"It isn't natural to put a cat on a lead," she said. "That's not a dog you have there."
The statement amused me, because there's nothing natural about dogs being on leads, it's just something we're used to seeing and consider normal. Leads have to be made, dogs do not grow them.
The question of how human activity relates to what is natural, is always going to be an interesting one. Condemning as 'unnatural' pretty much anything that isn't liked, is one of those things people seem to like doing to other people. There's a case for saying that the majority of things we do as late stage capitalist humans destroying the planet is unnatural. It goes against nature. There's also a case for saying that viewing ourselves as separate from nature is part of what causes this problem in the first place.
All too often, we mistake what we consider to be normal, for something being natural. As with the dogs on leads. No animal originally evolved to be put on a lead by humans. However, there are many creatures that we've had relationships with /exploited for tens of thousands of years, no doubt influencing them as well as us. Dogs and humans have been collaborating for a very long time, arguably this is natural. Pug dogs on the other hand, can barely breathe through their own noses and have been shaped by human intent in a way that seems as unnatural as it is cruel. But then, cruelty appears to be very much a part of human nature.
We confuse the familiar with the natural. We confuse normality with inevitability. We confuse averageness with desirability. We treat being normal and familiar like this is reliably a good thing, something to aim for, to trust and to measure with. It is our business as usual, our regular every day how we do things that is destroying us, and destroying life. It would be helpful to stop assuming that just because it's what we're used to, that it is somehow good and desirable.
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