NATURE = The Drive to Thrive, Evolution, Replication (Breeding of Forms); Accident, Change, Variability; Organic Wars (i.e. Life feeding on Life); Predator, Prey or Mutualism; Circle of Life; Hierarchy.
Common terms and ideas to show the anti-Nature worldview versus the pro-Nature worldview:
- "Shoulding" (REBT) or Yes-saying (Nietzche)
- Fixed Mindset or Growth Mindset
- Leveling vs. Rank Order (Nietzche)
The former points of view above, like shoulding, leveling, etc., is in some way a version of Utopianism (the perfectly ideal state of all things as ultimately unnatural, i.e. denatured). This utopianism as the ideal worldview leads to frustration and disappointment in life; and is thus ultimately disempowering, leading to higher degrees of unhappiness. For example, the thought process of, "This or that should not have happened," "he or she should not act that way or should not have done this or that." "It is terrible, an objective moral outrage because they could have and should have behaved differently with pure contra-causal free will." All this ignores NATURE and any degree of "fate" whether by the mythical fate weaving norns, or by a naturalized fatedness through biology, sociological effects, and physics, etc. Thus the Natured-attitude is instead something like, "It is what it is," or as REBT/CBT might frame it: "I prefer events were otherwise, but it's just an event. I can handle it. Not that big a deal."
Or even, "I would have it no other way, for Nature is the sweet and sour, the rainbow and tornado, the butterfly and mosquito. Nature is what I too am in very form and deed. Nature is what I swim in, and thus Nature it is. I accept what is."
This does not mean one might prefer Nomos (idealized cultural rules) over pure Nature, the natural order of things; but there is a difference between preferring versus expecting (or demanding) Nature (Reality) be what it is not. Even Nietzche had his ethical preferences but in his drive to fully accept Nature, he basically said that at best he would look away from Nature when it was terrible and horrendous; but he strived to embrace Nature (Reality) as it is; he believed that by doing so one can potentialilly better avoid becoming depressed, pessimistic, disappointed and nihilistic.
The Platonist Ideal, the Demand for Perfection (or Perfectionism) does not match Nature's #1 Law of Change (Organic & Cultural Evolution). So that just as believing that biological forms are magically breathed into molded clay bodies by a skybound man, instead of organic forms evolving through natural selection; it is also a form of magical thinking to expect or demand idealistic perfectionist outcomes, because just as organic life forms evolve, so too, social outcomes also evolve (change via chance and accidental occurrence) as part of Changing-Nature as well.
The more realistic and empowering Life-stance or attitude toward Life, that is affirming of NATURE, is that of seeing that on some level it is all a form of WAR: as in competition, overcoming, i.e. Agon; so that just as Darwin says that there's a war of the species leading to new beautiful forms, with basically life feeding on life as necessary, so too, there is also necessary forms of war in nearly all things: from the wars of competition in a capitalist economy, to the soft wars of sports competition, to the social wars for class status, to the wars within one's own body.
The war within the body: the striving of drives to overcome one another and compete with one another, so that self-overcoming is a war within one self, where for example one's optimism and positive thinking must go to war with one's inner critic and the outward naysayers. Meanwhile, there is a war within oneself that is moving one either toward greater strength or weakness, of growing fat cells or muscles via hypertrophy, of sedentariness or activity; of, in the language of Mind OS, getting one's needs met and "fighting" for one's happiness and self-esteem or losing to boundary violations and a loss of self-esteem; of winning friends and allies or alienating people and isolating oneself from the power of team spirit; of lowering in status or growing higher in status, building wealth or declining toward poverty, etc.
When one sees themselves as Nature (and not separate from Nature), being of Nature, part of Nature, swimming in Nature; then being a natural being means you have the same power as Nature. I like the analogy of one of the Transformers movie, where the Transformers are able to shape shift because of a substance called transferium. Well, Nature is akin to transferium: wherein you are by analogy a body of transferium and everything around you is ultimately a kind of transferium; so that you are ultimately capable of transforming along with this transferium-based natural reality in which you swim.
Rather than denying or opposing Nature, or wishing it were not NATURE, not omnipresent quasi-transferium and fragile or antifragile forms; what if one instead stepped into it, aligned with it, merged with Nature?
If you say "Yes" to Nature, both the Yin and Yang, you merge with Accident, Change, and Will to Power. In other words, you are better able to work with randomness and accidents which become "happy accidents" like a painter working with a perceived mistake from a slip of his brush; by instead evolving the painting around the mistake, growing it into an unplanned and unexpected beautiful form upon the canvas. One thus becomes more spontaneous, creative, and artistic toward life by expecting randomness and imperfection as pathways new creations by creators.
One begins to see oneself not as apart from nature or being always attacked by nature, but as part of nature; a natural being growing and becoming within nature, being lived by nature, growing and expanding with Nature. Thus one realizes one is as eternal and as powerful as nature by being one with Nature.
