Human Beings and Nature

¶ … Post Freedom, morality, and nature are tremendous topics individually, and taken collectively can help generate meaningful commentary on the human condition. When applied to the arts, these concepts show how artists often do take responsibility for their role as communicators. Artists sometimes engage in political discourse through their works, whether or not they use the written word. In The Art of Being Human, the authors show how freedom of expression is linked to morality in art, and also how morality is connected with our responsibility to nature.

Nature is an ever-present theme in art; the first cave paintings were of animals. Landscape art has featured prominently in the arts of Asia as well as Europe, showing how artists are inspired by nature and feel moved to interpret nature through the medium of visual expression. Featuring nature in art can be a spiritual act, as honoring nature through the hard work of art is like making an offering to the gods. Modern artists may feel that their role in depicting nature has changed.

No longer are human beings passive recipients of nature, or consumers of nature. The human being now sees how nature has the power to destroy us through natural disasters, just as we destroy nature through our exploitation of its resources. Photographers document global warning and become photojournalists. Painters can use surrealism or abstraction to show how the decimation of nature is a violent act. A pianist playing on an iceberg floating in the Arctic Ocean makes an equally powerful statement about anthropogenic global warming.

Artists can no longer afford to stay silent about the things they witness in their daily lives, whether those things are related to climate change or social justice. Human nature is also a tricky topic for artists, who grapple with the eternal question of whether people are inherently good or bad. When artists communicate controversial positions on their political views, they encourage dialogue. Response 1: Rachel Hammersley The free will and determinism argument is multidimensional.

On the one hand, we are constrained by our social status, access to resources, gender, and even overarching issues like our historical context. We do not have the free will to travel through time, but we do have the free will to act within the constraints of our little worlds. Our lives are mostly apt to reflect a balance between free will and determinism. No one is predestined to do anything; yet circumstances and structural inequalities makes it so that few people are capable of doing absolutely anything they want.

Sometimes it seems that human beings condemn themselves to suffering, as looking at the world today and the violence within it makes it seem like the world is actually worse off now than it ever has been before. Human nature, and our free will to act as we want, has showcased our selfishness and self-centeredness. Response 2: Iris Stokes Nature is a spiritual experience. Encountering nature is sublime, whether one classifies that experience as religious or not.

Definitions of nature vary widely: is nature wilderness, places that are completely untouched by humans or at least uninhabited? Is there any possibility of encountering "pure" places.