The authoritarian mind boxes itself into a corner. Knowing the world as it is supposed to be, it views everything, Nature, society, and culture, through the prism of pre-defined rules and conditions, forcing the facts to conform to its concept of reality. In all of us there is the streak of the authoritarian, though we hardly recognize it as such, and if we were to deconstruct our daily lives and thoughts, we might find ourselves shocked by how much we assume and how little we actually know.

This dilemma is characteristic of the American political sphere, poisoned at it is by ideologues and culture wars, with both sides twisting and shaping the world to fit within the narrow boundaries of their ideological world view. But the authoritarian mind is coming back to bite us in new and unexpected ways. For now, our authoritarianism is the seed of our destruction. Only recently has the full extent of our ecological authoritarianism come to light.

Yes, it has always been the human tendency to alter the environment, to change it and shape it for our well-being and comfort. The innate human desire of Man the Maker, Homo faber, cannot be described as good or bad. For better or for worse, it is what we are. But when we begin to force Nature to tell the story that we want it to tell, or to be the landscape that we want it to be, it is then that we begin to reap the consequences of our poorly understood concept of the natural world.

It need not be abstract. The lawn is perhaps one of the most ubiquitous and curious examples of ecological authoritarianism that I can think of. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the American suburbanite insists on maintaining his green patch of bucolic bliss, come rain or come drought. The desert Southwest of New Mexico is the last place you would expect to find such an improbable, and impractical, monoculture. Yet there it is, adorning so many of the homes in affluent neighborhoods.

As a thought experiment, I’ve often pondered what I would have to do to create the perfect suburban lawn. Mowing, yes, that’s okay I suppose. And aeration and fertilization, not particularly harmful. And then the indelible image, and the unforgettable smells, of the Chem-Lawn truck appear in my mind. Yes, the Chem-Lawn truck would be an absolute requirement. I would need copious amounts of liquid nitrogen for robust growth, and in particular I would need herbicides, to keep out the nasty combinations of dandelions, crab-grass, and leguminous clover that would inevitably invade my all too hospitable green paradise.

The ecological authoritarian does not pause to consider the implications or the consequences of this. Her mind is too rigid, too circumscribed into a fixed sense of natural place and beauty to entertain the notion that Nature is more diverse, more chaotic and integrated than she can tolerate or comprehend. But how much different would the world be, I wonder, if instead of trying to force Nature to tell our story, we realize that we ourselves ARE Nature’s story, and only by listening closely can we hope to tell the story that is running through the marrow of our bones.