What is natural ?

Author: Victoria Maravi
Location : Peru




Natural: Original; constituting the original substance of anything; as, native dust. --Milton. (Webster Dictionary)



Homosexual relationships go against the natural order of things; eating processed food is not natural; letting women acquire leadership roles is unnatural; living in a non-nuclear family will give you an unnatural, mutant child… Alright, I am exaggerating with the last remark, but haven’t we heard (or made) these allegations several times during the past few years? Everywhere in the world, people build up arguments based on what they consider as “natural”. However, I think we have been using this word in a thoughtless manner.

Let me start with processed food. Here we are confusing natural and organic. Processed or, roughly speaking, junk food is known to be unhealthy for our bodies in the long run because we are predisposed to eat food that takes longer to digest and does not contain chemicals. However, subsequent generations will probably not be able to digest organic products because people in the lower social strata are being fed with this processed food at cheaper prices and it is not likely this trend will change. Consequently, we will evolve and adapt to this processed food.

We can now focus on the argument against women in power. I believe this has more to do with social dynamics than genetic predisposition: hopefully everyone here agrees that we have lived in a patriarchal society for a very long time and women have been labelled as the weak or submissive gender. In the Stone Age, men hunted for food. Afterwards, men fought in medieval wars. This tendency continued until our time, when we have begun to focus our life on intellectual tasks. These do not demand brute force anymore. In these circumstances, men and women are equals. Only conservative people claim women cannot reach powerful positions. Maybe, in the future, the situation will be reverted and women will seize more power. However, this is something we cannot predict accurately.

I shall refrain myself from comments on homosexual relationships. Let’s just say I added this in the introduction for attraction drawing purposes!

Even if people are right, if it is true that I have made illogical arguments and organic food will always be eaten, women will never attain power and we will never consider non-heterosexual relationships proper… In the next few years, our society will develop so rapidly that we will end up on intergalactic trips, eating protein pills and bearing hermaphrodites on laboratories. Yes, this is probably the most artificial, “unnatural” environment ever.

So, frankly speaking, who cares what others do? What if it’s not natural for you? As long as we do not disrespect someone else, the world will be a fine place. Even if the future scenario I depicted never occurs as global warming may kill us all :).

Cheers!

"Photo courtesy of: Wesley* and sparktography (Flickr users)"