What Is Human Nature Anyway?

At an airport given over to a large international airshow, I walked around looking at flying machines, contrails, smoke, exhaust, pavement, rubber tires the size of cars, and heard roaring engines and generators everywhere.  I walked on asphalt and cement covering hundreds of acres of fertile land.  Speaker towers blared loud rock and pop hits and an announcer informed me of the aerobatics going on in the open sky above the airfield.  Thousands of human beings walked around looking at trucks, planes, jets and big tents that displayed pictures and slogans of the military service branches.

Jet fuel and lighter fluid perfumed the air.  Far in the distance a bird or two blundered into the air space but did not hang around long.  It was a day completely devoted to and encompassed by humanity and their mechanical things, mostly very big things, enormous things like 707s and C-17s.  Many of the things were named after birds:  Falcons, thunderbirds, eagles, hawks, seahawks, blackhawks.

I thought about the nature of the place, how it might have looked before anything was built or changed by people, a hundred and fifty years ago.  I mused that the hills to the southwest and to the east of the airport probably looked exactly the same, but everything where I stood was made possible because of petroleum products manufactured from oil and gas.

Then, as I stood there and as I looked at all the humanity and machinery everywhere, an FA-18 fighter jet came shrieking overhead at 550 mph with a cone of moisture forming around its fuselage, afterburners glowing deep orange, and I got just as excited as everyone else by the pure crazy ferocious speed and devilish power.  Yes, I did.

I have that polarized set of scenes sitting side by side in my mind, and I feel that because humans, me included, are seduced by speed and power and mechanical technology that allows for unearthly things like FA-18 fighter jets to exist, nature is facing a losing battle.  I will always do my best to grow green things, reduce my own personal impact on the environment, and value keeping our mitts off of wild places.  But, there I was at that place, which was about as un-green as one place can be, admiring technology and fierce metal machines, in essence supporting them by being there.

Is there a place for humanity in nature or are we just kidding ourselves, denying the sad truth that we are actually just witnessing a slow but certain annihilation of the natural world?  Is our predominating lust of technology leading us to such a separation from the natural world and its exquisite mystery that we will always judge it to be the lesser choice?  Today, my response to the roaring jets told the answer, and I am not encouraged.