In the last warm days of autumn, the garden around my apartment was bustling with work: there a neighbor collects leaves from trees, there a man trims a hedge, here a woman trims withered summer flowers, and a gardener mows the lawn for the last time this year – everywhere everyone pays close attention to a well-groomed nature, so that next spring it will bloom again and produce a harvest.
“According to myth, the only reason humanity was created was because the gods found themselves working in the fields and earning too much for their living,” writes German publicist Philipp Bloom (52) in his new book on the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish. (9-2 centuries BC). Based on this, Blom traces the “domination of man over nature” to the present day.
“The subjugation of the natural environment was still beyond the technological capabilities of antiquity,” writes Blom, “however, even under the Roman Caesars, there were permanent changes in the landscape through clearing and reclamation, water management, mines.” Enslavement reached new dimensions through industrialization, the systematic exploitation of the colonies, and the birth of the natural sciences.
“But she still carried the old moral-theological burden,” writes Blom. It must prove why submission is not only possible and beneficial for the subject, but also why it is good and right. Blom: “God’s will, or the will of providence, world spirit, progress, and not arbitrary force and cruelty.” God is on our side.
This comes at a price, Blom calculated: The world’s population has more than doubled since 1960, but meat consumption has increased fivefold. “Each year, 88 billion land animals are killed to satisfy the basic human right to the daily schnitzel,” he writes viciously. These animals would eat not only three-quarters of all agricultural production in Europe, but an equal share of all antibiotics produced.
“The project of human enslavement of nature turns out to be a catastrophic mistake by the beginning of the 21st century at the latest,” says Blom. Despite the fact that today people turn away from religions, and we live in a secular age, at least in the West, submission continues with unrelenting zeal. Blom refers to the modern Bible as the “Liberal Gospel”.
Humanity in the 21st century will be expelled from its conceptual home, the history of the conquest of nature, like Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden – only this time it will not be God or an angel with a flaming sword, but a predicted climate catastrophe.
Philipp Blom, “Submission – the beginning and end of man’s domination of nature”, Hanser