I propose we stop using the word Nature.
Firstly I am so sorry about this. It’s ridiculous. I know I won’t actually do it, yet here I am proposing the idea. Sorry. All this really shows is the damp Dartmoor air has finally got to me, but as I’ve been mulling this over for a while I think it’s only fair to bother you with it too. I’m nice like that! Sharing is caring…
The word ‘Nature’ is embedded in the English language, such an everyday commonplace word. That said, the word is a bit weird when you think about it, a divisive word, one that sets us apart, one that is used often to either falsely deify or denigrate. It is such a woolly word, used with a wafting hand and a soft tone ‘we are such nature lovers’… whatever that means.
So why don’t we just stop using it? After all, there are some languages that don’t have a word for nature and they seem ok.
So how do we use nature as a word and what would we say instead?
‘I love nature’
Do you? Do you really? Or do you love green spaces, or wildlife, or trees? Do you mean you love being away from other people, going on a walk, stopping and looking at the view? Or watching birds? Is it chalk streams that float your boat? What exactly do you mean when you say ‘nature’? What would you say if you didn’t use the word?
The list of other, more descriptive words, is long; there’s wilderness, ecology, or biodiversity, habitat, untamed, outside, or wildlife for starters. I’m not even sure nature is a real thing. It’s just a vague notion half the time.
‘Nature recovery’ and ‘destroying nature’ would need to become specific if we didn’t use the word. If instead we said this action is killing this particular bit of biodiversity, or helping this ecological niche recover, you can see how it becomes real and detailed, a tangible thing. The cry of ‘that new housing estate is killing nature’ becomes ‘that new housing estate is destroying 15 types of birds’ nesting habitats and two very rare plants’. There is a distinct difference between the two, a narrowing of focus. We also say ‘this pond will be good for people and nature’ as though we are utterly separate from the wider, wilder world. We could just say ‘this pond is great’ and leave it at that.
Then there is the cry of ‘don’t worry about Dave, it’s just his nature’, when Dave kicks off again after 15 pints and half a packet of crisps in the pub. Without the word the vague excuses dry up. It’s not that ‘they’ (whoever they are) can’t help themselves because it’s just ‘natural’ for ‘them’ to act that way. It’s suddenly more precise, Dave is an idiot because he has got away with it for years, and his dad was also an idiot. Nothing natural about that, it’s cultural.
The Natural World…
There you are, it’s a Sunday evening, the TV is on and David Attenborough is talking about this strange and exotic place ‘the natural world’. It is not here, not just outside the back door, but distinctly elsewhere. Fascinating and beautifully filmed, the world is displayed for us to wonder at.
Now take away the word ‘natural’ and you are left with what? A travel documentary? An ecological film? A specific show about a particular place or creature? His more recent films did that, they focused on an ecosystem rather than ‘nature’ and that worked just fine. In fact I would say that it changed how we see the world for the better.
What happens if we just say ‘world’ instead of natural world? Or we use ‘non-industrial’ if we need to define it? The world does not change, birds still sing, cars still rumble past, supermarkets sprawl, frogs spawn, but the fence is down in your mind. The untamed wild could be anywhere, in your garden, under your bed, behind the warehouses at work, or even on a farm.
Next to go are the sickening phrases ‘going into nature,’ ‘being at one with nature’ or ‘being in nature’
I’ve heard these phrases more and more recently, ‘I’ve spent the day out in nature.’ It’s accompanied by a slightly smug look and an expectation of imminent glowing mental and physical health. Mate, seriously, you have just gone for a walk in the countryside. It’s nice, there are trees and stuff, and fewer people, but just because you sat still long enough that the scared creatures who inhabit that bit of the world relaxed slightly, and you saw some of them doesn’t mean you were in a whole other world. If you said ‘I’m going for a wander, and I will probably be quiet, and sit still for a while while I am out’ you may sound a touch less pretentious for a start, and the act becomes more accessible to others, less special maybe (which I guess could be a blow to some), but a lot more achievable. Heading into the countryside or heading ‘into nature’… which of those includes others? The countryside is a peopled place, it is hard to be there without seeing the work of generations, even in the deepest wood or on highest hill. Conversely if you are ‘going into nature’ you are focused only on the ecology, or biodiversity of the place, and when you discount the human impact even in the wildest places you can easily start to believe the work of people is somehow always wrong. Even our most remote places are homes or workplaces for normal people, and that work is often vital.
And what about ‘prescribing nature’ via the NHS? What is it you’re actually being prescribed? Time out of the house, in a fairly quiet place, away from work or family pressures, where you can spend some time noticing small details and taking some deep breaths until you calm your nervous system a bit? You don’t actually need some special place to do that, the library would do, and be a good deal more accessible to most people (as long as the library hasn’t been shut by the council!) or the park if it has to be outside.
Nature writers or… just writers?
What else would be changed by the mothballing of the word? Nature writers, a subject Patrick Galbraith wrote about recently on this platform, would suddenly become just writers. If we had to categorise them on the bookshop shelves then we can, we would have ‘people going on an adventure’ and ‘look I’ve found a creature/place/plant and I want to show you’, or ‘I work here, let me show you all about it (craft and skills exist as book genres already) or even ‘here be rural folk, look how odd they are’. There would also be ‘can we fix it? I’m not sure’. Mostly though it’s basically nonfiction. (Unless it’s about a certain coastal path).
Imagine the results if while perusing the shelves for the life and times of Lionel Messi you picked up and read Waterlog by Roger Deakin, (they both cover outdoor sports after all), or while looking for Taylor Swift’s biography you stumbled across Field Work by Bella Bathurst.
Moving category could also help sort out some of the wheat from the chaff… Natasha Carthew would stand up strongly against any other autobiography and her book, Undercurrent, about the realities of rural poverty should be more widely read, while other less gritty books could be cheerfully consigned to the ‘fluff and nonsense, safe to gift to gran’ area of the bookshop.
Next to go is ‘natural’ history
This is tricky because words have defined meanings in science and people study this stuff. But I propose instead we have EGG history (Ecological & Geological Global history). Skipping off with the kids to the EGG history museum to look at the dinosaurs. Studying EGG at uni. Professor of EGG at King’s Collage. Yeah, that works. It’s clearer, amusing, and less steeped in that odd Victorian mindset of ‘look at that strange place and its strange ways’. The mindset that completely ignored whole continents of people and their work, their lives and their cultures.
Then there is the new phrase ‘Natural capital markets’ which can just get straight in the bin.
It’s just making money out of land in a variety of new ways. There is often nothing natural (biodiverse or ecological) about it. I propose we just name it for what it is, either carbon offsetting or species recovery. The addition of ‘natural’ to the phrase just makes it sound nice (nice… now there is another word we could lose…) and often it is nothing of the sort.
Along with Natural Capital there is ‘Natural flood management’ which could easily become plain old ‘flood management.’ The act of digging ponds or releasing beavers to hold water on the land is suddenly normalised if you take the woolly and meaningless word ‘natural’ away. Rewetting a meadow is just a job, like clearing that drainage ditch behind Tescos, both work, there is no need to separate one method from the other. Both require a digger after all.
So there it is, an unhinged unworkable idea. Born out of ridiculous intolerance of half-arsed language. One that not even I will manage to do for more than a morning at a time. All I can hope for is that next time any of us hear or use the word we pause and have a little think about what is really being said.
Disclaimer: I must admit I am sure I’ve seen this idea floated around before, where and when I don’t know, if you know please say! I would love to know.
