Since I promised you, my gentle reader, I would cheer up at the end of my last post, I’m going to discuss the nature of Nature. You’re all well aware there’s little which cheers me like Nature.
We already discussed the theory of True Environment. True Environment is an area which would be the same whether or not humans existed. So obviously the areas of Alaska’s interior would be damn close to 100% True Environment, while the average street in the Bronx might get about 2%.
Disregarding those extremes for a moment, let’s consider a typical western home. Does shutting oneself within a box completely cut you off from Nature? Could it be that having plants, pets, or even photographs and art count as something? What if one opens a window? Are we closer to nature now?
Enter the back yard. Plants are there, often arranged by human hands, but behaving naturally. Perhaps a pair of birds twitter in a tree as a bee comes by to investigate your shirt. I think it all helps. Humans need grounding.
We have been removed from the animal, from the environment, and told it is okay, in fact the more removed the better. Air conditioning is way better than a swamp cooler and if you live in Phoenix and don’t have either, you’re considered a loser and DCS will be on their way to take your kids. Make more money, so you can have a bigger home, and have more rooms between you and the outside.
And what does Nature mean for most industrialized people? Maybe you might go jogging down a trail which has seen a hundred thousand footfalls. Or perhaps you will save up some money to have an allotted nature experience and travel to an endorsed, Nature Zone, to view some wonder next to two hundred other people and then go home.
Have you ever considered humans only focusing on humans and human inventions is a little strange? Maybe it’s good to experience things where we’re not 100% in charge. Let’s consider two scenarios.
Scene 1: A couple grabs their wallet, gets into their heated car, and goes to a restaurant. They know around what the bill will be, they pay it, and return home.
Scene 2: Couple rides their bikes out to Walnut Canyon. Makes their way into the canyon, perhaps walking where no one has for decades. It starts to rain, so they hunker under a cliff and eat a few power bars. The sun is starting to get lower in the sky, so they hurry back to their bikes and rush home.
Say both couples have to return to work Monday. In scene one, they reinforced nothing but human based valued and felt almost no aspect of the True Environment. Group 2 though, they placed themselves outside of the world of human.
They challenged themselves, yes. They experienced more of the True Environment, yes, but what is the difference for them?
It is so easy to accept this artificially created life and feel it is normal, even though 90% of what we do every day has only been possible for a few generations. How real is something which has only been present for .000001% of humanity’s existence?
“Well, of course it’s real, dummy, I’ll prove it to you. Look my Netflix account works just fine, let’s pick which one of these thousand movies you’d like to watch.”
Let me just ask you this, if we are focusing 90% of our time on things that didn’t exist a hundred years ago, what 90% of our lives were replaced? Many of us feel wounded and confused in life. We muggle through our jobs and relationships while always feeling like there’s something missing. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is that 90%.
I hope I got you thinking a bit. Drop by Flagstaff and I promise I’ll take you into Walnut Canyon.
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