Basic Trope: The logical fallacy that claims that a thing is good because it happens to be the natural state of things.
- Straight: Alice claims that a new farming technique is immoral, because it doesn't follow natural cycles of wild plant growth.
- Exaggerated: Alice claims that, since cancer, death and pain all occur as part of nature, they are all good and shouldn't be fought.
- Downplayed: Alice thinks that "natural" things are better and doesn't usually analyze this belief very closely, but is willing to accept that "unnatural" things can also be good — just not really as good.
- Justified:
- Alice is a neo-Luddite, who explicitly believes that a state of wild nature is the best possible condition.
- Alice lives in a Techno Dystopia, and as such, is distrustful of anything artificial.
- Alice is a Nature Spirit with Blue-and-Orange Morality.
- Inverted: Alice acts like anything natural is inherently primitive and undesirable.
- Subverted: Alice's claim that the new farming technique is immoral seems to be fallacious, but as her argument progresses her objections revolve around specific parts of it that cause observable harm.
- Double Subverted: However, the harm in question seems to be tangential to her argument and it's not clear how aware she is of the actual side effects. Her main conscious gripe is still the deviation from "the way things are."
- Parodied: Alice refuses to eat cooked food, wear clothes, or speak in anything but grunts, because she claims those things are unnatural.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice will do some things because they're natural and avoid other things because they're natural.
- Some characters use this excuse, while others do not.
- Averted: Alice doesn't bring up "naturality" or its lack in her arguments, but focuses on specific ethical and practical problems and benefits when analyzing problems.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Anything that defies the natural order is an abomination!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: A Snake Oil Salesman sells quack medicine to Alice by emphasising that it's 100% natural.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: "You do realise these new farming methods are increasing global food production?" "I don't care! At least hunger is natural!"
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: While picking wild berries, Alice shakes her head at a nearby farmer using the new technique.
- Deconstructed: Alice goes and lives in a forest, so she gets to eat only wild food, and dies of starvation when it proves scarcer than she expects. And that's if she doesn't get eaten by bears or catch a deadly disease first.
- Reconstructed: She accepts her impending death, because it's a part of life after all!
Back to Appeal to Nature.
