On the Duality of Culture and Nature

Abstract

Much of the Western tradition can be understood in terms of increasing self-consciousness about the difference between culture and nature. The problems that anthropology has recently discovered about culture parallel what Buddhism claims about the problem of the individual self. We alternate between the promise of technological progress (freedom through self-grounding) and yearning for a return to nature (security through regrounding). Since both are impossible for us, is there is any third alternative? It is very remarkable that we should be inclined to think of civilization --houses, trees, cars, etc. --as separating man from his origins, from what is lofty and eternal, etc. Our civilized environment, along with its trees and plants, strikes us then as though it were cheaply wrapped in cellophane and isolated from everything great, from God, as it were. That is a remarkable picture that intrudes upon us. (Wittgenstein) [1]