Tag Archives: nature

The Best Exercise Includes a Dose of Nature

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The British Ecological Society’s blog posted about a recent research article titled “What Is The Best Dose of Nature and Green Exercise For Improving Mental Health?”

The article is a meta-analysis (that is, it synthesizes research from many previous research studies about the topic), and sums up its results with the following statement:

“This study confirms that the environment provides an important health service.”

And I have only two questions…

1. REALLY?!!! and,

2. AND?!!!

First, this information is anything but new.  Anyone who has every gone hiking, who has ever taken a vacation in the mountains, or in the woods, or who has ever played in a creek behind their house, knows firsthand the difference between “exercising” (moving) outdoors in a natural environment versus doing the same or similar activity indoors or in a “built” (human-made) environment.

I’m talking here, not only your own first-hand experience, but also about the incredible amount of scientific research that shows the benefits of moving in a natural environment.  The paper quoted above used a lot of that research to make its own (redundant) point!

I’ve pointed out at least one piece of this literature in previous posts (here, here, and here).  So…it’s not even new to this blog!!!

However, even with that knowledge, and even with the rapidly mounting evidence, and my (and others’) incessant blog postings on the subject, it continues to be an “issue.”  That is, people continue to choose Wii, and to choose justifying their Wii time, to actually going out into the woods and taking a hike.

I want to say one thing before I finish this post up with a final point, and that is this -People seem to have a tendency to feel better once they talk about something.  That is, they feel little compulsion to do anything about a problem once it’s been aired, once it’s out in the open.  In fact, on a few occasions I’ve seen this behavior up close and in person.  Let me give one example:

There was a family that I spent a lot of time with.  Everyone was overweight in that family, and they were aware of it.  In fact, they would almost always say things like “We’re all fat in this family.”  Or “We need to lose weight.”  Or “We need to throw out all of that junk food in the pantry, and just have a bowl of fruit out for snacks.”

One time, I actually offered to help with the clearing of the pantry.  I said “Ok, that’s a good idea!  Let’s do that now!”  Well, the younger children of the household weren’t home, and the adults decided that it would be too traumatic to just throw everything out all of a sudden.  So we didn’t clear out the pantry.

There is a reason we are not connecting to nature.  That we are not making this connection.  That we don’t go out into the woods and take a hike.  There is a reason you don’t do it.  What is that reason?

My final point is this – The above question seems a good question for science to ask.  Why isn’t science asking that question?

Here’s my answer(s) to that question:

1. It’s not the job of science to do anything about it.  It’s the job of science to ask questions and get answers.  But science is not a field of activisim. It is a field of questioning and answering.  That’s all.  Expecting action based on gathered knowledge is a bad habit (one which I’m trying to get rid of).

2. Science doesn’t want to ask a question that invalidates itself.  I think part of the answer, of why we are not connecting to nature, in spite of overwhelming evidence that we should, has to do with the fact that our culture is largely based in a scientific approach to things.  That is, nature and science (at least, the way we’re accustomed to doing science) are largely contradictory.  So, science might find its own relativism, and find its own value being questioned, were it to ask “Why aren’t we connecting to nature.”

A couple of possible answers…what do you think?!

Anti-Establishment Thought – A Response

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Guy McPherson’s most recent blog post over at Nature Bats Last garnered a lengthy response from me that I’d like to share and expand upon here.

Guy reviews Tom Blees’ book “Prescription for the Planet.“  While I haven’t read the book (and that’s partly the point), Guy cites some issues he has with it.  Namely, that Blees’ recommendations don’t call for any radical (root) change in the way things are done, but merely use alternative forms of the same (destructive) system.

Guy says:

Ultimately, Blees’ plan boils down to two “solutions,” both of them extremely suspect. First, he claims we can we can ramp up production of renewable energy systems and also fourth-generation nuclear reactors to keep the power on. Indeed, Blees claims our lives depend on electricity. As such, he dismisses the first two million years of the human experience. If our lives depend on electricity, it’s because we’ve abandoned a viable, durable set of living arrangements in exchange for endless opportunities to destroy the living planet. Second, Blees promotes the notion that boron-powered automobiles will keep us on the highways. And he thinks that’d be a good thing. After all, boron seems to be essentially limitless on this world. Just as crude oil seemed, not so long ago.

Indeed, Guy.

The rest of this post is my response, with some editing.

we need power

Welcome to the Machine

It’s not that I disagree with Guy’s sentiments, but it’s worth noting that he and I wrote our opinions (and you are currently reading them) on a piece of equipment that is an integral part of the “omnicidal technology” that we decry.

The roots of the culture of omnicide are not located in any single place.  They’re distributed through our culture.  This is true of any culture.  Culture, as accepted, shared values, is always self-policing.  Individuals within the culture accept it, and see anything that is different from the culture as “foreign,” and therefore also “dangerous,” or “threatening.”  They then seek to ostracize or destroy that foreign element – whether or not that makes sense.

The greatest example I can think of is the American Civil War.  Brother fighting brother, father against son.  It didn’t matter whether or not they were family, or that they loved one another (previously, at least).  What mattered was that they had become “the enemy” to one another, through a process of enculturation.  The Northerner accepted the cultural values of the North.  The Southerner, those of the South.

Beneath that lay the dominant drive of life – at any and all costs to expand, to become more (people call it a lust or desire for “power,” though that description seems flaccid to me).

The two forces combine.  The Southern father is now a foreigner.  A threat to the Northern son’s expansion – and not just his expansion, but his entire culture’s expansion – everything he stands for or represents…a force greater than he himself.  A fight to the death is the only option, it seems.

brother, can you spare a bullet?

Wherefore Art Thou, Culture?

The thing is, the roots, the seeds of the “omnicidal technology,” must already have existed in our culture from the beginning, in order to be able to sprout into their current form.  I don’t think they were “planted” along the way.  I think they were always present, like anything, just needing ideal conditions for their growth.

What happened?  How did “hard work” turn into “entitlement?”  How did the earth-consciousness of the small farmer turn into the money-consciousness of modern agribusiness?

Some values were (are) allowed to be stressed (or impressed), while others were (are) allowed to be suppressed.  How did those allowances occur, or how were those allowances coerced?

This, I think, is the appropriate starting-point.  Starting from a discussion of right/wrong tacitly concedes the ground that supports the undesirable state.  Once conceded, it is the “dominant system.”

Now (still) the dominant system, any energy put into it, is used by it (not singularly, but in a distributed fashion) to further its cause.

The “antagonist” must fight against an “agon.”  There must be a hero for the villain to fight.

I think these are clues to the way out.  Any argument that relies on something other – especially any argument that relies on reference to the current (read, dominant) paradigm – will only be used by the current paradigm.

What do you think?

Fat Kids, Their Parents, Nature Deficit, and the Future

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So many articles on overweight/out-of-shape children popped up on my Google alerts yesterday that I have to post about it.  Not that I don’t want to, you know.

The kids in Sacramento are terribly unfit, and getting less fit by the year.  The Sacramento Bee article linked to above does a good job of showing how most “physical fitness” data ignores socioeconomic data.  It’s essential that we start putting these things together, to be able to see the bigger picture.

You see, poor kids are typically less fit than kids from more wealthy families.

One of the schools mentioned also had to reduce the presence of their “physical fitness specialist” from five days per week, to two days per week.  I’m sure that kind of thing is happening all over the country.  “PE” isn’t valued in our culture.

Great Britain is experiencing the same symptoms.  The article says, though, tat the biggest cause is a lack of regular physical activity by the children.  Sounds good.  Again, though, it’s only part of the argument.

This recent article in Scientific American points out how being in nature or in a natural setting not only reduces stress markers, but also creates value change in the people involved.

Out in the Wild, people naturally become more “other-focused,” and less “self-focused.”  Further, our motivational drive switches from an extrinsic drive, to a more intrinsic drive.

In all of these articles, though, where are the parents?

I mean, why aren’t fingers being pointed?  And pointed where they should be?

Socioeconomic status notwithstanding, parents play a huge role in getting their kids active, and into nature.

I suppose what I’m saying is this – we always look for the “cause” in the immediate present.  But those things are just symptoms.

What happened in the parents’ generation that has led them to care less about physical activity and nature?  Or at least, to be less involved in those things, or have their kids less involved?

What happened back then?  Treat the cause, not the symptom…