Hi, Lyle!! Welcome to the Feelings thread, if you haven't posted here before. I was gone for a few months and lost track a little, but hello in any event!!
I think humans and their works are certainly "natural" in the sense that we are organisms. When our acts are savage, or our works not aesthetically pleasing, it is disappointing to me because we were blessed with very advanced reasoning skills which should give us the ability, and the motivation, to act at the highest possible functional levels, not the lowest.
I guess it's about delayed gratification in lots of ways!! If we act impulsively and for immediate gain, the sky will be littered with orbiting space junk, a lot of species whose interplay with our survival we don't yet completely understand will be gone from the food chain, undiscovered drugs from the rainforest will never be utilized to save lives, there will be no fish in the sea, etc. I suppose it is natural to be this selfish, but we also have a very strong survival instinct, so that combined with our rational thinking skills should cause us to act in a more evolved, more environmentally conscious way.
I am a pagan, religiously speaking, and so I believe that everything we need is already here, and it is sacred, and all we have to do to survive is to respect and nurture what we see in front of us, and that earth is the mother. I don't think you can get much more natural than that. Monkeys in the forest have the intuitive good sense to move to other feeding grounds before they eat so much of their favorite treats that the plants will not grow back. Why is it humans are so stupid?
Now, about reinforcement! This goes back to some MAN's comments about women's breasts sagging, I think. Men are WRONG when they think we can suckle their children, overcome the rules of gravity, and keep those idealized teenage-type bodies into our '80's. This is one of those areas where women are much more understanding and realistic. Do you think we idealize those balding heads and beer bellies? Not really--we just find more of love radiates from the inside as we age, and that's what keeps turning us on.
Anyway, if Janice didn't make her splendid recipe with tofu and cucumber mousse, I don't think there would be as much of a problem--these are SOFT foods!! My original cucumbers need NO reinforcement, and I see from reading your profile that you like NANO and its twelve-inch measuring tools!! Could you explain to a non-techie girl what this all means? |
