Are there other ways the nature vs. culture paradigm causes confusion?
Paradoxically we celebrate or mourn modern industrial society as the cause and effect of humans’ victory over nature. Modern industrial society thus is seen as the end of nature and the highest state of culture. Yet modern industrial society is at the same time critically dependent on “natural” resources such as hydrocarbons. Modern human society is not independent of nature; at best (and at worst) it’s a hybrid of nature and culture. Even many animals are not really unambiguously part of nature or culture. Several of North America’s iconic “wild” animals, for example, are neither wild nor domesticated. Turkey, deer, buffalo, pigeon and geese all passed through genetic bottlenecks as humans subjected the species to dramatic selective pressures by (nearly) exterminating them, breeding them back or managing their populations. Many plants don’t fit into the two categories of wild or domesticated, either. An example is the bioengineering of crops. These crops are not merely human-created t
