. Remove earthquakes and volcanoes and we'll soon have a dead planet.

 

They only seem at enmity with life because we predominantly like to see things from our own perspective, but it's an arbitrary distinction: unnatural dare i say.

[B. John Jones]

 

I wonder why such things exist?

 

I do have the answer but you don't usually care for my answers.

 

At one level of magnification things might seem like chaotic arbiters of death, when at another they are part of the natural order of life.

 

Take earthquakes and volcanoes: they bring nothing but death and destruction, right? Take a different perspective though and you see they are necessary manifestations of the planet having a healthy geo-system. Remove earthquakes and volcanoes and we'll soon have a dead planet.

 

They only seem at enmity with life because we predominantly like to see things from our own perspective, but it's an arbitrary distinction: unnatural dare i say.

 

I disagree.

Edited June 28, 2016 by B. John Jones

[Lyudmilascience]

Phi for all "" I think it may seem unfair to many people, like our intelligence gives us too much of an advantage over other species, but it's one of the attributes we got from evolution, and it seems wrong to me to feel guilty about it. When you add it to our opposable thumbs, tool-use, cooperation, and communication skills, it's observably impressive, but is it unnatural?

If this sentiment is somehow guilt driven, it seems to me that it would be smarter to embrace our intelligence and understand our impact on nature as an integral part of it, rather than as outside of it. If we can use our intelligence more wisely, can we also agree that our intelligence is one attribute that distinguishes us in nature, just as the shark's teeth, the bird's wings, the bear's claws, all give them advantages in their environments and distinguishes them in nature?"

to me it dosent feel unfair, i dont feel guilty about people creating unnatural things I only feel guilt when it comes to non biodegradable things, we are killing species by landfills and factory runoff. our intelligence can create nagitive things for the enviorment.

[Mitsurugi]

I have read through all the replies here and I do believe we are missing a key part to the answer or at least something we can agree on and that is our Anthropological roots. Our first ancestors main objective in life was to survive like any other animal using similar methods such as hunting extensively. That is the sense some of you where alluding to...is nature. We hunt,eat,sleep, survive, and reapeat like all animals. You can even go as far as to say that this is nature because there is nothing hurting our environment and decomposition does it's thing accordingly.

 

But on the other hand...Humans to a certain degree have become unnatural animals due to our intelligence. Our instinctual survial intuitions have become skewed. We now have devloped many diseases due to obesity & overeating. We commit suicide. We masturbate. We reject rape. We love only one mate. We are the most violent animal. All of these things...generally aren't apparent in the animal kingdom. There are exceptions to certain species here and there but they have not outweighed the general studies.

 

On the third hand, I see we are almost stumbling into the realm of philosophy of "What is nature?" Let's try to stay on science!

 

Today's human mind is in a constant lost state of the primal brain and the modern brain. I believe evolution will help us out of these trances. I hope this helped and any feedback is welcomed.