CHAPTER 3: The Natural Delusion

Nothing we encounter is truly natural because human activity has already influenced every aspect of our planet with which we come into contact. Nonetheless, people feel an affinity for nature called “biophilia”. Left unchecked, biophilia can lead to a fear of the synthetic, which is rooted in a fear of harmful contamination best exemplified by people's reluctance to accept the OmniProcessor, which produces water from sewage. Many people were disgusted by the idea and refused to drink it even though water from the OmniProcessor is cleaner and purer than water that comes out of existing kitchen taps. This is because people are disgusted by the water's origin story. There exists a myth that the healthiest, most delicious foods are the ones that occur naturally, i.e. without much human intervention, when in fact, the majority of fruit and vegetable varieties have been bred painstakingly by dozens of generations of farmers working selectively re-planting crops with the most desirable traits. By looking at long-term trends in energy rate density (ERD) over Big History timescales, we learn that asserting more control over one's immediate environment is only the natural course of progression, not just for humans but for all living species.