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Nothing in the universe is “artificial”
It continues to amaze me how delusional and self-important we humans can be. Experiencing our lives up close, many of us fail to comprehend and reflect upon what an apparently rare but imperfect phenomenon our species is in our universe. Instead, we often obsess over local, universally meaningless animosities or spend our limited time on trivia.
Although we often feel, as individuals, that many events in our lives are out of our control, we may comfort ourselves by believing that other people — our leaders — know what they are doing and will help to keep us safe and comfortable. Religious leaders even assure us that there are superior beings that are looking after things.
We humans hold many delusional beliefs, major and minor, that demonstrate how imperfect we are. Chief among them is the belief that we are somehow more than natural phenomena.
That belief is expressed in our English language by the distinction that we make between “natural” and “artificial”. Artificial means, of course, “human made” or “unnatural”. It also carries a connotation of “false” or “fake”, acknowledging that may of our human creations have been limited, compared with ones that have grown organically. But that is also a remnant of an old belief that “natural” things are…
