Why Nature and Death are Closer than You Think

Two concepts that fascinate us are Nature, and Death. Although you might think otherwise, it doesn't not take a logical circus to meaningfully relate these two ideas.

Consider nature not yet in terms of death itself, but in terms of the feelings which it elicits. Tangentially, death is not our context for understanding nature; it is simply an analytical model through which we can examine nature in the broader context of our own psyches. Nature represents something to us; there is a discourse surrounding it that pre-configures the way we perceive it before we even step out into the woods. Our friends and family share with us ideas about nature, TV and movies portray nature in a certain light, and most importantly, each of us comes pre-assembled with the history of our own experiences with nature. All of these things merge into the framework for our thoughts about and observations of the natural world. For now, my analysis of nature is going to be in purely conceptual terms, as free as possible from socio-cultural discourse and our warped consciousness of nature. Our understanding of nature has a few distinct but related components to it: a uniquely personal discourse, a social discourse, and a composition of the two. The social discourse is largely the aggregate of everyone's personal discourses, and the third component is the product of the social discourse in turn shaping an individual's personal discourse. Since everything depends on singular personal discourses, that component is the logical place to begin. By personal discourse, I mean your own specific perspective on nature. By nature, I mean any kind of natural scene where you feel like you're removed from human development; trees, mooses, and mountains optional.


Nature evokes some deep feelings from us on its own, aside from the underlying feature of death. Most superficially, nature has a stunning visual appeal. Beautiful colors, interesting shapes, and often times, incredibly sized objects. Going a little deeper, all of these colors, shapes, and sizes, are by definition the work of something other than man! Ecosystems are like naturally emerging cities; complex structures of imposing size house communities of plants and animals. All of these organisms are connected; their actions impact each other and the ecosystem as a whole. This system is in a constant state of flux and balance, and it is our frame of reference for understanding nature. Here's where death comes in. When something dies in this system of nature, what happens? The body decomposes. It might become the fertilizer for other plants to grow, it might be eaten by scavenging animals, but it will definitely be broken down and reabsorbed by the system somehow. This is why I think nature fascinates us so much: it presents us with a model of life in which death is not mourned, or celebrated; it's merely one development in the course of the systemic life. This of course, is anathema to the human conception of life, or what life should be. To see an animal die in nature and then watch the system in which this animal lived thrive in spite of death, and even benefit from the resources that this animal's death has dispensed back into the system, is to see that in nature, an individual organism's mortality means nothing. It simultaneously reminds us of our own mortality and puts us in touch with the deep feelings which accompany this realization.