Kevin Robert Dean wrote:
>
> What about....Nature is in constant conflict with itself. Plants shade
> out other plants. Animal eats animal. Weather destroys animal. Animal
> with no predators out competes other. Nature is violent, nature is the
> embodiment of suffering. Suffering is nature and nature is suffering.
>
> Or how about "It is against HUMAN nature for man to lie with man" or
> "Man is naturally greedy, to suppress it is evil"
Roughly speaking, Homer's response to what the 19th/20th centuries call "Nautre" was that nature was UGLY. A mountain was ugly; the sea was ugly. Beauty characterized only that which had been shaped by human artifice. Of course Homer did not have central heating, a radar-equipped Coast Guard, Helicopter rescue teams, steel&plastic hip replacements. (I would be dead or permanently bed-ridden except for the latter.)
Carrol