Chapter 05 — Need and opportunity, Paragraph 5.3 (§05.00.05.03)
Of course, this is an extremely broad claim, and one which allows for some questionable, or at least counter-intuitive findings. While a nest may be agreed upon as a Thing natural to birds or a house to humans, with humans specifically in mind, taking into account their many needs and the means imaginably necessary to serve them, is practically all that they do and have done so far natural to them? Is a nuclear plant, a space ship or a machine gun natural to them? Is art, language, writing or computer programming natural to humans? Likewise, assuming clothing is natural to them, at which point do we move from it being perhaps natural (e.g. animal skins found in nature but not killed by humans) to it being, arguably, non-natural (i.e. the elaborate fashions of each period in history)? The same question could be asked with regard to food or shelter. A certain level of abstraction is, therefore, warranted in this case. It is the idea, the essence of whatever is necessary to satisfy a need that is natural to the respective Being, and not its infinite variations in practice throughout history. For example, clothing or food are necessary to satisfy the human need to survive, and are thus natural to humans, but not in their various, exquisite elaborate or simply exaggerated forms that have appeared from time to time. The same is true of housing. Similarly, tools are necessary for humans to survive, but it is not certain that a nuclear plant (or, taking it further, a nuclear bomb) qualify as such. Equally, air and a temperate climate are necessary for humans to survive, but the replication of these conditions (e.g. in space or the deep sea) may not qualify as natural to humans. Language is necessary to satisfy the human need to communicate, but it is not certain that all languages that exist today are natural to humans (those that have become extinct being a case in point). Of course, it is natural to humans to create all of the above but that they are the product of need and thus natural to humans, does not make their many variants natural to humans, only the basic idea behind them. The same is, after all, also the case for states: states are natural to humans, as unique identification mechanisms across space and time, but this does not mean that modern nation states specifically are natural to humans (past, extinct forms of state, such as empires, tribes or church communities being cases in point, see also §15.00.00). Therefore, the task of identifying the means necessary to satisfy a need (whether a Thing or another Being), which are thus natural to the Being concerned, should be approached with a certain level of abstraction.
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