Reed Esslinger-Payet, GSI
Art-Des. 250:Section 5
Being immersed in technology in my everyday life, I have been almost deprived of my primordial “natural” sense to appreciate the natural world. However, I am fully aware that nature is the source of the Earth’s life. Not only do I need nature, I must protect the natural world since the condition of our environment beholds what issues that our future (and present) generation will have to resolve. According to Diamond, societies, such as Maya, Rome, Greece, etc., were “inadvertently destroying environmental resources on which their societies depended” (3-6); therefore, environmental abuse was one of the factors in the collapse of these societies (Diamond 6-7). Not to recognize the importance of nature and its role on all life causes costly consequence for everything, since environmental issues will stay unresolved.
Consequently, if people cannot distinguish the natural world from the man-made world (or technological world), environmental issues will stay unheeded:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away a sordid boon! (“The World”)
This excerpt from William Wordsmith’s poem, “The World Is Too Much with Us,” portrays the common detachment that now is instilled in our societies about the natural world—even I possess this detachment. During the day, I barely stop and ruminate about the beauty around me in natural world since the man-made world has its edifices lingering and towering above nature--as if to claim itself as the victor between the two worlds. I consume and consume without any concern about nature. Corporations have branded its logo onto the brain cells of my mind. It is difficult to operate without pondering what I will buy this day or what brand will I represent today—listening only to the commercials from the man-made world and not my natural sense to conserve the environment.
(Picture above is the Huron River in Nicholas Arboreum taken by me)Leopold “[know] a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all…It is a river” (Leopold 51). A river that I ignore yet I drink from its bank. A river that supplies life to the environment around me yet I abuse it. However, I know that I need nature.
Works Cited
Diamond, Jared M. Collapse How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking, 2005. Print.
Leopold, Aldo. Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Print.
"The World is Too Much With Us -." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 19 Sept. 2009.
The Natural World has always been a necessity in my life, more so when I was younger. My family would always go rustic camping, which obviously included fishing, building fires, and using nature to get us from one day to the next. Older now, I find myself relying on nature less and less. However, at least once a day I need to be outside weather that involves reading under a tree, running, sketching, or just taking a walk (in a wooded area away from campus). In some ways I feel like our society has been forced into an industrialized world where nature has been shut out. As a college student we are forced to be in class, on computers, in libraries and have very comfortable social places where we don’t need to experience nature at all. Personally I have become comfortable with this lifestyle and way of living and would say I need my computer and air conditioning more than being outside enjoying nature. People rarely even rely on nature for food anymore, and if they do the food is probably not as natural as they think. A lot of meat is injected with growth hormones /fish are farm raised, sometimes I don’t even know if fruits and vegetables are fresh and natural anymore. As I said earlier, the faster the people demand products, food especially, the unhealthier and more industrialized our products and lifestyles become. It’s scary that people don’t realize how much we do need the natural world. If we don’t protect it and take care of it, we will severely have to face the consequences. Yes there are new “green” ways of living, but that will only make a small dent in helping toward saving the world. Green design isn’t really practical just because not everybody can afford it, and even if every single person could afford it, we’ve already done enough to screw it up.
ReplyDeletePhoto was taken by me at Nicholas Arb Last fall