Do we need nature?   That was the subject of an essay contest sponsored by Shell Oil and The Economist magazine in August of 2003. Issues for the essay included genetic modification, biodiversity, gene therapy, nuclear power and renewable energy. The essays were to focus on the difficult choices to be made in politics, economics, society, and public policy between actions, or inactions, that seek to increase man's control over nature and those that seek to reduce it, those that seek to bypass nature and those that hope to work with it, those that put a higher value on human development and those that value the preservation or even reconstitution of nature.

            Do we need nature?   To Pagans, who address air, fire, water, earth, and spirit-the essentials of life on the planet-in our opening and closing prayers, that seems like an absurd question.  It's like asking do we need the air we breathe, and the water we drink? Do we really need to eat? These simple gifts of nature are mostly taken for granted. We eat, drink, breathe without thought for nature, the source of our life-giving essentials. This thoughtlessness, this lack of consciousness regarding nature, bleeds into every aspect of life on the planet.

            Now as we contemplate our role in nature and ponder the evolutionary path before us, what are the questions we should be asking? Are the problems, as the Shell/Economist essay implies, whether to bypass nature or embrace and work with it? Are we trapped between the dualities of increasing or reducing man's control over nature? Are we left with the singular choice of valuing human development or preserving nature? Is humanity condemned to the limitations of these struggling dualities or is salvation found in the balance of these polarities? How do we find this balance?  In the wake of potential environmental devastation in the not too distant future, should we not first look at how we got here? How has our society become so disconnected, so cut off from nature? What are the attitudes that have sped us toward the increasing deterioration of our environment? What is at the heart of our fundamental beliefs about nature; what is the nature of Nature ?  Continued. . .