 |
An Inconvenient Truth,
Al Gore, 2006, p 160
|
|
When I'm back in nature after months of walking around on concrete and living in boxes, I feel a palpable internal shift. It doesn't happend right away; I have to settle into it. Sometimes it takes a while to shake off the urban frenzy. But inevitably, that serenity--that stillness-- takes hold, and when it comes at last, it's like taking a deep breath and saying, "Oh yeah. I forgot about this." |
Losing something is one thing; forgetting what you've lost is something else again. Maybe I shouldn't generalize from my personal experience, but I do beleive that our civilization has come perilously close to forgetting what we've lost. ... I defy anyone to take in this country's unspoiled treasures and not feel calmed, humbled, and rejuvenated by them.
I believe that when God created us (and I do believe evolution was part of the process God used), He shaped us, breathed life and soul into us, and then set us free within nature, not separate from it, giving us intimate connections to all aspects of it. The relationship we have to the natral world is not a relationship between "us" and "it." It is us,a and we are in it. |
Our capacity for consciousnes and abstract though in no way separates us from nature. Our capacity for analysis soemtimes leads us to an arrogant illusion: that we're so special and unique that nature isn't connected to us. But the fact is, we're inextricably tied. |
|
|
|
I have a healthy respect for the mesmerizing power of an overscheduled, overpopulated, hyperstimulated existence. It's designed to monopolize our attention, to sell us things, to speed us from one place to the next, to focus us on matters that appear to be vital, even when they're not. It's such an encompassing artificial environment that it can seem to be all there is. |
Nature, by contrast, is slow-moving, undemanding, maybe underwhelming for many people. But if you never put yourself in the midst of nature--to understand that its essence is our essence--then you're inclined to treat it as trivial. You become willing to abuse and destroy it through carelessness, not recognizing that to do so is wrong. Nature becomes the wallpaper of experience, with no deeper meaning in and of itself. |
We've come to accept the dominant attitude that if nature can yield something of value to the lucrative engines of commerce, the we should, by all means, grab it and rip it out, never thinking twice about the wounds left behind. |
According to this way of thinking, if exploitation results in injury to the environment, so be it; nature will always heal itself, and no one should care.
But what we do to nature we do to ourselves. The magnitude of environmental destruction is now on a scale few ever foresaw; the wounds no longer simply heal by themselves. We have to act affirmatively to stop the harm. |
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
