EXOTICA
Nature is also a value concept. A value opposed to the
social institutions which strip man of his natural essence and imprison him.
Nature thereby acquires the meaning of what has grown organically, what
was not created by man, in contrast to the artificial structures of human
civilisation. At the same time, it can be understood as that aspect of human inwardness which has remained natural, or at least tends or longs to become
natural once more.
According to this view of nature, the life of a wild
animal becomes an ideal, an ideal internalised as a feeling surrounding a
repressed desire. The image of a wild animal becomes the starting point of a
daydream: a point from which the daydreamer departs with his back turned.
— John Berger
— John Berger