Nature is Messy

In this photo, our lumberjack gestures towards the mess he is about to attack.  It's not really chaos, because there's definitely a pattern to this inpenetrable tangle of twigs.  Nature is more complex than we can imagine.  Nature is definitely not American.

Americans like to keep things simple, as befits our simple-mindedness.  The epitome of American landscaping is the lawn -- two-dimensional, one species, one color.  Even better would be to pave it over.  You don't have to mow a parking lot.  Get rid of life altogether, now we're talking!

I can't imagine a greater tragedy than turning a rainforest -- which is messiness personified -- into a cow pasture.  Eliminate the third dimension, and you've eliminated billions of years of evolutionary magic.  But there are burgers to be fried, and money to be made.  Onward into the 21st Century!