Have we grown increasingly estranged from nature with which we were presumably in harmony at one time?

At least two fallacies underlie this assumption.

First: the myth that people in the past felt closer to nature because they lived closer to it.

Second: that our increasing ability to manage nature and subdue its excesses means that we are growing increasingly estranged from it.

The fact is that the farther back we go in history the more our ancestors were at the mercy of nature and therefore the more estranged they were from it. Nature which burned them froze them drowned them entombed them. Nature which washed away their crops and destroyed their frail habitations.

Nature was harsh arbitrary capricious.

Unable to fathom the complex causality of natural processes our ancestors anthropomorphized nature. They saw nature as a person or as gods. Through the eons a massive mythology sought to come to terms with the moods and wraths of these gods (nature). For example earthquakes—volcanic eruptions—floods were seen as punishment. "What did we do to deserve this? Why is god punishing us?"

We built cities to better protect ourselves from the ravages of nature. But a city is also nature—redesigned nature.

It is one thing to languish in an air-conditioned apartment in a city insulated from many environmental threats and talk grandly about living in "harmony with nature." It is quite another to cower in a fragile mud hut on the edge of a desert totally exposed to nature's frequent temper tantrums.

Storms—floods—-earthquakes—other natural disasters exact the greatest toll in human lives in rural areas—rarely in modern cities.

People living in New York City—London—Amsterdam feel closer to nature than rural people ever could because they are less threatened by nature. They can enjoy the lovely aspects of nature without being as helplessly at its mercy.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 823