On Domestication, Exploitation, and Wonder

A Toxic Relationship – Humanity and Nature

Between the Bombardment of Love, Infinity, and Destruction:

We have mapped and categorized nature; we love it and destroy it simultaneously. Cognitive dissonance is our daily reality. The constant need to control and exploit animals, plants, and ecosystems stands in stark contrast to the now-powerful desire to see, travel through, and enjoy the wilderness. The desire to create order by paving the earth goes hand in hand with the yearning to escape the desert of asphalt cities and return to the embrace of forests. We want to touch what no one else has touched, and we wish to be the first to do so, but also safely and in a controlled environment—and we are aware of this paradox. Where does this lead us? To the abyss.

“Man is the only creature that destroys its own habitat.” Humanity’s growing relationship with the environment and other living beings is deeply rooted in tradition and religion. There is a wealth of strange behaviors and views worth exploring. We want to be as close as possible to conscious and intelligent beings, and so we imprison them. In contrast, we find, for example, the American lawyer Steven Wise, who fights to grant great apes, elephants, and marine mammals at least the rights of personhood based on their cognitive abilities. Meanwhile, many wild animals exist only in captivity. Those that remain in their natural habitat are subject to intensive research. But how and when did all this actually begin?

Writing about nature on a whole new level.

The writer Bettina Palaca masterfully blends history, research, and literary narrative on the crucial topic of “nature and humanity.” In a series of essays, she explores this paradoxical relationship: subjective and scientific, historical and personal, exposed and neglected, analytical and experimental. She writes about overhunting and marine research, animal husbandry and plant life, climate catastrophe and reverence, and how it requires not only individual rethinking but also political decisions: for the sake of this planet.