The nature of man. Man is a being formed in essence and in origin from nature. This is an obvious reality that, unfortunately, we often forget. Failing to recognize the natural substrate of the human species is to deny its basic substrate. It was above all from modernity, when the res cogitans was split up from the res extensa, that man was deprived of this biotic foundation. In this way a crack opened up that has ploughed the Western world from top to bottom since its foundation to construct a reality alienated from nature and our own body. This alienation has been expressed throughout human existence in each of the events and concepts that have emerged. We talk of the rational animal underestimating, in this sense, the first part of the equation (animality understood as a burden which we must cast off) desiring, at root, to become thinking entities exempt from any physical substrate. It is in this way, for example, that modern Western medicine has separated all connection between our brains and our bodies. And not only this, but has also approached any illness by understanding the body as a dissociated set of organs (it is only necessary to see the list of specialists and medical specialities.)

Losing place. This dissociation between man and nature has resulted in human beings losing their place on Earth and within the natural cycle of life and I say this not from a poetic or new age point of view but rather from a substantial one. This loss of place has also meant the lack of a feeling towards nature. The concept of landscape emerges when we become modern “individuals” independent from our surroundings and we can, therefore, identify the landscape as an element external to ourselves to admire it as an object or res extensa. The first step towards a reunion between man and nature would be to talk of the world in the second person – as Jordi Pigem proposes – which will allow us to establish other types of dyadic relationships between two equal elements. This you instead of he/she places us in a position of equality and of proximity that allows us to reinstate our place in/with nature. Nature is no longer that other but is this other and this this other refers only to ourselves.

Listening. Being able to speak on an equal basis with nature means being capable not only of speaking, affecting surroundings, but of having the capacity to listen – a very difficult aspect in an egocentric society like the modern one where individuality is put before and above all. We would have to set up a parliament of things, as Bruno Latour proposes, which finally also means listening to nature, to ourselves, to our body and to our natural substrate that Western medicine has largely forgotten, relegating this responsibility to machines and to medical specialists. Therefore, the moment has arrived to listen and stop blindly acting on the world.

Nature no longer exists. It is inevitable to think that nature is not nor will ever be more than a nature in “pure state”. The action of man on the world has a history of more than thirty million years to believe that he has not, directly or indirectly, left his mark on all the corners of our planet. In this sense the development of man on Earth has left and is leaving his mark day after day. If we understand by nature what Descartes called res extensa, that which exists in itself outside of man and his thought, this non-human, purely materialist nature no longer exists. In a process of co-existence (rather one should talk of in-existence understood as living-in or being-in) of around thirty million years, the mark of man on Earth (biotic substrate) is undeniable and now we can no longer talk of nature as such, it is necessary to find other terms. The chaotic matricial substrate is given form ecumenally (eco-techno-symbolically). The Earth, with the effect of technology and culture, is transformed into world. We no longer live on the Earth, we live in the world.

Basic trajection: biotic trajection. Any living being is a system that needs energy to be able to subsist: from a plant cell to an elephant or a man, all require, in this life process, energy that they constantly transform. In its development any living being is an interior that takes from the exterior resources that modify this interior and this exterior. When we eat an apple we feed ourselves and transform the matter into energy and into other matter (cells…) also changing the exterior (the apple). By eating we are interiorizing the world and exteriorizing ourselves. Obviously this trajection is basic because it affects any living being but this very trajection can evolve and become increasingly more complex until reaching a high level of symbolization and of mediation, which would be what Augustin Berque calls ecumenal development (eco-techno-symbolic). In this text we will develop the two fundamental elements, in my opinion, of trajection: food and home as motors of constant transformation of the surroundings (of the world).

Our physiology and the surroundings. The basic need of all living beings is that of satisfying the requirements of food and this fact obliges us to establish a relationship with the surroundings. Therefore, our physiology will only make sense if it is in contact with these surroundings and these surroundings define it. We are how we are based on how our surroundings are. In order to receive energy in the form of matter we must be able to perceive it and, moreover, assimilate it as food. This implies that our physiology is founded and constituted, in principle, in function of these two parameters.

The basic and universal trajective movement: food. The basic need to feed establishes a trajective relationship with the surroundings given that, based on a primary interior need (to eat), we interact, first cognitively and then technically, on our surroundings (taking this food, and therefore affecting and changing it). This is a basically trajective movement given that it connects at a very basic– not yet cultural – level common to all living beings our interior and our exterior. In this sense, the biochemists Maturana and Varela talk of giving birth to a world; in the words of Berque we cosmosize ourselves (we make a cosmos) in the world but, also, we somatize it (we make body) constantly. This is precisely the trajective movement, which keeps the landscape in constant mutation, a movement to and fro between our interior and our exterior which never stops and that maintains the buzz of life in movement.

Biological trajection and cultural trajection. We can distinguish two types of trajections: those based on the basic physiological needs of our own development as living beings (food, nest, reproduction) which to a greater or lesser extent are universal and those which emerge based on and a posteriori to the former; we would speak in this case of cultural trajection. Both have a direct influence on our surroundings. When the basic needs are covered a cultural development can emerge, a relationship with our surroundings which is the result of a surplus of time and energy and which goes beyond what is meant to satisfy basic needs. This also involves the development of a complex symbolic relationship, which finally channels this relationship with the exterior and obviously also directly affects it. Thus we see how the biological trajective movement can finally become a much more complex trajective movement, as is the cultural, which mediates between our interior and our exterior.

The emergence of agriculture: the stabilization of the primary need. The appearance of agriculture, together with the technological revolution it brought, made it possible to stabilize one of the main basic needs: food. The effects of this stabilization also had repercussions on the relationship with nature as sedentariness emerged together with social, economic and other repercussions. But what most interests us is the emergence of a new relationship with the second of the basic needs: shelter. The establishment, more or less permanent, allowed the development and the rooting of the shelter which gave body and form to the house. A technological change like agriculture provoked, by extension, a change in the shelter transforming it with time into a house and later into a home.

Concentric needs. As we have seen the ambit in which we move is the analysis of the most animal root of the being-in-the-world and because it is the most fundamental it also becomes the most universal. It is possible to make a diagram through circles that would concentrically be added to the needs of men beginning with the most basic and therefore most universal, until the most individual and subjective or cultural. Therefore, we would locate food on the outermost circle, then shelter and afterwards reproduction. These three factors are common to almost all living beings. From here the need would begin to be diluted in specificity and the social or group communication need would emerge which would lead to culture: a specifically human need. Within culture we can find different levels of relationship of need that gradually individualize (the need to know how to read is more universal or common than the need to have a jeep or a chalet in the mountain).

The second basic trajective element: shelter. If on the one hand food is the first trajective foundation, on the second level we find the need to find shelter, accommodation. For ants, birds, beavers and many other animals the second main foundation in life after the search for food is the construction of the nest, of the shelter or the house. This is a basic need for all living beings (some large fish or animals do not have the need to make a nest but they do defend their territory: their nest-state constructed with invisible frontiers like those of our countries). This is the second great trajective action of living beings on the world, an action that constantly transforms our surroundings to a greater or lesser extent. A colony of ants constructing its ant-hill, a stalk making its nest in a tree or a rabbit are radically transforming their own surroundings, although from our point of view these transformations can seem insignificant.

Relationships and the meta-surroundings. We can say that our being-in-the-world is mainly based on the relations that we establish with what surrounds us. Within the great sphere of what surrounds us and is closer to us, we must also include the other beings-in-the-world that share our sphere. Therefore, within the surroundings there are also other human beings who will become surroundings. When we talk of surroundings, therefore, we refer to the material and to the human that exists around us. However, at the same time, we ourselves also become surroundings given that we are the surroundings of other surroundings. The being-in-the-world in fact is being-world. This not only creates physical surroundings around us but also meta-surroundings which are the psychological, cultural and social surroundings that are often not visibly present because they are immaterial or because in our daily existence they have become invisible. These meta-surroundings are those that allow community life and, more extensively, society life.

The meta-home or the house-nation and the feeling of identity with the Earth. In his treatise Spheres Peter Sloterdijk poses the idea that the passage from the private sphere to the collective goes through the formation of globes that are common identity formations. If the family consists of a first existential wrapping that shapes the home, the nation-patria amplifies this sense of identity until establishing our identity with the country as an extension of the home. Home and country become synonyms. This patriotic feeling serves as a catalyser to form social coagulations that emerge from the structured relationships of great groups of population.

The amplifying effect of society. The change from nomadic cultures to sedentary cultures provokes a large growth in populations. First people live in tribes more or less reduced for eminently practical reasons given that if not the movements would have become exoduses. The settlement in fixed enclaves means that community life becomes society life with the consequences that this implies. The most important aspect for the issue that concerns us is that the influence of an individual or a small group of individuals on the surroundings is highly amplified exponentially with the massive increase in population. Society, with the consequent cultural expansion, provokes much faster changes and the consequences are much more serious. Ants, for example, are social but not cultural beings that constantly affect the world and essentially their-world, constructing ant-hills. The social nature of the ant-hills means that they can intervene much more powerfully in the world, adapting it to their needs.

We all work for a better world. All living beings are genetically programmed with the impulse to cover their needs, above all the basic. This means, as we have seen, decisively affecting their surroundings to adapt it, above all with the nest, to their needs. In this process of change what is sought is to create a better-world-to-live-in. The ant-hill constructed by the ants is in fact their better-world-to-live-in. Therefore, in any basic process of life trajection there is a sense of utopia, whether in animals or in persons, to construct a better-world-to-live-in. The fact of having more or less success in this impulse only depends on the accuracy when establishing our priorities for the needs to be satisfied.

Complex relationships. As we have seen, when the basic needs are covered we have a surplus of time and energy that allows us to develop much more complex ways of relating. This is how the meta-surroundings emerge. Culture is the meta-surroundings that, we can say, encompasses the surplus development of the human being on Earth. Culture acts as a filter when affecting the world until distorting the basic needs in such a way that they become almost invisible. With all the cultural substrate that has been accumulated about our existence – and more since the appearance of modernity – the most animal part of man or the basic needs have become invisible elements and in many cases troublesome for culture or have been regurgitated by it in forms of postmodernist atrophy: the chalet, nouvelle cuisine.

Economy as a cultural metaphor of organization of the basic foundations of life: house and food. In order to be able to establish a link that regulates and organizes the relationships that appear through culture of the surplus which emerged from the Neolithic, man develops a super-effective and practical system as is that of money and on a higher level, that of the economy. Although these two concepts have been associated with a series of eminently negative moral values, it is still a symbolic system of amoral exchange (in the strict sense, that is, without morals).

The cultural filter and the economy. Culture understood as a symbolic development of the being on Earth acts as a filter when affecting the world through technique. And as we have seen, affecting the world or the act of trajecting is primarily governed by the basic laws of food and home. Thus, culture acts as a sieve between our basic needs and the developing world, a technique through which we shape these basic needs in the surroundings and in the meta-surroundings. It is, therefore, the cultural lens which will optimize or not the resources of the surroundings now providing a moral charge to the economy.

Subtrophy and hypertrophy of the house and eating. The trophics of the basic relationships of man with his surroundings are provoked by moral trophics acquired after thousands of years of mistakes and misunderstandings. The trophics are therefore imbalances within our ecosystem by excess or by defect and are related with the two basic elements of life: house and food. The hypertrophy of the first economic powers of the world generates an excess (not for nothing the richest country in the world is also one of the fattest countries of the world) and the subtrophy a defect. These trophics have their origin in the relationship of possession that we establish with our surroundings and with its basic foundations.

Reformulating the basic trajective relationships: house and food. It is therefore necessary to first reformulate our basic relationships with the surroundings from two aspects that are currently in crisis and that are fundamental: house and food. A society without these aspects in balance (whether through hypertrophy or dystrophy) can have neither a socially nor culturally harmonious and balanced development. This is evident in the innumerable wars that assail our planet: all military confrontations, without exception, are provoked by imbalances with the house (invasion of countries, nationalisms…) and with food (control of energy resources). Moreover, the situation of development chaos of our country also denotes a largely unaware relationship with the house element.

The emergence of change as a concentric movement. Let us return to the diagram of needs of living beings. In this diagram a process of concentration is produced as we approach its centre. In the middle of this is the subject that demands a multitude of personal and peremptory, circumstantial and non-universal needs. A concentric force is thus produced from the exterior to the interior. From the universal towards the concrete. Therefore, a change of eccentric mentality is very difficult (from inside to outside) – society itself already uses this same denomination, often contemptuously. If there is no alternative, the change must be concentric from outside to inside (from universal to concrete). If we make the basic and fundamental needs of all persons shake, the remaining needs will automatically be reformulated. In short, being without a jeep can mean a more or less bearable calamity but being without a house and without food makes us see life through other eyes.

Crisis as an emergency. The ecological crisis we are currently experiencing is in fact a crisis that affects our house which is the planet Earth (the term ecological comes from the Greek oikos meaning house) and this implies, paradoxically, that it is also a crisis of food as, in our case, our house gives us food. This crisis is therefore the driving force that will lead to a social, economic, technological and political shift that will regenerate our whole world and drastically, radically and unquestionably relocate the relationships of need that we establish in our life with our surroundings. If we do not decide to voluntarily change it will be the house, the Earth, that which will change us and our world.

Recycling humanity. For this change to take place a fundamental circumstance must appear: we must recycle humanity. When talking of recycling I do so in the literal sense of the term: to return to the cycle. If man had not lost his most intimate connection with nature and had not exiled himself from the cycle of life we would not currently be in the situation we are. It is, therefore, necessary to recover our place in the cycle. Resuming the cycle will mean resuming life. If modernism has taken us to this point, postmodernism has realised this meaning and the obsolescence of this proposal. The modern machine has expired. It is, therefore, the moment to resume what is biotic. Resuming the natural cycle means recovering our lost eternity as we give up being teleological, unidirectional, speculative, lineal and temporal. We give up being un-presentable; that is, we will cease not being in the present. If we resume the cycle we will become systemic, chaotic, attractive, dynamic and synthetic. We will be presentable again, we will therefore live in a present continuous.

The synthetic or transmodernist moment. Thus, being synthetic strictly speaking means that we will synthesise all the knowledge of the past, recycling it in a new present. This new present involves a recycling at all levels: industrial, social, political, economic… We must, therefore, cease producing disposable things. We must abandon the Kleenex era to reach a point where everything we do is useful, and when I say do it is in a sense of becoming, everything we will become with our thoughts and our acts must be immersed in a cycle that serves those coming after us. Our waste must feed the others. Everything must be recyclable, not only industrially but also in terms of life. Uncovering the modern fallacy that makes us believe that the life cycle is birth-life-death and that it ends here when, in reality, the life cycle is birth-life-death-decomposition-life for another. In this sense, being synthetic also means being transmodernist: transcending modernism. Being in the cycle means being aware and letting oneself live in the apparent instability of constant mutation.