I like the thinking behind this post and I think it gives a good reason for reading old books. Upvoted.
But I don’t know if you’re quite right about nature. This study shows that being in nature provides various hard cognitive benefits. It makes evolutionary sense that we feel more at home in nature and more connected to ourselves there. Why should we be looking for more explanations of why people like nature than that?
I also don’t think our views of nature are all that uncontaminated. Yes, there’s the animal core of us that thinks “Oh, nature, I understand this.” But that’s overlaid by a lot of very culturally-determined feelings. In Western culture, the a certain idea of loving wild nature for its own sake really started with the Romantics, and then went through people like Muir to come down to us as various ideas like romanticism, environmentalism, hippie-ism, wilderness sports, and the like. Those counterbalance a whole bunch of other ideas including a medieval Christian/Protestant distrust of wilderness, a Randist “bulldoze it to construct something profitable” ethic, and a whole bunch of other things. I doubt a hippie and an Objectivist would see a waterfall the same way any more than they’d see a strip mall the same way.
I do think everyone including the Objectivist would have a certain biological core set of preprogrammed responses to nature, but I don’t know if that’s what you’re saying.
It’s worthwhile quoting the summary given for the study you linked (this quote is not part of the study itself):
The basic idea is that nature, unlike a city, is filled with inherently interesting stimuli (like a sunset, or an unusual bird) that trigger our involuntary attention, but in a modest fashion. Because you can’t help but stop and notice the reddish orange twilight sky—paying attention to the sunset doesn’t take any extra work or cognitive control—our attentional circuits are able to refresh themselves. A walk in the woods is like a vacation for the prefrontal cortex.
Strolling in a city, however, forces the brain to constantly remain vigilant, as we avoid obstacles (moving cars), ignore irrelevant stimuli (that puppy in the window) and try not to get lost. The end result is that city walks are less restorative (at least for the prefrontal cortex) than strolls amid the serenity of nature.
In other words, it’s not being in nature that’s good for us. It’s just not being in a city that’s good for us :-)
So once we learn to build super-duper-optimized resorts for relaxation, we can put them in every other city block, and your reason for preserving real nature will become irrelevant.
there’s the animal core of us that thinks “Oh, nature, I understand this.”
Apart from all the cultural views you quote, my animal core panics in nature. It thinks: There’s trees and bears and rocks and, and different looking trees! Where’s my car? My cellphone? My backpack of food? My insulin pump supplies? HEEEELP!
Don’t get me wrong, I love a walk in a quiet wood. But to feel relaxed I need a lot of safety and infrastructure. I’d guess quite a few modern city dwellers are more like me than they are like “oh, nature, I know this”.
Because you can’t help but stop and notice the reddish orange twilight sky—paying attention to the sunset doesn’t take any extra work or cognitive control—our attentional circuits are able to refresh themselves. A walk in the woods is like a vacation for the prefrontal cortex.
Strolling in a city, however, forces the brain to constantly remain vigilant, as we avoid obstacles (moving cars), ignore irrelevant stimuli (that puppy in the window) and try not to get lost. The end result is that city walks are less restorative (at least for the prefrontal cortex) than strolls amid the serenity of nature.
The person who wrote this wouldn’t last long in the wild.
If people just plain like nature, that alone is a good reason for there to be nature. That’s true for just about anything (that doesn’t harm others). The question is whether nature is deserving of some special status or protection (maybe nothing is deserving on such protection and there should be only as much of it as arises under free markets, but that’s another argument). I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that nature is a world completely apart and that we bring none of our baggage with us when we enter it. But I do think that I can be more relaxed and confident that my experience is genuine and that I’m not being played in the woods than I can in Disney World, that this is of special value, and that this is precisely the kind of thing that the market tends to under-provide since no profits can be made from it.
If people just plain like nature, that alone is a good reason for there to be nature. That’s true for just about anything (that doesn’t harm others).
And everything that does too! (For a start because having activities with no negative externalities is virtually impossible. Both keeping and destroying nature included.)
I like the thinking behind this post and I think it gives a good reason for reading old books. Upvoted.
But I don’t know if you’re quite right about nature. This study shows that being in nature provides various hard cognitive benefits. It makes evolutionary sense that we feel more at home in nature and more connected to ourselves there. Why should we be looking for more explanations of why people like nature than that?
I also don’t think our views of nature are all that uncontaminated. Yes, there’s the animal core of us that thinks “Oh, nature, I understand this.” But that’s overlaid by a lot of very culturally-determined feelings. In Western culture, the a certain idea of loving wild nature for its own sake really started with the Romantics, and then went through people like Muir to come down to us as various ideas like romanticism, environmentalism, hippie-ism, wilderness sports, and the like. Those counterbalance a whole bunch of other ideas including a medieval Christian/Protestant distrust of wilderness, a Randist “bulldoze it to construct something profitable” ethic, and a whole bunch of other things. I doubt a hippie and an Objectivist would see a waterfall the same way any more than they’d see a strip mall the same way.
I do think everyone including the Objectivist would have a certain biological core set of preprogrammed responses to nature, but I don’t know if that’s what you’re saying.
It’s worthwhile quoting the summary given for the study you linked (this quote is not part of the study itself):
In other words, it’s not being in nature that’s good for us. It’s just not being in a city that’s good for us :-)
So once we learn to build super-duper-optimized resorts for relaxation, we can put them in every other city block, and your reason for preserving real nature will become irrelevant.
Apart from all the cultural views you quote, my animal core panics in nature. It thinks: There’s trees and bears and rocks and, and different looking trees! Where’s my car? My cellphone? My backpack of food? My insulin pump supplies? HEEEELP!
Don’t get me wrong, I love a walk in a quiet wood. But to feel relaxed I need a lot of safety and infrastructure. I’d guess quite a few modern city dwellers are more like me than they are like “oh, nature, I know this”.
The person who wrote this wouldn’t last long in the wild.
If people just plain like nature, that alone is a good reason for there to be nature. That’s true for just about anything (that doesn’t harm others). The question is whether nature is deserving of some special status or protection (maybe nothing is deserving on such protection and there should be only as much of it as arises under free markets, but that’s another argument). I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that nature is a world completely apart and that we bring none of our baggage with us when we enter it. But I do think that I can be more relaxed and confident that my experience is genuine and that I’m not being played in the woods than I can in Disney World, that this is of special value, and that this is precisely the kind of thing that the market tends to under-provide since no profits can be made from it.
And everything that does too! (For a start because having activities with no negative externalities is virtually impossible. Both keeping and destroying nature included.)