Being Nature
November 18th 2007 03:55
When I am out in the nature---you know, trees, and birds, and bees, and weeds, and running water, and poison oak, and other things non-civilized, I SOOOOO don't know the classifications and labels of all that bound. I wonder, when out there in the nature with those who know the classifications, order, label, and other things cognitive, if they are at one with it all. I suppose it reduces to what it means, individually, to be 'at one with it all'.
If one identifies oneself as nature, as part of nature, and as an expression of nature, I wonder if one may need to shift or re-vision what it means to 'go all cognitive' on the very nature that is revered. Classifying, ordering, labeling, and defining, all this new-brain activity seeming to emerge from a fear of who and what we are at a very basic level. I leave the city, for Christ's sake, to get out of my head and into something else.
At least that is what my instincts and intuition tell me...
Nature Deficit Disorder frightens me. Today we have a generation of youth growing up techno, eye contact meaning face to screen rather than face to face, with breath. What is lost, I wonder, when intellect, technology, and other things cerebral, distance us from the nature that we are. Distance us from the 10,000 (at least) generations that lived as nature before us.
Hmmm...
Today, those who know what species and genus and type and family this squirrel or that tree is are revered. Scientists and smart people. Knowledge is cool. I wonder, though, if these intellectually inclined folk also distance themselves from the nature that both contains and embodies we humans.
Again, hmm...
When I am in the forest, the last thing I care about is what kind of tree it is that provides me shade or something to lean against. When I am in the ocean, I am purely unconcenred with the name of the jellyfish that stings me. Or, for that matter, the time-table of when the neap tide will occur. As I gaze at the clouds streaming by, I am not concerned with whether they are cumulus or stratus or who knows else what else. And when I meditate, I don't care about the thoughts and ideas that 'pollute' my desire and drive for simplicity.
I know I must accept that I value human fellowship, and that my very humanity (blessed or cursed with this intellect) may at times distance me from the very nature from which I ultimately derive comfort. Must I go mindless, because my neo-cortex has not calculated all that there is to be calculated?
I just do not know...
If one identifies oneself as nature, as part of nature, and as an expression of nature, I wonder if one may need to shift or re-vision what it means to 'go all cognitive' on the very nature that is revered. Classifying, ordering, labeling, and defining, all this new-brain activity seeming to emerge from a fear of who and what we are at a very basic level. I leave the city, for Christ's sake, to get out of my head and into something else.
At least that is what my instincts and intuition tell me...
Nature Deficit Disorder frightens me. Today we have a generation of youth growing up techno, eye contact meaning face to screen rather than face to face, with breath. What is lost, I wonder, when intellect, technology, and other things cerebral, distance us from the nature that we are. Distance us from the 10,000 (at least) generations that lived as nature before us.
Hmmm...
Today, those who know what species and genus and type and family this squirrel or that tree is are revered. Scientists and smart people. Knowledge is cool. I wonder, though, if these intellectually inclined folk also distance themselves from the nature that both contains and embodies we humans.
Again, hmm...
When I am in the forest, the last thing I care about is what kind of tree it is that provides me shade or something to lean against. When I am in the ocean, I am purely unconcenred with the name of the jellyfish that stings me. Or, for that matter, the time-table of when the neap tide will occur. As I gaze at the clouds streaming by, I am not concerned with whether they are cumulus or stratus or who knows else what else. And when I meditate, I don't care about the thoughts and ideas that 'pollute' my desire and drive for simplicity.
I know I must accept that I value human fellowship, and that my very humanity (blessed or cursed with this intellect) may at times distance me from the very nature from which I ultimately derive comfort. Must I go mindless, because my neo-cortex has not calculated all that there is to be calculated?
I just do not know...
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