The best healers do not treat symptoms. They discover and address root causes.

If we see the wanton destruction of the world around us as a sickness, we must discover and address its root cause. Why would our species destroy its source of food, water, air? Why would it destroy its own home?

This is a complex issue and no one answer will provide the ultimate solution.

However, it cannot help our cause that we have written our species out of the very definition of Nature.

According to the Oxford Languages, which is the first result served by Google when searching "nature definition", Nature is defined as (bold added for emphasis):

1. the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.

Dictionary.com defines it thusly:

1. the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities.

2. the natural world as it exists without human beings or civilization

And Cambridge Dictionary:

1. all the animals, plants, rocks, etc. in the world and all the features, forces, and processes that happen or exist independently of people, such as the weather, the sea, mountains, the production of young animals or plants, and growth.

We believe that writing the human species out of the definition of Nature is a root cause of our species' sad and unfortunate treatment of the planet. We view Nature as separate from ourselves. We are taught – through the definition itself – that Nature is separate from us.

Help us address and treat this root cause by signing the petition and showing the various dictionary organizations around the globe that humans are and always will be a part of Nature.

Learn more at TerrainTheory.net.