With modernization, the longstanding contract between humans and nature has dissolved and left its place to a new paradigm characterized by a lack of respect and based on desire. The human relationship with nature has lost its moral virtues and turned into a system of domination and invasion.
These thoughts bring to mind a profound statement by Ibn Arabi, who proclaimed that nature is "the manifestation of the Most Merciful."
A line in some critical texts that I have read on modernization is engraved in my memory which I have not fully comprehended for a long time. In this line, which tries to explain the fundamental transformation in the human relationship with nature, it is emphasized that "in the process of modernization," "the marriage contract" in the relationship between humanity and nature is broken off. Choosing the concept of a marriage contract to express this relationship reminds me of the possessive and superior language of modern men who regard themselves as “the master” and that is why I had difficulty in understanding it.
While we can coin or choose many other terms and concepts to explain the relationship between humans and nature, the “marriage contract” is the least favorable to come up with. For this reason, I had to circle around the concept before I finally found out its meaning. What I wondered most was the concept that would replace it. What kind of connection was there between faith and contract so that when the contract was broken, the process which led to the birth of the modern world happened?
Following a thought through critical texts is open to mistakes. People lose the moderation and fairness of words most while criticizing and their “desire to write” prevails over reason which makes them sway into heroism. Therefore, even though criticism plays an important role in the formation of thought, criticism also has a tremendous need for self-criticism.
That is why I regarded the criticism of the relationship between humankind and nature as an example of immoderate writing that was exaggerated and so lost touch with reality. When I had the opportunity to analyze it with the help of my other readings, I realized that it was not an immoderation that lost touch with reality, but an expression accurately chosen and well-established. It is a fact that in modernization, the relationship between humankind and nature built upon new reasoning by religious thoughts whose roots were in ancient traditions was collapsed and replaced by a relationship based on pleasure and desire; within this direction, the respectful and restricting manner that “the contract” required turned into an excessive and aimless act and the nature whose majesty was once respected became an object of desire for the pleasure of humans.
Then what happened? People have been afraid of nature all along. It has never been a piece of cake to survive for all living beings. They have been frightened by the element of water, fire or air. Even though the earth seems to be steady, earthquakes have caused a kind of terror from time to time; and more often, famine and drought have scared people. That is why people have developed the ritual of sacrifice because they believed that they had to make concessions in their relationship with nature. By sacrificing, they try to calm down the natural forces or direct them toward the more righteous. The principle to follow in an uncanny nature with limited resources was to just sacrifice. In the religious tradition, this idea was expressed as “Sadaqah is a shield which protects a person from calamities.”
We cannot know for sure if this expression carries traces of the common fear of humanity, but it is obvious that life has never been easy in any time or place for all centuries.
The mythological era was followed by a time of confrontation that was shaped by a powerful search for rights so that the relationship between men and nature could be healed. The main idea was to encourage people to treat other beings in a respectful manner and require them to build a relationship based on morality. The problem was taken more concretely within religious thoughts while it was interpreted as a form of worship by the belief systems that saw everything as living and conscious. A systematic understanding of the being from which this relationship arose was shaped through time, but systematic thinking was never as influential and widespread as belief systems.
Two hypotheses are significant to explain this understanding. The first one is: “Everything concludes each other causatively. All beings are related to each other through cause-and-effect relations, and everything depends on one another in a way; here the degrees of existence are determinant, not the modes of existence. This approach was expressed as the theory of emanation, but it was an understanding shared by almost all animist beliefs. One aspect that draws attention is this: the causality that determines the relationship between humans and nature was expressed through basic concepts of human life such as “parents” or “mother and father."
Thus, all the beings in nature are connected with each other like the members of a family and everything is linked with the other relatively. When Avicenna said, “There is nothing in the universe that is not connected with each other,” or when the Sufis said “Everything is within everything,” they tried to explain this system of a big family. The fact that the sheikh is called “father” in dervish lodges is an example of how this abstract language finds itself a place in daily life.
Secondly, it is important to see that all beings are linked with each other through this connection. This connection provides a line or boundary for each being and respecting this boundary becomes a moral virtue and a basic law that protects both humans and nature.
More precisely, this knowledge about the universe shows humans how to act in nature and how to interact with it. So, the contract started to be used to explain the intense and comprehensive relationship between humankind and all beings in nature. A contract is a bond that ensures a relationship between two realities by connecting them. When Sufi metaphysicians expressed the relations between the degrees of existence with the help of the concept of contract, the great Sufi master Qunawi coined the key concept of “the contract spreading through all the degrees” to explain the clear structure and mobility of the degrees of existence.
This bond of contract limits people in their acts and aims to prevent them from living an arbitrary life based on desires. It can be associated with the real marriage contract; because this contract also limits human beings and controls their boundless and unrealistic desires according to law or morality and keeps their feet on the ground.
In this respect, regarding the relationship between humans and nature as a contract means that the boundaries that law and morality require should be maintained. Breaking off the contract means the emergence of an order in which people can act without any moral or legal restrictions and their reason is ruled by desires. With modernization, this contract is broken off and replaced by a disrespectful relationship based on desires that has resulted in a system of domination and invasion in which human relations with nature is no longer based on moral values.
Islamic thinking has developed a valuable point of view on human nature based on an ancient understanding of nature. Above all, the relationship between human beings and nature was established upon concepts such as soundness and peace, and living a life without violating limits was regarded as a necessity to be virtuous and religious. When Haji Bektash Veli stated that when a person reaches the stations of reality, “all beings and nature are safe from his hand and tongue,” he uttered a new interpretation of a well-known hadith.
The themes of Sufi literature were included in the texts written by Muslim jurists in various ways and it became a Muslim tradition not to harm nature and be respectful to it. In that sense, religious thinking shattered the understanding that nature was threatening and instead maintained that it was sound and peaceful, which meant limiting and disclaiming the power of nature as a whole.
In religious texts, neither the world nor the heavens are agents per se; every being is a shadow and, in this respect, equal in terms of their passiveness. One of the most important points of view that religion presents is that all power is concentrated in God by rejecting the holiness and potency of the heavens. The Islamic view of Oneness means the concentration of power and might only in God, which consequently means that nature is not an enemy to fight.
According to religious thought, the heavens do not have the potency, with or without any will, that directs the Earth or determines the destiny of humans, rather it is a plane of existence that has been created with a purpose. This approach has been followed by mostly Sufis, but it has penetrated Muslim thought substantially. Indeed, this approach can help people build a fear-free relationship with nature – not to be afraid of fire, water, earth and air. Muslims reject any idea and language that presents nature as “a second god” and continue to emphasize the equal ground we share with nature by using the term “contract.”
We witness increasing interest and intense debates on nature for a long time. That the world would be uninhabitable, and it would end soon for some terrestrial and celestial reasons is no longer just a conviction but a reality. We can leave the discussions about the question of whether the world is primordial or not as it is a fact that it will not be everlasting. Using the terms of the ancient philosophers, the idea of an eternal world is no longer a meaningful assertion as the idea of an everlasting world is falling apart. No matter what they believe, everyone thinks that the universe, and especially the world we live in, will end one day.
This expression of a writer whom the environmentalists are familiar with sums it up: “The world would eventually find its balance but in that balance, there will be no human beings.” One way or another, everyone accepts that nature or the whole world has no longer a lifetime as it once had. That being the case, why do the warnings about the destruction of nature backfire and why is there no awakening about it? In other words, why cannot we make a new “marriage” contract in our relationship with nature? It seems like we fail, and we are doomed to fail as it is the capitalist and selfish urges that determine the course of human concerns about the future of the world.
The greatest success of capitalism is that it solidifies its power by assimilating its opponents too. It is a contradiction that people act selfishly and carelessly against nature while they also love it and maintain the idea that it should be protected. Is it possible to reach a moral and intellectual maturity that can change the world by protecting a tree just because it gives us oxygen? Or is it possible to change the world by taking an animal out of its natural habitat just to enjoy its company?
It is not possible to develop the moral sensitivity required to change the world without realizing that loving something means knowing it as it is and not overstepping its borders. Therefore, we should be concerned about environmental problems today. However, as long as it is our selfish urges that direct our minds while we defend nature and love the environment, there is no difference between the ones who fight for it and the ones who destroy it.
