Man and Environment

I have been having a hard time reconciling two facts: that A) Mankind is a part of Nature and B) This particular type of Mankind (today's society) is living as if it's outside of Nature. To put it another way, Man is destroying that which s/he is apart of. How can this be? Is man a virus? A parasite? The only animal with a suicidal tendency?

Well, the book Biomimicry has an answer that may be worth considering. There are types of ecosystems that inhabit a location at a given time. There are Type I ecosystems that emerge after some trauma to the system (fire, flood etc) and grow and reproduce very quickly and die just as quickly. After which there is succession and Type II plants edge out the Type I plants to become the dominant ecosystem for a while. They are, in turn, replaced by Type III ecosystem which describes the long-term, sustainable ecosystem of that place and time. The strategy of the flora in Type III ecosystems varies greatly from the strategy of the Type I plants.

To keep this short, we-our present culture-is analogous to the Type I ecosystem: we consume much we grow really fast, and die just as fast. We are still a part of Nature, but we are not the sustainable part of nature. If you want to know how to be more like a Type III ecosystem, you'll have to read the book.