I guess it's my month of objecting to Alternet articles -- beware "the dangerous idea that nature exists to entertain us"!
Or, you know, not.
Seriously, when people like George Will characterize liberals as joyless geeks, this sort of article is exactly what he's talking about. It's the liberal version of "Think of the children! Won't someone think of the children!" Only in this case we're supposed to worry because, in the words of one hand-wringer, "Nature does not exist purely to entertain children. And these bears and walruses -- which would devour us if given half a chance -- are not fuzzy toys soft-shoe shuffling across a rapidly melting snow stage."
Right, and his point is? To make sure that children don't try to climb into the polar bear habitat at the zoo?
The article is also concerned with objecting to rampant anthropomorphizing, such as that engaged in the show "Meerkat Manor," because it often has a conservative social bent: "They portray the nuclear family as a firm social unit <..> Their girl-meets-boy narratives suggest universality on uniquely human social constructions."
Then, on the second page, the article claims that, because of global warming, "the conservatives who often benefit from these documentaries are no longer on the winning side of the storyline."
Hmm. Unless you are reaching back into a near-mythic past when being a conservative meant being a conservationist, I would say that conservatives have never benefitted from wildlife programs, because they always, inevitably, carry an implicit pro-conservation message.
Even at its most basic, stupid level, the narrative of a wildlife program is "nature is cool." There may be no more to it than that -- but there is always that. Is it somehow hurting the polar bears that we think these fearsome predators are cute? Are we diminishing them as *koff* people? Or is our instinctive "awwwwwwww" reaction to animals the first step toward actually caring about the fate of the natural world?
Sure, there might be some tender child out there who is traumatized by the idea that a polar bear considers him lunch, but I suspect that most kids have a more Calvin-like reaction: the deadliness of the polar bear just makes it that much cooler.
Anyway, I think we know nature doesn't exist to entertain us -- that's part of what we find entertaining about it. Animals are fun to watch because they have nothing to do with our agenda. We see animal behavior as spontaneous and genuine, and emotionally non-threatening (even if something like a polar bear should, technically, be considered threatening). Study shows that spending time with animals calms us down, makes us happier, etc.
We are humans. We are crazy self-involved abstract-thinking monkeys. And we like other animals. Sometimes we like to eat them, but we like them all the same.
Nature doesn't exist to entertain us. But maybe we exist to be entertained by nature.
