During my university studies we had a lecture that related to the concept of our relationship and understanding about our role with nature, where we discussed theories as to how we got to this place in the common Western society, this absence of connection between man and nature.
One of the most intriguing aspects, to me, was based around the evolution of how we had gotten to this point, and that it all started taking shape about 10,000 years ago, when we started realizing we could grow our own food and stay in one place. As we started to go from nomadic tribes to stationary civilizations we started to develop a need to fight nature, fight pests, fight weather and manage depletion of environments and resources, waste and everything else that came with it. This changed our mindset, maybe without even knowing, to one that was constantly fighting nature.
In some ways we figured out ways to ‘manage’ this fight and we evolved, adapted and created tools to suit our needs as we started to develop civilizations. With the rise of The Industrial Revolution we started to move from fighting nature, to starting to live, or thinking we could live, without nature.
Now it seems that many people have lost their relationship or connection to nature. Everything many of us use, home items, day-to-day items, personal care products and sometimes even our food, is often man created in the absence of nature (not natural) and if by chance there are ingredients sourced from nature, we have lost that connection to it, or why it even matters.
Overall, it seems many people in society do commonly, and I think mostly unconsciously, figure we really can do without nature these days. They have faith in government and industry to be able to “figure it out” and save us from our failures in the battle against nature.
Unfortunately, I have really little to no faith in the decision-making paradigm of most government agencies and authorities. Now we find ourselves in a place where big industry, big oil and big biotech-chemical manipulate and control environmental policy. They push forward despite environmental and scientific concerns echoed worldwide by a growing percent of our population and scientific communities.
We need to make the connection. We need to find our role as a part of nature and get into a balanced (pono) place in the ecosystem. We need to do it quickly because it is the concern of many around the world that, if we don’t start functioning as a part of nature again, it, and us, are headed for collapse.
• Fern A Rosenstiel, ‘Ohana ‘O Kauai director, is a marine biologist and environmental scientist.
