The Environment and Natural Contentions

Given the assumption that life has within it, some degree of struggle or fight, there is a relation between environment and type of struggle which man encounters. For three simple environments, of desert, jungle, and agrarian plain, there exists respectively the struggle of man against the forces of nature, man itself, and the mind.

The first, being the desert, is perhaps the most interesting because the environment is itself the opponent that man finds itself against. In a desert, resources are so scarce and other creatures, human or otherwise, so few, that in order to survive, man must chiefly concern himself with the elements; how they behave, what they demand, etc. This pits man against a foe who is highly abstract, and has little to no empathetic qualities that humanity can call commonality with, and thereby is highly alienated from this experience. What comes forth to survive is a perspective "incapable of reflection", but instead of "suspense and watchfulness", because clues to surviving are so unapparent and inaccessible (The Plains of Patagonia, Hudson).

The jungle provides such comparatively abundant resources that survival is often against man itself. Equivocal environments to an actual tropical jungle, is that of the city; similar principles can be derived. Although resources are numerous in the jungle, so is life. Because of this, there is life such that it lives by fighting other life. Man therefore, must orientate himself around human, animal, insect, and plant kind, in order to survive, both feeding off of as well as defending against these groups. As such, man’s skills become strong in external expressions: social behaviors, physical strength, political renown, etc.

In the agrarian plain, man struggles against the mind. The environment allows human life to exist more easily than the desert, but less than in the jungle. Less population density detracts the importance of human interaction. Greater allowances to grow give less pressure on having a perspective of "suspense and watchfulness", and thereby more of an ease of what the plain will bring to fruition. Having no opponents other than what the land gives him with relatively little struggle, and having little reason to compete, man’s reality is relatively fixed. Thereby, the struggles which do emerge are those of the mind and inward life.