Going, Going, Gone

The Sixth Extinction 

Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)

Our envelope, as I have called it, the cultural insulation that separates us from nature, is rather like the window of a lit-up railway carriage at night. Most of the time it is a mirror of our own concerns, including our concern about nature.

                                     

                        

Auroch (Bos taurus primigenius)

As a mirror, it fills us with the sense that the world is something which exists primarily in reference to us: it was created for us; we are the centre of it and the whole point of its existence. 

Wooly rhino (Coelodonta Antiquitatis)

 But occasionally the mirror turns into a real window through which we can see only the vision of an indifferent nature that goes along for untold aeons of time without us, seems to have produced us only by accident, and, if it were conscious, could only regret having done so
Northrop Frye, Creation & Recreation  

                                                          
                                                                                                            

 Good Reads: The Sixth Extinction  by Richard Leakey

Good Vibrations:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njtM09ki5nY

With a Little Help from My Friends

     Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark

                                       1613,  Oil on Panel

'Nature teaches beasts
         to know their friends'
       
               Shakespeare,Coriolanus

Biophilia, meaning “love of life or living systems” (Fromm 1964), refers to the natural attraction of humans to all living things. Harvard biologist (specifically, myrmecologist), E.O. Wilson popularized the term in his work, Biophilia, although the term’s meaning changed to “an innate love for nature,” a definition which suggests biophilia is genetically based.

In a subsequent book, The Biophilia Hypothesis (Kellert &Wilson 1993), several contributors examine the validity of Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis, with Wilson (1993) proposing that biophilia evolved by natural selection in a cultural context,  called  gene-culture co-evolution. Given the history of human/animal relationships, and the substantial body of evidence of a growing need for contact with nature, Wilson’s theory is not as farfetched as some would lead us to believe.

Good Vibrations: http://bit.ly/1NiWMhr

Swingin' on a Star?

…I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

                               Robert Frost, 1916

Nature Deficit Disorder

In his landmark book, Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv defines a condition from which many children and adults today suffer-nature deficit disorder. Urbanization and the rise of technology, particularly our dependence on the latter are producing generations of ‘screen addicted’ individuals. Gone are the days where children ran outside to play after school. Instead, their attachment to computer and mobile phone screens has lured them to routines and habits which can potentially prompt antisocial behaviors and impede cognitive growth.

The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence includes outdoor learning as an essential element to a child’s education and there is a movement in the UK and elsewhere which seeks to put people, big and small, back in touch with nature. On a more positive note, research shows that growing urbanization also tends to create a need to be reconnected with wildlife & nature. 

Good Vibrations:  http://bit.ly/1UTu2nm