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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Disonnection from nature
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Are you? Are we generally? disconnected from natural world. Lack of greenspace, and manicured landscapes versus wild, children who don't play outside or even walk to school, adults whose exposure is limited to roadside photo ops.
I think lack of regular exposure is associated with many adverse things, having read Last Child the Woods (Richard Louv) which discusses Nature Deficit Disorder. It is from a USA perspective, a little different than a Canadian, and I imagine UK, perspective. But the consequences of disconnection seem severe for physical, mental and social well being.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I don't think it's good (says she, typing away inside on a computer). But I'm not sure what to do about it, living where I do, since the climate here is extreme for ten months out of the year. My mother used to throw me outside, but that was in temperate California, and we didn't have mosquitoes that could carry off small cows. We do go camping (and I selfishly try to bag for myself the campouts that take place during our two-week long spring and fall seasons.)
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
I'll confess to several layers of skepticism about yet another diagnosis to add to the next edition of the DSM. At the same time, though (she says upon consideration of early-season veg gardening activities), I'm of mixed mind about this. For example, gardening gets me "close to nature" at one level, but may also be the primary activity that prompted humanity's movement away from nature, given that gardening consists primarily of altering the "nature" of the natural.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
Two thoughts occur to me:
1. There's less 'nature' about unless you live right on the edge of town - where there are sizeable green spaces in the middle of cities and large towns they tend to be full of people so the possibility of children feeling they can play 'lost in the wild' games may be reduced.
2. Smaller families and larger numbers of only children mean even if a child is turfed outside it will be alone: parents therefore may not feel confident about turfing out and those allowed out alone will be more isolated.
I grew up with close in age siblings: even if they or I didn't want to, we could and were expected to play together or at least have an awareness of where the others were. And our friends came from families with similar numbers of children, so if 3 or 4 lots got together you had an instant gang of 12+ children.
Looking at 2014 my neighbours have a single child - the only one in a stretch of 10 houses now my twins are 20. Across the road there are no children at all. My grandchild lives in a road of 12 houses where there are a grand total of 5 children - one family with 2 and 3 onlies.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I have lived in London for 50 years, and I have always felt a great need for the countryside. So I bought another house in Norfolk, so we can go there. I have tried living in the country, and felt homesick for London, so I am stuck with this ambivalence; or, if you like, I need both. But if I go too long without green fields and woods and plants, I start feeling crazy and depressed.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
I tried (small) city life for a few years and had enough of grey. It's highly debatable whether the rural landscape is remotely natural here, but it's a heck of a lot more pleasant than the city. Plus the fact that a 3 bed bungalow with an acre of land costs less than a 1 bed flat does in most British cities.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
Nature Deficit Disorder, I assure you, has yet to get into the DSM, although I would say the lack of exposure to nature can lead to other health problems both mentally and physically.
I live in a rural area so I have no problems with interacting with nature.
Just today I was listening to an interview on NPR of a middle class American family deciding to go back to where the woman's great grandmother came from in Croatia for a year. She said her kids adjusted very quickly to not having access to wi fi and the internet. They got along well with the children of the village. The commonality was football (soccer). The kids played morning till night. They had more freedom than they had in America. They learned to climb trees, pick herbs and berries. She said her kids grew a lot physically and emotionally.
She admits she was concerned about her husband going over (his family immigrated from Norway), but he learned a universal phrase worked very well: "Who wants a beer."
I have to say all my kids grew up in nature. We went camping a lot. They were allowed to play outside all day long until there were at least three porch lights come on in the neighborhood, then they had to be home.
All three kids still like the out of doors. They continue to go camping. My one son is very big in the biking community where he lives. Two of the kids like to fish with their children. Youngest son has been a guide in the wilderness of Idaho. He has also hiked the Wallowa's of Oregon. Our youngest grandchild at three months has already gone camping too.
Wife and I still camp from time to time. We will usually rent a yurt in a state park or a cabin near a beach. We will go on bike hikes in the local area. I will take my dog walking in a couple of county parks.
By all means, I think families and children need to get out into nature as much as possible. I find it renews the soul.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Ethne Alba
Shipmate
# 5804
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Posted
Being intentional is maybe half the battle in the UK ?
(where we Are able to be outside for far longer than LambChopped for instance.......)
Posts: 3126 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Bob Two-Owls
Shipmate
# 9680
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Posted
I start to die if I am away from gritstone edges and hills for more than a week or so. I don't really understand what drives people to live in cities, I could never do it but I am being priced out of the country and into the city with alarming rapidity. I tried living in London once but I ended up on anti-depressants just to get me out of the flat.
Posts: 1262 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Thing about nature, it tends to be wet, muddy and miles from anywhere. I would really like to live somewhere with the grass to my door, mountains thataway, woods and lakes yonder etc. but I also want art galleries and shops and classes and decent broadband.
I don't drive, and public transport in rural areas is attenuated, to say the least. Both my parents grew up on farms and holidays were visiting the ancestral acres. Country life has its social and cultural limitations (and my dears is absolute death to any skincare regime).
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Mmm - it's why I like here. 10 minutes walk to the fields, 20 minute walk to forest, old hedge in view out of the window, 3 minutes walk to a library, 10 minutes to the nearest Tesco or tube station into central London. I miss the sea, hills, mountains, streams and rivers because we have to look for that, but it's a reasonable compromise. I've done inner city and really rural and there are disadvantages of both.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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blackbeard
Ship's Pirate
# 10848
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Posted
Getting to be more of a problem here in the southeastish of England.
Old Blackbeard can remember a time when his home town was surrounded by areas of farmland and other open spaces. Some of the open spaces survive - just - but the farms have nearly all gone. Mostly they have become housing estates, the size of the houses and gardens reflect the price of land around here. We have become London SW200.
And it's getting steadily worse.
And too many people spend too much of their time, not in contact with Nature, nor earning money, nor doing anything useful, but stuck in ever worsening traffic jams on M3/M25/M4/M27.
And there are politicians who seem to think we need more and more of the same, and to go with it another airport, or enlargement of the airports we already have. Doubtless someone can make money this way, but there's more to quality of life than that. ![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
And can some of this "prosperity" please go to the regions which desperately need it, and where there is still plenty of space?
Posts: 823 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Dec 2005
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Did you see that interesting series Mind the Gap with Evan Davis? He was looking at the economics of agglomeration: the way in which there is a reciprocal dynamic between concentrations of productive/creative people, which leads to yet greater concentration, which requires enhanced infrastructure which in turn enables more people, which in turn - and so on.
The impression I got was of a London/south east honeycombed with hubs and links and a Rest of the Country making do with a one-dimensional, uncoordinated and haphazard communications network.
With the odd exception - eg Wordsworth and his chums piling off to the Lake District - it's very difficult to create a significant cultural, intellectual, economic or political impetus outside of cities.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Nature Deficit Disorder, I assure you, has yet to get into the DSM
Probably because there isn't a profitable drug with which to treat it.
It's all very well to be all romantic about the countryside, but one of the many reasons people began living in cities was that nature can be a terrible thing. In the UK we don't have animals that eat people, and it's rare to be quite out of sight of human habitation, or unable to see an electric light at night, however distant. And those are the very things that allow us to view "nature" as a playground and a source of pleasure.
But it wasn't always so. Firenze mentions Wordsworth, and we like to think of him as a champion of nature. But as often as not, he portrays the other side of rural life - poverty, hardship, loneliness, isolation - and it's chilling. My own family history touches tangentially on the story of an isolated woman farmer murdered by a passing stranger at the beginning of the 19th century.
The Bible ends in a city, not in a garden. Perhaps if our cities were more habitable we wouldn't feel the need to escape from them.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
The Bible ends with a riverside garden in the midst of a city, which sounds to me like the best of both worlds. I must confess that my first post was written from the point of view that outside = nature, and I was not even considering the difference between cultivated and uncultivated land. To me the inside/outside distinction is greater and more problematic (if you don't get both).
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
An elderly friend at the other end of the village keeps hens - has done all their life. The house next door has recently been bought by DfLs (Down from Londoners) who, the first weekend they were in evidence, friend visited with pot of homemade marmalade, half a dozen eggs, bunch of flowers and card from him and wife to say welcome.
This morning he's just had a visit from a council employee (accompanied by 2 PCs) to say a complaint has been made about noise from his hens, "unreasonable noise in his garden" (actually its a small-holding) and other "anti-social behaviour".
Having been given all the relevant facts (thank G one of the constables was a country boy) they have now gone on their way, assured/informed of the following:
1. A small-holding is a small farm: the new people have, in fact, bought a small-holding which carries a covenant - if they don't use it to provide food and employment for themselves they're in breach of the covenant and so breaking the law.
2. It is usual for people cultivating a small-holding to use powered cultivators and it is entirely reasonable to expect to use these before 10am; similarly it is not unreasonable to work on a Saturday or Sunday since the work is weather dependant.
3. All the local estate agents are aware of the covenants on the small-holdings - but then the new people didn't buy through an agent, it was a private sale from the children of the previous small-holder.
4. Previously attempts have been made for the covenant to be set aside - these have all failed. There is a long waiting list of people who wish to buy/rent a small-holding and the charity which gave the original parcels of land is very much alive and active. Those small-holdings that have been sold have a reversionary clause in their Deeds which any buyer must have seen.
In the meantime, how do we respond to these people who not only have no knowledge of what country living may entail (noise from animals, etc) but no willingness to adapt to it.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Ah yes, rural peace and quiet - apart from the cockerels, sheep, owls, foxes, tractors, combined harvesters, muck-spreaders and wind farms. And the scenery - all those sheds and silos, the sheen of concrete, the soft undulation of corrugated iron, the sparkle of wire fencing, the glint of polytunnel. Not to mention the vernal waft of diesel, silage, chickenshit, fertiliser, burning stubble, more shit...
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ophicleide16
Shipmate
# 16344
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Posted
It's very well to pose questions about connectivity with nature, but it's quite tricky to define nature in the first place. Certainly in places like the UK, much of what people consider nature is actually human construction- wooded areas flattened into agricultural fields. Someone in a city might think of a small park as a piece of nature, but to people living in the countryside, that definition would be laughable. So it's not possible to connect beneficially with nature unless you happen to have access to a form of nature considered ideal, like a mountainous region or manicured park. If, on the other hand, you have dangerous isolation and/or arid, barren landscapes full of things willing to kill you, nature isn't so nice at all.
That aside, I would argue that the most significant, human endeavours are those which point us away from nature completely. The occasional natural wonder admired from afar may well be inspirational, but so is a huge cathedral, a night at a concert or some other cultural event (even those which, in themselves, eulogise nature).
Posts: 79 | From: London | Registered: Apr 2011
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I'm thinking about the immediacy of experience versus the anticipatory experience, if I am wording this in understandable terms. Example: I have to present for 4 hours to about 90 people this afternoon. Stressful to be organized, engaged with the audience, tailoring the slides and what I need to tell them to their responses, and appear to be competent. If I go outside in the -1°C with dog, and we ramble along the river with the sun and wind, the ground is uneven and there are birds, deer and rabbits, I am not so focussed on the anticipation of what I must do at work, and I am in the moment. So I guess I'm saying outdoors time in a natural or more natural environment (e.g., no concrete) is good.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Is that to say anything other than you feel more stimulated in a changing environment than a static one? Outdoors is full of sensory variables - temperature, light, wind, scent. we need to be more alert to negotiate it - to walking surface, obstacles, hazards. It is full of novelty - look! a bird! leaves! clouds!
Whereas the office and the corridor and the seminar room present no such instabilities, and you can therefore get on with thinking of other, more abstract, things.
This is the rus vs urbs argument in miniature. In nature, you are preoccupied with whether it is going to freeze you or drench you or sting you or jump out at you with big teeth - or, latterly, how, with an enormous amount of effort, you are going to wrestle the bugger into growing/supporting enough food for you to live on - for you to have the time to come up with much in the way of art, culture or philosophy. It is only in the city that you have the space to come up with the doubtless valuable intellectual content of your presentation.
Of course, you could decide that one impulse from a vernal wood can teach you more of man etc. Though I don't suppose even Wordsworth would have claimed that vernal woods were competent in, say, medicine or engineering. We can enjoy the natural world only, in my view, because we don't actually have to live there. When it has delighted us sufficiently, we can go back indoors where it's warm and dry.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
It's more than that. The current popular term "mindfulness", which I take to mean being in the immediate experience of something is part of it. There are other aspects, such as connecting to something.
The info indicates that probably anxiety depression, ADHD and other problems are helped a lot with immediate natural environmental experiences. Like music programs in schools, environmental exposure is associated with improved academic performance.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I'm perfectly sure contact with the natural world is therapeutic. Blisters, backache, headaches and exhaustion apart, I always enjoy gardening.
I think it's also the case that some human environments, creations and activities have benign effects on the conditions you mention.
My quibble is with any view that you've just to get out there and it will automatically do you good. I'm reminded of Leonard Bast and the sunrise.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Firenze, I can see that. I like either a big city or the countryside - it's small towns or the suburbs that I find depressing.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Ah yes, rural peace and quiet - apart from the cockerels, sheep, owls, foxes, tractors, combined harvesters, muck-spreaders and wind farms. And the scenery - all those sheds and silos, the sheen of concrete, the soft undulation of corrugated iron, the sparkle of wire fencing, the glint of polytunnel. Not to mention the vernal waft of diesel, silage, chickenshit, fertiliser, burning stubble, more shit...
Just what Betjeman thought fifty years ago
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
On local CBC Radio 1 this morning. It's slightly tangential, but parallel enough I thought. It's the physical activity part of this.
The speaker discussed how when he was young his parents grounded him for punishment by not letting him go outside. Today, staying inside means playing with electronics, and thus is no longer a punishment.
He also noted how odd it is that people drive to places they could easily walk to. I see people driving to the river bank here, which is publicly owned and park, both wild and manicured, when they could easily walk to it. Kids could walk through parks to school but parents drive them instead. Striking that.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
I recall the interview on CBC a couple of years ago, about a nature reserve that was studied by biologists. An ATV ("quad bike") trail ran along one side of the area, with up to 80 vehicles per hour on holidays. The frogs had learned to jump OUT of any water they were in, since they knew that ATVers liked to splash in the water. Total reversal of natural survival instinct.
An ATV enthusiast, an older man, was interviewed, and talked about going out for 4 hours on his wheels to "enjoy the beauty and silence of Nature". The interviewed was boggled enough to ask "How do you hear the silence?"
And the nut replied: "Oh, after an hour or two, you don't hear the engine noise".
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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