“Stewardship” and “Growing Natives”

The good Dr. ___? first sparked off this idea. He thinks the notion of humans as stewards of the earth is presumptuous. And it is. 

It is a distinctly Anglo notion, or Judeo-Anglo-bibilical one. 

Who are we to think the running of nature is our job?

Our real job is to restrain our own wrong-headed impulses, in some cases to correct the mistakes we already made. 

But beyond that, our role should be what it is to most “primitive” people, i.e. grateful beneficiaries of nature’s endless bounty. 

Grateful observers and students and enjoyers as well as users. Not abusers, just users--in the sense of beneficiaries. 

So far we have been very efficient at using--or abusing--but very weak on gratitude, enjoyment, and observation except for a small subset of “specialists.” These things are the job of all people. 

Stewardship, on the other hand, implies control. 

So does use in the form of agriculture, mining, commercial extraction of any kind, for which the gratitude, if there is any, usually goes to the extraction (in the form of money) rather than to the provider--admittedly, gratitude sometimes still goes to a (man-made) God, but practically never to Mother Earth, Nature, or land, or to the specific plant or animal that gave its life. 

The wife of the Dr. is a disciple of G. Keaton, writing a book, and a fanatic newly-converted “native plant” gardening purist, who wants to save California by getting the middle class to grow natives. 

But at least she concedes that the real value of this native garden purist frenzy is that it catalyzes people to take an interest in the native flora.