Ancient writers used the analogy of the beehive or the anthill to tie the city to the natural world. The action of man in civilization was like the action of bees to make their hive survive. Until very recently, most men lived outside civilization and outside the walls of the city. The principles that organize the city are alien to earth.
Formal languages, like mathematics or computer languages, or music, are also alien to earth and are possibly only a few thousand years old. Perhaps they come from concepts that are embedded in natural language, or from relationships that are embedded in the body, or in the physical world.
Animals, plants, microbes in a given area all evolved together over thousands of years. Man, too, evolved within the constraints of given environments. Where animals, plants, and man violate the constraints of those systems, they die off.
Human civilization (the Orc version) tries to remake the world into an artificial one--one that's motivated by the whims and convenience of citified man. A tremendous expenditure of energy is required for that. (See: Recreating the Steppe, and Technology Doesn't Make the US more Energy Efficient)
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