The great hype these days within academia is on enviromental issues. Especially here in Denmark. Consequently a  lot of my friends talk about issues as; sustianble psysichal environment, social environment, it even goes into art, urban planning, and a number of other issues. There is however one problem, and that is the simple fact, that they have absolutely no idea about what they are talking about.

If you try to understand man in relation to nature, your first step should be to understand nature. Anyway to grasp the connection between man and nature, you naturally have to see the nature in a darwinian perspective. Darwins ideas are, to this day, unrivalled in the field of human/natural exchange. Or rather the way man interact with nature, and is interacted upon.

There was this thing with Nietzsche and Hitler, using the ideas of Darwin to an extent that had some negative consequences for the jews. So naturally people are a little reluctant to use his ideas, and that is off cause a wise standpoint. But anyway, let us have a look on modern darwinism, and see if we can actually derive some workable understanding of nature in relation to the enviromental hype. Darwin is famous because of his work with the selection of species. His first idea was to see nature as adapting to the enviroment. The strongest survived in a given habitat. This is, morally equivalent to the “natural justice” of Plato.

There is, however, an even more interesting point and thesis of Darwin. After he worked on the natural enviromental selection, he embarked on another much more fun selection of nature; sexual selection. Because living beings with two sexes naturally select each other based on a very complex, but nontheless analyzable set of factors. Basically we choose each other with regard to the quality of our genes.

We have amazing examples of “sexual ornaments” in nature; the colours of the butterfly, the song of the nightinggale and the first three albums of Led Zeppelin.

But, it would be a little too freudian to see everthing in the light of sexuality, and Jung would not agree anyway, so we have to look somewhere else for a principle to base our enviromental principles on. Well, it is really quite simple, if you know your theory, there is a third principle in nature, and that is the principle of justice. According to Anaxagoras, the classical thinker, justice is the principle all living beings are working with. The way it works is also quite simple, if you hurt someone or something, you are punished. If you are nice to someone, they are nice to you. It is also called the golden rule. And it is the basis of the rule of law.

Therefor, to be really serious about the enviromental issues, you have to reflect these ideas in the light of justice, and the tradition that is within the justice system.