“Nature taps the power of limits”. As this short quote from American biologist Janine M. Benyus’s book on biomimicry and innovation inspired by nature suggests, nature recognises its limits and uses them as a source of power. As she eloquently puts it; nature optimises rather than maximises.
Acknowledging limits and even benefitting from limitations is something that a majority of late-modern human beings seem unable to grasp. We have become accustomed to viewing limitations as boundaries; as something that must be overcome in order for us to continue our expansion and growth.
However, we largely accept foisted limitations in the shape of societal rules and regulations — at times even illogical, discriminating ones that increase inequality between populations — as well as unreasonable surveillance forced upon us in the name of security and as a part of cultural compromises.
In his seminal work Discipline and Punish, French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–84) discusses power structures, fear, and control by investigating the history of the penal system, and concludes that the inducement of fear through surveillance, normalisation, and examination is the major way to keep prisoners in line in the modern prison.
But Foucault doesn’t stop here; inducing fear through surveillance, normalisation and examination does not only characterise the effective modern prison, it also defines the structure of modern society.
The goal in modern society is not fairness. Rather, the goal is maintaining order by producing harmless, non-rebellious, hard-working, productive, consuming, tax-paying citizens, who follow the rules and are satisfied with a life of conforming to the normalised standards.
Such standards conduct anything from what it means to be a good employee, citizen, consumer, or colleague, to setting standards for what being a good spouse and friend means. Controlling human behavior through surveillance, normalisation, and examination is not only immensely effective, it is applicable to any circumstance imaginable according to Foucault.
In modern society individuals are simultaneously being controlled and taking active part in controlling and surveilling others. Addiction to smartphones and social media only makes this more widespread.
With these societal regulations and restrictions, to which we surrender and adapt without much concern, despite the fact that a degree of civil disobedience at times could be beneficial, we contradict our biological, natural limitations.
When decay sets in as a natural consequence of age, we fight the process with plastic surgery, Botox, and extreme exercise. Smoothness and firmness must be maintained at any price.
We insist on consuming, living, and eating in a similar manner all around the world, which is why global chain restaurants can be found more or less everywhere, serving the same food whether or not it is suited for the climate, and whether or not the ingredients are locally accessible, which has led to a damaging degree of homogenisation as well as increased pressure on ecosystems and agriculture.
Furthermore, we want to travel more and faster across the world with devastating polluting consequences.
We refuse to accept our physiological limitations and celebrate “superhuman” achievements.
We make use of pesticides to control and profit better from crops with innumerable side effects to the natural environment, and we insist on building houses and hotels in naturally challenging places, even if the physical setting is not suited for the constructions or for the building materials used.
We insist on conquering nature, as if it is a constant power-struggle.
Unlike the late-modern human, wild nature doesn’t adhere to cultural and societal restrictions. It doesn’t “behave” very well, and it isn’t cultivated. It doesn’t try to be something it is not — smooth and firm. It is rough and mouldy, blossoming and withering, messy and diverse, and it isn’t easily normalised. We can attempt to tame it and we can farm it, but when human beings withdraw from an area or when fires, floods, or draughts ravage an area, nature quickly takes over and after a short while it will begin to spread wildly.
Unlike late-modern human beings, nature respects and even benefits from biological limitations. In a diverse, “wild” ecosystem, trees can only grow to reach the size they were programmed to reach, so that they don’t suck out all nutrients from the soil and destroy the livelihood of other plants and trees and to ensure that their trunk it strong enough to carry them.
Wild rabbits—as well as other rodents—only eat plants that are not poisonous to them. Tame rabbits on the other hand don’t know the difference between edible plants and poisonous ones. (I had an unfortunate first-hand experience recently when my sons adopted some small rabbits from a dreadful animal market. They didn’t live for very long in our lush garden, in which they ate absolutely everything.)
The combination of predatory animals and prey will ensure a balanced diversity of wildlife and even benefit the landscape, and if disturbed can have devastating ecological.
The many cycles and rhythms in nature ensure a nourishing environment consisting of nutrients and wholesome changes and variety. Within those natural limitations there are possibilities for development, upgrading, or optimising adjustments.
Other plants will grow on a tree’s trunk — nature favours cooperation and diversity — and flower species will merge and combine their properties to create new scents and colours that attract more bees and other insects to ensure their survival. Tree canopies form a shelter for small animals or birds.
Some animals develop resilience to plants in their environment that are poisonous to them and are able to feast on them. Other trees outgrow their own limitations by developing extremely long trunks if necessary, to reach the sunlight.
Optimisation rather than maximisation means — in the case of trees — being the best tree possible and adjusting to surroundings and conditions rather than pursuing expansion and trying to out-grow boundaries or trying to be something else.
One could say that nature is governed by facticity. In the wild, unlike in human environments, facticity rules without counterbalance. Perhaps that is actually one of the main differences between human life and the life of an animal or a plant. Human beings are not only governed by facticity, but also by transcendence; and balancing between these two ways of being or existing is the key to authentic living according to French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80).
Facticity in human life can be described as what is given; it is all the concrete realities about us, such as our physical traits, actions in the past, childhood, etc. — things that we cannot change — whereas transcendence is all the potentials and options human beings have, or the power of our consciousness to go beyond trendy or transcend our immediate situation—to move toward what could be.
Facticity and transcendence need to co-exist in human life, because we are never solely limited to object our facticity or our current, concrete realities or happenings from the past, nor are we exclusively constrained to our future opportunities and prospects.
However, when a human being is governed by what Sartre calls bad faith, coordination between facticity and transcendence is not possible. Bad faith makes us believe that we are not free to make choices, or it makes us believe that we can explode all boundaries of our facticity.
The reality of human life is that we are totally free—or, as Sartre puts it, we are condemned to be free. Within this freedom, however, there are limitations. Our facticity provides us with a framework that in Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s (1813–55) philosophy is described as authentic freedom being equivalent with choosing oneself. Choosing oneself involves embracing one’s transcendence, one’s options and possibilities, but it also involves comprising one’s facticity.
Our human facticity can feel limiting in the most bothersome sense of the word; restraining and confining, because facticity ensures that we cannot become anyone or anything other than ourselves.
However, when we understand that facticity actually contains an amount of liberating potential in the sense that it provides our lives with a sense of direction and with a framework. It is within the self-framework of facticity that we must pursue our dreams and fulfil our need to develop, engage in adventures and rewarding experiences, and transcend our immediate conditions and situation. Rather than fight our facticity we should embrace it, as it can be redemptive rather than restraining.
Facticity gives our lives a skeleton on which we can build; it provides us with a fundamental structure from which we can expand and transcend and explore our freedom.
Freedom without any boundaries at all is nothing but chaos.
We do have options, but not every option imaginable. Perhaps we should embrace this as liberating. Trying to deny our facticity means living in bad faith. We must embrace our limitations and accept the boundaries of our existence in order to create a good life worth sustaining, a life that we can justify living, and that we can find continuous pleasure in engaging in. This is crucial when it comes to living sustainably, because only when it is established can we avoid drowning in our despair and dissatisfaction in overconsumption, the continuous desire to spice up our reality with newness and the attempt ease the stress from continuously running faster with smoothness and convenience.
Despite the fact that we are not a plant or an animal, the facticity of nature and the natural limitations for growth that our natural environment is built around could work as a nourishing inspiration.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Paolo D’Andrea on Unsplash
