Toxic Relationship - Humanity and Nature

Between love bombing, boundlessness, and destruction. We have mapped and classified nature, loving and destroying it at the same time. Cognitive dissonance is our everyday reality. The constant need to control and exploit animals, plants, and ecosystems contrasts with the equally strong desire to see, travel through, and enjoy the wilderness. The wish to impose order through land sealing goes hand in hand with the longing to escape the asphalt deserts of cities and recharge in forests. We want to touch the untouched, ideally as the first and only person, but also safely and in a climate-controlled environment - fully aware of the paradox. Where does this lead us? Into the abyss.

"The only animal that destroys its own habitat is humanity." The conquering relationship of humans to the environment and fellow creatures has deep roots in tradition and religion. There is a wealth of bizarre behaviors and opinions to explore. We want to be as close as possible to sentient, intelligent beings, yet we confine them. In contrast stands American lawyer Steven Wise, who fights to grant personality rights to at least great apes, elephants, and marine mammals based on their cognitive abilities. Many wild animals now exist only in captivity. What remains of them in their natural habitat is eagerly researched. But how and when did it all actually begin?

Nature writing on a whole new level. Author Bettina Balàka masterfully combines history, research, and literary narrative on such a far-reaching topic as "Nature and Humanity." In a series of essays, she examines this ambivalent relationship: subjectively and scientifically, historically and personally, cultivated and wild, analytically and experimentally. She writes about overfishing and...