Connection and Disconnection
Have we become irrevocably disconnected from nature in our modern world? Have we lost a former ability to connect, in a way and a time when life was more simple and sweet? Just what is it that we want and expect from nature in our modern, urbanized, industrialized world? Is this any different from how humans have wanted to connect with nature in the past?
There is a strong theme that runs through contemporary discussions about nature. It is that humans have become disconnected from nature. Indeed, discussions seem saturated with this idea.
This disconnection is seen as a symptomatic malady that stems from modern urbanization and industrialization. A disconnection from nature is also seen as contributing to physical and mental unwellness, and that conversely, a reconnection to nature can contribute to wellness.
Viewing the past
Without a doubt, there is a temptation in this modern era to romanticize how past connections with nature are seen. There is a view of a more simple, idyllic time, with a pleasant and uncomplicated life, not marred with modern urbanization, industrialization and technology. This can be seen to result from a literal romanticization of nature, which happened in the “Romantic Movement” of the late 1700s.
But the Romantic movement was not the origin of this sepia-wrapped, nostalgic view of a relationship with nature. This view can be traced to far earlier times and cultures. The Romantic movement was just one iteration of this constant human desire to re-create a perceived relationship to nature from the past.
Romanticizing the past
But even before the Romantic movement came “pastoralism.” Pastoralism provides a vision of rural life that yearns for a more idyllic past way of life, as explained within this quote explaining the sentiments expressed in the Greece of antiquity , “ancient Greeks had sentiments of an ideal pastoral life that they had already lost.”
A longing for a more simple life from the past that cannot be reached in the present is something that has been present in the human psyche across the ages. It comes with a sense that this connection, this sweet life, is something that cannot be recovered.
These long-ago desires, of aching for an unreachable past into a landscape now erased, is not anything unique, then, to the modern world. But is there anything in the modern world which brings this idea of connection and disconnection strongly to the fore?
Disconnected and Disembodied
There can be something that fosters disconnection in the modern world. That is a way of moving through the world in a rush and a hurry, moving through the landscape and nature, rather than being part of it.
There is something about moving through the landscape that affects how it affects you. If you are moving through quickly–by train or car– you may quickly reach your destination. You might even gaze with appreciation as the landscape spins past.
But these ways of moving are disembodied. In a literal sense, it is not the body providing the locomotion and the presence through the landscape. The body is present but not present– it is cocooned away from the land, rather than being part of and exposed to it.
Childhood Road Trips and Alienation from the Landscape
And this in itself invites an alienation from the land and the landscape. It is to be an observer, not actually connected to and part of the scene. I have a memory that drives this home (literally!) from childhood vacations. My family would drive across Kansas to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. It was a drive that could be done in a single long day.
The next-to-last part of the drive always seemed to be the longest. It was the stretch across the High Plains of western Kansas and eastern Colorado. The High Plains were a flat, nearly treeless terrain, with very few towns or cities to break up the monotony of the drive. By this time into the car trip, nothing felt novel or exciting. The trip felt long, hot, and never-ending. There was always a friendly competition to see who would spot a mountain first on the horizon. At first it was hard to tell a snowy mountaintop from a distant cloud.
But in time the mountain would take a more definitive shape—a mountain and not a cloud. That only left the heavy traffic of Denver to negotiate, and then once Denver was behind us, we began the climb into the foothills and then into the mountains.
The challenge of the High Plains
For those who had to travel the High Plains in a pre-automobile day, the journey was long and ardous. But it was not over in a matter of hours or perhaps even days. And there were much larger threats than boredom. For much of the High Plains was dry, and people were known to have died of thirst trying to cross this expanse.
Even for those who made it, the experience would have been altogether different. Travelling by a horse or ox drawn waggon, or on foot, meant that the pace of travel was much slower. Not 70 miles per hour. Perhaps not even 10 miles in a day. What we did in one hour in a car might have been a week’s travel or more for those people in distant past days. How they experienced the land would have been altogether different. They might have seen the land as an enemy, an obstacle, giving rise to the view of this expanse of land as inhospitable and perhaps even uninhabitable.
Rushing through
This area became known as the “Great American Desert,” even though it is far from that. But the idea that this is land to move through as fast as possible, to endure rather than to enjoy, persists in the modern psyche, with this area known rather deregatorily as “fly over states.” The idea behind that label is that there is no point in taking your time to traverse these—and that there is nothing to see. You should travel as fast as possible over and across. This landscape remain an obstacle, not a destination.
Becoming EarthWise: a timeless quest
The idea of nature connection– and of whether to be embodied within nature then can invite a paradox in how we think about nature. This paradox demonstrates that being embodied within nature does not lead to a positive connection but does not fully address the consequences of being disembodied. The deep human desire, wrapped in nostalgia, to be connected with nature is not a by-product of urbanization and modernization. It could be a desire as old as time itself. This means that the quest for becoming EarthWise may seem modern, and as a result of modernity. But to fail to see the timelessness of this quest is to fail to see how deeply embedded into the human psyche this is.
In seeking a nature connection, this then is something to keep in mind. This nature connection is timeless and deep within the human soul. It is part of the essence of being vital, being alive.