More Portlandia. . . .
This is more than a satire of artsiness. It cuts to the human condition: how we idealize nature while also loathing and fearing actual nature.
HT: Joanna
Put a bird on it, but not a real bird
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve seen this before and I thought it was absolutely hilarious. I didn’t realize that is was Portlandia.
Thanks! This reminds of some writer who wrote of the “Bambification” of nature ala Disney. What the characters also, as fallen sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, also loathe are each other!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLrTPrp-fW8
Hmm. The fear of Nature is a recognition of its fallen state (death, disease, predation, etc.) The idealization of Nature may be a longing for the restoration of Creation’s original state. Don’t Christians have both this recognition and this longing?
Yet, by fallen man, idealization can easily turn into idolization. Yes, for Christians, idealization may be longing, but I think it is looking the wrong way. In the Scriptures, in Christ, it is not about a restoration but a new creation, for which we look towards in hope.
Won’t it be both new and a restoration, Rev. Schroeder? The new Earth will still be an Earth, after all. And we could discuss the question of whether there will be a literal annhilation of this world, or, instead, a cleansing of all evil from it.
The restoration will be done by God, not us. We as sinners tend to muck up what we try to restore.
Why do I have an overwhelming desire to transport these two to the stock yards in Oklahoma City. Must be my sinful Old Adam (PS – God loves cattle – check out the ending to Jonah!)
Pax,
Dennis
Oh so true. I have occassional landed in debates with radical vegans – and this is exactly the trap they fall into – idolising nature. Nature is brutal. Creatures eat each other alive. Chimps beat each other to death in territorial warfare. Yes, and germs that do horrible things are also part of nature.
BTW, I love nature.
Klasie, nature is also highly social. Chimps, for example, empathize with one another, assist one another, and cooperate to achieve good things for their communities. This is true for many other species as well. (Maybe even Man.
)
IE Tom, it is complicated. Who would have thought?
Alfred Hitchcock meets the craft world?
Reminds me of a quote from Horace? “You can throw ‘nature’ out with a pitchfork, but she’ll just come back in thru the window.”
cheers!
I’m rather partial to Arthur Schopenhauer’s vision of nature, as described upon visiting Java:
He witnessed “an immense field field entirely covered with skeletons, and took it to be a battlefield. However they were nothing but skeletons of large turtles, five feet long, three feet broad, and of equal height. These turtles come this way from the sea, in order to lay their eggs, and are then seized by wild dogs (canis rutilans); with their united strength, these dogs lay them on their backs, tear open their lower armour, the small scales of the belly, and devour them alive. But then a tiger often pounces on the dogs. Now all this misery is repeated thousands and thousands of times, year in, year out. For this then, are these turtles born. For what offence must they suffer this agony? What is the point of the whole scene of horror? The only answer is that the will-to-live thus objectifies itself.” (The World as Will and Representation, Volume II, p. 354)
He continues in this vein for a while. Nature is overrated.
Cincinnatus – what is nature?
(I love this one!)
KK: Great question, and one that leads me to reject theories of “natural law.”
/total copout
Weenie!
A little Portlandia pushback: Vancouvria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMwCkZiEQ7A&feature=related
and related to the post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23uDJJ1czAA&feature=related
There might be an insight to the human condition there, too
when we first moved up here, the locals in portland referred to vancouver as “east berlin”
cheers!
utahrainbow:
Wow. Point, and counterpoint. And it’s really funny. Thanks.
@Cincinnatus
Schopenhauer’s observation only has meaning because his example of “nature” (sea turtles, dogs, etc.) has some value: at the very least, an aesthetic value. We may find terrifying things in nature, but they can only be terribly bad because they can also be terribly good. Focusing on the disturbing to the exclusion of the sublime in nature is to assign that which is truly terrible (bad) over that which is truly terrible (good, sublime). Which is to say, that’s nonsense which is popular with materialist “realists”.
See, for instance, the entire Romantic movement.
Hilarious… Now what was the point of the video?