Nature as healer

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, nature, the natural world, lessons for living

The trend to divorce humanity from nature began long ago, with the Greek philosophers of the 400's BC or earlier. I remember reading that they preferred argument to experiment, sophistry to evidence, such that they could argue for hours about how many teeth a horse has, and nobody would suggest going to the nearest horse and looking in its mouth. That's probably a bit exaggerated. Curiously, the rise of experimental science (first called "natural philosophy") during the Enlightenment seems to have cemented the divorce, at least for a time.

In the recent generation or two increasing numbers of researchers and students have been willing to accept that we are part of nature. The "natural-artificial" divide is exaggerated at best, and flat wrong in most areas. It is true that human culture and technology have largely insulated us from many natural phenomena, but we see less efficacious technologies throughout the animal kingdom, in everything from bird nests to the tunnels of mice and hares, to bee hives and wasp nests, and to the tools apes and some birds use to winkle out termites and other insects to eat.

A side note: the just-delivered issue of Scientific American has, on its back page, a brief survey of the most numerous species of birds. The House Sparrow is the most numerous known wild bird, having a population estimated to be between 1 billion and 3 billion. A quick search for the numbers of mice yields an estimate of around 20 billion. There are also that many chickens and a billion swine (bonus results of the search), but those are domesticated, part of human culture; there would be far fewer of them if we weren't raising them. But this does indicate that, for our size, humans are much more numerous than we would be without our admittedly huge level of technology, even in the Third World.

It is good that at least some of us are getting more comfortable with being part of nature. The divorce from nature, almost exclusively in Western culture, has led to this quote, about the strain between proponents of the Enlightenment view and those who held back:

Those who balked at this epic drive to disenchant, who failed to champion the notion that there are eternal truths discernable, as Voltaire put it, by "anyone of good sense," were considered ignorant, underserving of respect of consideration. So should you ever wonder where hostility toward intellectuals comes from, or why educated white men have so often irritated the crap out of people from other backgrounds, the Enlightenment is a good place to start looking.

That is from page 55 of The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches Us About Living Well in the World, by Gary Ferguson. He has worked as a naturalist for the National Park Service, and writes about his experiences in this book, along with his interpretations of the lessons one can learn by spending more time in natural settings.

It is worthwhile for us to dwell on eight terms that I glean from his eight chapters:

Mystery, Connections, Diversity, Yin-Yang Balance, Zoomorphism, Efficiency, Resilience, and Memory (i.e. Mentoring)

I will dwell a moment on just three of these.

• Diversity is not just about racial balance in schools, cities, and workplaces. It is about variety versus sameness. A litter of kittens will have one or two that are bolder, another that is more skittish or shy; some will be affectionate pets and others more aloof. The intelligence of the womb ensures that at least a few of these cats will be well adapted to a changing world. A field of wildflowers of many colors is unlikely to be wiped out entirely by some sudden event such as a new disease or a giant storm: Even though some of the species in that field may be entirely destroyed, not all. We are happiest when we have learned to relate to people of different backgrounds. It is good to be "cosmopolitan". Excessive narrowness is unpleasant. I rejoice in having, among my closets friends and associates, people from a dozen nations and a half-dozen Western "subcultures."
• Yin-Yang Balance refers to the balance of masculine and feminine qualities, as traditionally understood. The Chinese Yin-Yang diagram is shown in several ways, with the dark section sometimes ascendant, the light section sometimes ascendant (more commonly), or with the sections side by side. I chose to put them all together, with the understanding that these are "clockwise" tadpoles, and a mirror image is equally possible. The "enlightened" suppression of any roles for women "outside house and home" is thankfully ending, but we still have a ways to go. Animals and plants cannot afford to suppress anything, for reasons expressed in the chapter on Efficiency. A man with no feminine attributes is as unpleasant as a woman with no masculine attributes. We each embrace both, even though each of us will emphasize them according to our nature and learning. More exposure to nature can help us learn to achieve a more harmonious balance.
• Zoomorphism is the opposite of Anthropomorphism. For a few hundred very unenlightened years, animals were treated as automatons, having only "instincts", and any evidences of pain or emotion were denigrated as "automatic responses." If we, at least those of us with a scientific bent, truly understand what Evolution means, we realize that our feelings and emotions and reactions descended from our animal ancestors along with the size of our bodies and the strength of our muscles. As a Cheyenne elder told the author, "We're the ones who took our qualities from the animals. It's never been the other way around." (p. 127) True science embraces this.

When you get down to it, we all feel better when we spend time in a natural setting. It is a rare person indeed who, taken into a field or forest, dashes back to a cubicle as though fleeing a monster. The author describes some chemicals in the air of a forest that may explain why taking a "forest bath" makes us feel so good. Chemicals or not, getting outside, even in a manicured yard, is better than spending all one's time locked away indoors. For myself, I know I must at least take a walk frequently; daily is best. I'd rather do that outside than do "mall walking" unless it is raining (and even then, if it isn't raining too hard…).

As much as the author has worked in the natural world, some glaring ignorances appear. On p. 76 he speaks of us sharing the planet with "more than a trillion species of plants, animals, insects, and microbes." The best current estimates of the number of species, including microbes, is between 100 million and 1 billion. Perhaps he was influenced by the understanding that each of us is host to tens of trillions of bacteria, primarily in our intestines. I am also not sure why he writes of 23 "universal proteins" in all life. There are 20 amino acids, which are used to make up all the millions of proteins found in living cells. The human genome is composed of 23 chromosomes, each of which consists of around a hundred million ACGT "letters". Again, perhaps two facts got mixed-and-matched in his mind.

The writing is lyrical and enjoyable. It becomes clear that the author is still processing the death of his first wife fifteen years ago. Having had significant losses in my own life, I understand that some things you don't get over, you just learn to live with the gap. I am thankful he has married again, happily.