Well, here we
are in yet another election year full of vitriolic demarcations of right from
left, seemingly with little overlap. Once again, the looming dangers of global
warming, failing ecosystems, and our overall unsustainabilty are lost amidst
the rhetorical din of jobs and economy (as if these were somehow distinct from
the aforementioned perils). Meanwhile, the chasm between humans and nature deepens.
Watching the
national debates unfold, I find little to be positive about. One exception
worth underlining, however, is the very fact that such divergent views can
co-occur. Most of us live as if there’s only one worldview—ours. But anyone
doubting the existence of deeply contrary perspectives need only look at the
current Republican-Democrat divide in the United States. And that’s within a
single country.
As readers of
this blog will be aware, my central concern is how we are to go about
connecting humanity with nature, with the assumption that we cannot achieve anything
approaching sustainability without a mindset that embeds us inside nature.
Living in an indoor culture obsessed with the techno-gadgetry of computers,
smartphones, and e-tablets, the notion of embedding humans within nature might
seem an impossible dream. But such a mindset is not nearly as alien as it might
first appear.
Take America,
for example.
Traditionally,
the indigenous
peoples of this continent, and every other, were expert naturalists who formed
deep bonds with their local places. Today, native peoples continue to speak of this
close attachment, even co-identity, with their homelands [1]. In the words of
Luther Standing Bear, an Oglala Sioux:
"The
American Indian is of the soil, whether it be the region of forests, plains,
pueblos, or mesas. He fits into the landscape, for the hand that fashioned the
continent also fashioned the man for his surroundings. He once grew as
naturally as the wild sunflowers, he belongs just as the buffalo
belonged..."
Marlowe Sam, an
Okanagan Indian, put it simply [2], “As Okanagan people, we are from
the land; we are part of it.” Best we can tell, this
kind of nature-centric worldview has dominated the human mind for most of our
200,000-year tenure.
European
colonists in North America, although bearing a conqueror mindset, found that
they too had to be students of nature to survive in the New World. In the
bloody wake of indigenous decimation, new generations of naturalists set out to
rediscover North America’s wonders. The 19th Century in particular
witnessed an explosion of fascination in natural history. Nuttal, Bartram,
Clark, Agassiz and others steeped in the Linnaean tradition collected and
classified legions of North American species. Birds, beetles, butterflies,
seashells, and wildflowers were favorite targets, but Cope and Marsh expanded
the scope to include fossils, competing to see who could recover the greatest
number of ancient species from the western territories.
As difficult
as it is to imagine today, even the Whitehouse was occupied by a series of
naturalists. Early in the 19th Century, Presidents Washington and
Jefferson were both ardent naturalists. Jefferson even had a prehistoric giant
ground sloth named in his honor. A century later, Theodore Roosevelt proudly
brandished the naturalist label, translating his lifelong fascination with the
outdoors into conservation of wilderness areas.
In the 1870s
and 1880s, nature fever overtook the general public, resulting in hundreds of
small natural history associations from coast to coast. Membership in these
societies surged as people relocated from countryside to towns and cities. This
public passion for nature translated into the construction of natural history
museums, both here and overseas, to house the growing collections and put them
on public display. The Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, the
Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the American Museum of Natural
History in New York, and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco
are all products of this period. By the close of the 1900s, most Americans
could describe themselves as naturalists [3].
The nature
craze continued early in the 20th Century with more clubs, more
museums, and more learning. Indeed an education was considered incomplete if
one lacked a general knowledge of local plants and animals. The chief guide for
outdoor adventuring became Anna Botsford Comstock’s 1911 Handbook of Nature Study [4]. The Old and New Testaments may have
held sway on Sundays, but Comstock’s Handbook
revealed the wonders of God’s creations the remaining days of the week. With
abundant illustrations and vivid descriptions linking animals to habitats, she
introduced a generation of school children to fireflies, toads, dandelions,
clouds, rocks, and robins. Comstock’s firm belief was that experiential
education in nature should form the bedrock of education. And, while certainly
not all reached adulthood as naturalists, the practice of natural history was
highly valued, both as an amateur pastime and a professional vocation.
Following
WWII, nature study took an abrupt and precipitous decline. Amongst the contributing factors was the mounting exodus from
countryside to cityscape, further separating people from nature, as well as the
reinvention of biology as a strictly empirical science focused on genes and
molecules rather than whole organisms [5]. Field observations, the
bread and butter of natural historians, were replaced by replicable experiments
carried out in sterile laboratories. By the 1960s, natural history had become a
quaint hobby for amateurs. With landmark exceptions such as Harvard biologist
E. O. Wilson, “naturalist” was no longer a label adopted by most
self-respecting biologists.
Nevertheless, there’s still
plenty of reason for hope. For example, you may be surprised to learn that
annual attendance at North American nature institutions—museums, botanical
gardens, aquariums, zoos, and science centers—exceeds that of professional
sporting events. And plenty of people still flock to beaches and parks on
weekends, as well as to natural wonders on vacation. It’s been only two generations, well within the
lifetime of my mountain-and-forest-loving mother, since the bulk of people in
this country shared a significant link with nature. Viewed in this way, our present mode of thinking can be considered a
recent aberration set against a lengthy history of uniting people with their
local environs. Connectedness with nature lays dormant within us, waiting to be
reawakened. We’re closer than you might think to rebuilding a country of
naturalists. But to get there, we’ll need to reverse current trends, getting
people (and especially children) back outside experiencing and learning about
local nature.
References
1. Nelson, M. K. (ed.). 2008. Original
Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future. Bear &
Company, Rochester; Abram, D. 1996. The
Spell of the Sensuous. Vintage Books, New York.
2. Sam, M. 2008. Ethics from the land: Traditional protocols and the maintenance
of peace. Pp. 39-41 in M. K. Nelson (ed.), Original
Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future. Bear &
Company, Rochester.
3. Cain, V. 2012. Professor Carter’s Collection. Common-Place, 12(2): 1-20. (http://www.common-place.org/vol-12/no-02/cain/)
4. Comstock, A. B. 1911. Handbook of
Nature Study. Comstock Publishing, New York.
5. Pyle, R. M. 2001. The Rise and Fall of Natural History. Orion Magazine, 20(4):16-23.
Image Credits
All images from National Geographic: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/
