Nature-Deficit Disorder
January 16, 2022 3:34 AM Subscribe
I like Alan Lightman's writing but this is classic pathetic fallacy stuff.
'It was a look that said, as clear as spoken words, “We are brothers in this place.”'
No, mate, it didn't. You were merely in the way. Like a tree or a rock.
posted by fallingbadgers at 5:49 AM on January 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
'It was a look that said, as clear as spoken words, “We are brothers in this place.”'
No, mate, it didn't. You were merely in the way. Like a tree or a rock.
posted by fallingbadgers at 5:49 AM on January 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
Anyway, this reads just a tiny bit curmudgeonly to me? Not that it doesn't resonate...I think what it is for me is that it seems kind of... banal? Like, the vast majority of people I know like nature, and would like to be in nature more often. You don't need to look at a bunch of studies to justify that, you can just go outside and notice how you feel!
The author of this article seems actually relatively uninterested in the reasons that getting access to nature is hard for people: lack of transit, lack of access to parks, long working hours, etc. The framing in this article seems shockingly individualistic, as though the problem is that people don't know that they'd like to be in nature, and if only they read all these studies and understood, then they'd go and be in nature — it couldn't be that people know that they want to be in nature, but just don't have good access to it.
All of the problems described in this article are real and important, which is why it's frustrating that it essentially does not discuss solutions at all, other than "hey you should go outside more often"
posted by wesleyac at 5:55 AM on January 16, 2022 [22 favorites]
Change the specific technologies a bit and it feels like it could have been written in the 1960s or -70s.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:13 AM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:13 AM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
I wanted to like this article - I changed careers about a decade ago and went from being inside all the time to working outside and find that being outside definitely makes me happier. But the article reads as awfully pearl clutchy and privileged.
I understand that moment of *choir of angels singing* when you interact in an incredible way with nature. I’ve felt that way before seeing something up close that just kind of blew my mind.
I also spend time getting my kid outside and being excited with him about nature. I want to share this with friends and other kids.
But I guess I don’t appreciate being lectured at when the current day to day is so frickin’ crazy with omicron and knowing that for so many people getting outside and interacting with nature is hard/complicated/inaccessible.
I’m sitting here on a screen with my kid who is also on a screen and that’s the current reality. It is cold as heck outside and we are going to try to get outside later.
posted by sciencegeek at 6:20 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
I understand that moment of *choir of angels singing* when you interact in an incredible way with nature. I’ve felt that way before seeing something up close that just kind of blew my mind.
I also spend time getting my kid outside and being excited with him about nature. I want to share this with friends and other kids.
But I guess I don’t appreciate being lectured at when the current day to day is so frickin’ crazy with omicron and knowing that for so many people getting outside and interacting with nature is hard/complicated/inaccessible.
I’m sitting here on a screen with my kid who is also on a screen and that’s the current reality. It is cold as heck outside and we are going to try to get outside later.
posted by sciencegeek at 6:20 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
The article provoked me to think back to the first time I saw the Milky Way.
I think it's easy to overestimate how much actual nature, nature that is really wild enough to render a smartphone useless, most people have access to, especially if you live in a city of any size in any wealthy or middle-income society.
Here is my own lengthy nature biography. (It would be interesting to read more of these, if people want to share.)
Where I grew up, the land had been settled by Native Americans for millennia. European settlers arrived in various guises, expelled or killed the Native Americans, and used that same land for ranching, changing what grew there except atop the highest and least accessible areas. With aqueducts and water management, agriculture exploded, eliminating what remaining natural flat land had existed in a 100-mile radius. Chemical fertilizers were used and altered the biome for far more than just the crops on a person's particular field. Through the 20th century that farmland and ranchland has been replaced and now lies under the pavement of a huge megalopolis.
The communities around my childhood home incorporate lakes and trees where there were never lakes or trees before. Many of the trees are native to Australia or South Africa. Every natural space you might go to, like a park or preserve, has hours, rules, and borders; you certainly can't be there after dark or camp outside of campsites. Wilder spaces are far, far away. The desert is unreachable if you cannot drive. The mountains too. The closest national parks - themselves not really natural either, but human-groomed spaces before and after colonization, like all of the Americas for tens of thousands of years - are an archipelago of islands only accessible by charter boat or a larger site that's a lot more famous, but over a five-hour drive away. We never went to either as a child. Vacations were spent visiting family in other cities, which we flew to once every few years. Nature was somewhere else. The ocean was infinite, but ultimately unknowable unless you surfed or dove. I guess we had tidepools?
Local nature knowledge certainly wasn't at school, either. We read stories about magical talking animals in hundred-acre woods, but no one bothered to mention how large that was compared to something we knew, like the footprint of a supermarket or the driving distance to the cinema. In my Spanish classes, I never learned to describe the trees or plants or animals in my neighborhood despite dozens of towns and cities around us being named for them. Biology and earth sciences weren't local either, never answering questions like "OK, this is a Mediterranean climate, but we don't live near the Mediterranean. So what lives here?" In my high school English literature classes, I remember conversations when reading something a few hundred years old about how everyone just knew what a robin looked like, and that its eggs were "robin's-egg blue". I knew robins were red from Jack Kent's children's book Round Robin, but I had certainly never seen one.
I finished high school. That summer, I tent-camped, once, with a friend. He had progressed through over a decade of scouting and his family had every possible outdoor implement. But we were high up and it was very hot. Neither of us had the foresight to bring enough water and the intermittent stream on our map was dry. We were dehydrated and miserable and while we made it home safely, I never went tent-camping again. I'm nearly 40 now.
I moved away for university. The campus was set in a wooded area, which initially seemed extremely "natural" to a city person like me. And sure, I went for some walks, but I was unable to name more than the simplest of trees or plants: "redwood", "rose", "spider". Vacations were spent at home or visiting cities in other places.
My career took me abroad. First I lived in a city of millions of people in southeast Asia, in a country where nature was something you ran away from - the volcano that destroyed your grandmother's village, the tsunami that washed away the beach you went to as a child, the rainy season that filled the streets with mud and muck. Air conditioning wasn't just preferable, it was safer from disease. I had only a few weeks off and never made it out into nature; time off was for weddings, parties, socialising with friends, visiting other places in the region. The pollution in even the most pristine places was routinely held up as a reason to not visit. I didn't.
Then I moved to eastern Europe for some time, living in smaller cities in the hundreds-of-thousands-of-people range. Every forest on the outskirts of the towns and cities where I lived had been clearcut in the last few hundred years, leaving monocrops of birch or pine. Every lakeshore and seaside was packed with holiday homes and villages. The mountains were accessible if you had a car; I didn't. People were definitely more connected to the seasons, especially seasonal food, than I'd been at home, though this was hard to learn as an adult - how, I wondered, did all my primary-school students know it was strawberry season? (It turned out it was because their grandparents maintained allotments on the edge of town.) Long walks and cycle trips were possible, and I'd happily stroll for 20 or 30 km in a day along quiet rural roads or forest tracks thanks to cheap, excellent waterproof maps and consistent trail marking. It was also in rural Europe, way down some C-roads in the back end of North Yorkshire, at age 26, that I finally saw the Milky Way. These were my last years before owning a smartphone and I think now, had I stayed a little longer, I would have really turned into a much happier and more confident person in nature.
But then I moved back to Asia. Now, my closest naturally occurring tree is a good few miles away, somewhere in a country park. The hillsides behind my totally-urban neighbourhood (which was built on land reclaimed from the sea) featured informal settlements in the 30 or 40 years after the war, when people from other parts of the continent began to arrive in larger numbers. They used the land for firewood and vegetable growing in the days before they could find more permanent homes. Their communities were swept off the hills every typhoon season, or lost in fires. Today, 70% of my city's land is essentially uninhabited mountainside, park or preserve, nearly all of it with strict no-camping rules.
Most days, I hear no non-human-generated noises, not even the wind, other than a bird, perhaps. Near my office it is absolutely bright enough to read a paper book at night just walking down the street, not only because of street lights but because of the sky never actually being darker than dark grey. None of the children I know (and really, none of us at all) have left the city in two years, and so have not even had a chance to see stars.
But I also know that I will get back out there. On my last long-haul flight, across an ocean in January 2020, I went to the back of the plane at night and craned my neck out the tiny porthole in the emergency exit in the galley. I thought, maybe, just maybe, I saw the Milky Way again. I tried to look it up later - what could I have seen looking north at elevation X at latitude Y and longitude Z that night? Was it just a cloud? Was it a reflection? I need another look.
posted by mdonley at 6:39 AM on January 16, 2022 [20 favorites]
I think it's easy to overestimate how much actual nature, nature that is really wild enough to render a smartphone useless, most people have access to, especially if you live in a city of any size in any wealthy or middle-income society.
Here is my own lengthy nature biography. (It would be interesting to read more of these, if people want to share.)
Where I grew up, the land had been settled by Native Americans for millennia. European settlers arrived in various guises, expelled or killed the Native Americans, and used that same land for ranching, changing what grew there except atop the highest and least accessible areas. With aqueducts and water management, agriculture exploded, eliminating what remaining natural flat land had existed in a 100-mile radius. Chemical fertilizers were used and altered the biome for far more than just the crops on a person's particular field. Through the 20th century that farmland and ranchland has been replaced and now lies under the pavement of a huge megalopolis.
The communities around my childhood home incorporate lakes and trees where there were never lakes or trees before. Many of the trees are native to Australia or South Africa. Every natural space you might go to, like a park or preserve, has hours, rules, and borders; you certainly can't be there after dark or camp outside of campsites. Wilder spaces are far, far away. The desert is unreachable if you cannot drive. The mountains too. The closest national parks - themselves not really natural either, but human-groomed spaces before and after colonization, like all of the Americas for tens of thousands of years - are an archipelago of islands only accessible by charter boat or a larger site that's a lot more famous, but over a five-hour drive away. We never went to either as a child. Vacations were spent visiting family in other cities, which we flew to once every few years. Nature was somewhere else. The ocean was infinite, but ultimately unknowable unless you surfed or dove. I guess we had tidepools?
Local nature knowledge certainly wasn't at school, either. We read stories about magical talking animals in hundred-acre woods, but no one bothered to mention how large that was compared to something we knew, like the footprint of a supermarket or the driving distance to the cinema. In my Spanish classes, I never learned to describe the trees or plants or animals in my neighborhood despite dozens of towns and cities around us being named for them. Biology and earth sciences weren't local either, never answering questions like "OK, this is a Mediterranean climate, but we don't live near the Mediterranean. So what lives here?" In my high school English literature classes, I remember conversations when reading something a few hundred years old about how everyone just knew what a robin looked like, and that its eggs were "robin's-egg blue". I knew robins were red from Jack Kent's children's book Round Robin, but I had certainly never seen one.
I finished high school. That summer, I tent-camped, once, with a friend. He had progressed through over a decade of scouting and his family had every possible outdoor implement. But we were high up and it was very hot. Neither of us had the foresight to bring enough water and the intermittent stream on our map was dry. We were dehydrated and miserable and while we made it home safely, I never went tent-camping again. I'm nearly 40 now.
I moved away for university. The campus was set in a wooded area, which initially seemed extremely "natural" to a city person like me. And sure, I went for some walks, but I was unable to name more than the simplest of trees or plants: "redwood", "rose", "spider". Vacations were spent at home or visiting cities in other places.
My career took me abroad. First I lived in a city of millions of people in southeast Asia, in a country where nature was something you ran away from - the volcano that destroyed your grandmother's village, the tsunami that washed away the beach you went to as a child, the rainy season that filled the streets with mud and muck. Air conditioning wasn't just preferable, it was safer from disease. I had only a few weeks off and never made it out into nature; time off was for weddings, parties, socialising with friends, visiting other places in the region. The pollution in even the most pristine places was routinely held up as a reason to not visit. I didn't.
Then I moved to eastern Europe for some time, living in smaller cities in the hundreds-of-thousands-of-people range. Every forest on the outskirts of the towns and cities where I lived had been clearcut in the last few hundred years, leaving monocrops of birch or pine. Every lakeshore and seaside was packed with holiday homes and villages. The mountains were accessible if you had a car; I didn't. People were definitely more connected to the seasons, especially seasonal food, than I'd been at home, though this was hard to learn as an adult - how, I wondered, did all my primary-school students know it was strawberry season? (It turned out it was because their grandparents maintained allotments on the edge of town.) Long walks and cycle trips were possible, and I'd happily stroll for 20 or 30 km in a day along quiet rural roads or forest tracks thanks to cheap, excellent waterproof maps and consistent trail marking. It was also in rural Europe, way down some C-roads in the back end of North Yorkshire, at age 26, that I finally saw the Milky Way. These were my last years before owning a smartphone and I think now, had I stayed a little longer, I would have really turned into a much happier and more confident person in nature.
But then I moved back to Asia. Now, my closest naturally occurring tree is a good few miles away, somewhere in a country park. The hillsides behind my totally-urban neighbourhood (which was built on land reclaimed from the sea) featured informal settlements in the 30 or 40 years after the war, when people from other parts of the continent began to arrive in larger numbers. They used the land for firewood and vegetable growing in the days before they could find more permanent homes. Their communities were swept off the hills every typhoon season, or lost in fires. Today, 70% of my city's land is essentially uninhabited mountainside, park or preserve, nearly all of it with strict no-camping rules.
Most days, I hear no non-human-generated noises, not even the wind, other than a bird, perhaps. Near my office it is absolutely bright enough to read a paper book at night just walking down the street, not only because of street lights but because of the sky never actually being darker than dark grey. None of the children I know (and really, none of us at all) have left the city in two years, and so have not even had a chance to see stars.
But I also know that I will get back out there. On my last long-haul flight, across an ocean in January 2020, I went to the back of the plane at night and craned my neck out the tiny porthole in the emergency exit in the galley. I thought, maybe, just maybe, I saw the Milky Way again. I tried to look it up later - what could I have seen looking north at elevation X at latitude Y and longitude Z that night? Was it just a cloud? Was it a reflection? I need another look.
posted by mdonley at 6:39 AM on January 16, 2022 [20 favorites]
I remember the Milky Way. *Sigh*
posted by y2karl at 7:04 AM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 7:04 AM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
I definitely choose where I live based on easy access to nature - it's something I have found achievable, over the 15 years I've lived here, to be not too far from a big park, or the headland of the coast, or mangroves, or a weird pocket of rainforest that was clearly too difficult a gully to build in (and the council wisely decided to turn into a little nature reserve - you don't need to go more than a handful of steps down into it before it feels like you've left the city).
And, sure, I agree I do feel better with easy access to that nature. But the assumption that I don't have access to it, living in a city of millions of people, feels presumptive in a way I don't appreciate.
posted by Merus at 7:24 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
And, sure, I agree I do feel better with easy access to that nature. But the assumption that I don't have access to it, living in a city of millions of people, feels presumptive in a way I don't appreciate.
posted by Merus at 7:24 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
I mean, I can't see many stars here in NYC (and that's something I miss sometimes). But I wouldn't consider myself completely nature-deprived to the extent he's saying - I make frequent expeditions to this really cool city park that's a pleasant walk's distance from my new place, and I have daily flocks of birds that come visit the bird feeder I've set up outside my bedroom windows (literally as I was typing this one of the two blue jays just landed on one feeder and is gobbling down peanuts).
I get the sense that the author would say that this doesn't "count", for some reason, because "it's not a forest it's just a park" or "most of what you see at your feeder are mourning doves and house sparrows and they're too urbanized". And I do agree that it's important to encourage people to get outside and get into contact with the natural world, for all the reasons and benefits he mentions; but I also think it's important to acknowledge that there are elements of the natural world in urban places, and that it's also possible to "commune with nature" in more close-to-home ways, and that going to a forest is not the only way.
That kind of gatekeeping might turn away someone who would very much like to make this connection, but just plain doesn't have the time to go for a day trip to the state park outside the city or whatever right now; that just leads to a mindset that "oh, this is a big excursion kind of thing, I guess I can't do that and that's just for people with money and time." And it's not - it's for everyone who wants to pay attention to this kind of thing. You may not be able to see the Milky Way from Brooklyn, but you can see the moon. Sometimes you can see Orion too. And you maybe can't often get to a forest - but maybe there's a street tree on your block you could start paying attention to. Or a vacant lot near your bus stop that's got some weeds growing in it, and you may notice one of them has this really interesting-looking flower. That all counts.
One of my favorite moments from the past couple years was when I came home from a late shopping trip to find my super and some neighbors from my apartment all excitedly standing around the street tree outside our building, with one of them using their phone's flashlight to light something up. It turned out that they were watching a little saw-whet owl who'd just caught a mouse that was a little heavier than it thought, and was psyching itself up to fly up into the tree and start eating. I joined the crowd for a few minutes to watch and we all cheered it on until it managed to finally get up into the tree. By the time it made it up there, the kid from my building who was watching had named it "Smoreo".
...And that incident totally counts as an encounter with the natural world, I say.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:38 AM on January 16, 2022 [10 favorites]
I get the sense that the author would say that this doesn't "count", for some reason, because "it's not a forest it's just a park" or "most of what you see at your feeder are mourning doves and house sparrows and they're too urbanized". And I do agree that it's important to encourage people to get outside and get into contact with the natural world, for all the reasons and benefits he mentions; but I also think it's important to acknowledge that there are elements of the natural world in urban places, and that it's also possible to "commune with nature" in more close-to-home ways, and that going to a forest is not the only way.
That kind of gatekeeping might turn away someone who would very much like to make this connection, but just plain doesn't have the time to go for a day trip to the state park outside the city or whatever right now; that just leads to a mindset that "oh, this is a big excursion kind of thing, I guess I can't do that and that's just for people with money and time." And it's not - it's for everyone who wants to pay attention to this kind of thing. You may not be able to see the Milky Way from Brooklyn, but you can see the moon. Sometimes you can see Orion too. And you maybe can't often get to a forest - but maybe there's a street tree on your block you could start paying attention to. Or a vacant lot near your bus stop that's got some weeds growing in it, and you may notice one of them has this really interesting-looking flower. That all counts.
One of my favorite moments from the past couple years was when I came home from a late shopping trip to find my super and some neighbors from my apartment all excitedly standing around the street tree outside our building, with one of them using their phone's flashlight to light something up. It turned out that they were watching a little saw-whet owl who'd just caught a mouse that was a little heavier than it thought, and was psyching itself up to fly up into the tree and start eating. I joined the crowd for a few minutes to watch and we all cheered it on until it managed to finally get up into the tree. By the time it made it up there, the kid from my building who was watching had named it "Smoreo".
...And that incident totally counts as an encounter with the natural world, I say.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:38 AM on January 16, 2022 [10 favorites]
I also think it's important to acknowledge that there are elements of the natural world in urban places,
I'll be honest, I had no idea just how many different types of bird live or pass through NYC until the pandemic and I started paying more attention. My vision isn't good enough for me to become a devoted birder, but there is actually much more animal life in NYC beyond the rats and pigeons generally acknowledged.
posted by praemunire at 8:00 AM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'll be honest, I had no idea just how many different types of bird live or pass through NYC until the pandemic and I started paying more attention. My vision isn't good enough for me to become a devoted birder, but there is actually much more animal life in NYC beyond the rats and pigeons generally acknowledged.
posted by praemunire at 8:00 AM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm writing this from the Maldives airport as we depart this leg of our trip, and I basically agree with the premise-- after several days of swimming with the hawksbill turtles, blacktip sharks, sea anemones and clown fishes, and going to bed with the sun and getting up with the sun, it feels... Incomparable. But lack of access to the natural world as most people define it is definitely a structural issue, and most people don't really have the option of experiencing it the way we have, or the way the author wishes people could.
posted by erattacorrige at 8:02 AM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by erattacorrige at 8:02 AM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
Why N.Y.C. is humming with wildlife
"New York is now ‘the greenest big city on earth,’ one naturalist said."
The part of the essay that surprised me was that references to nature in popular culture have gone down. On the one hand, there is the metaverse, which no one I know is excited about, and on the other hand, news stories about National Parks being overcrowded are commonplace. the popularity of indoor plants is soaring. Green is the color of the year. It really seems that "Nature" is more popular now than ever in my lifetime. Maybe it will take a little more time before it trickles into popular culture?
I also live in Brooklyn and I'm particularly obsessed with city wildlife. Through the first part of the pandemic, on my daily morning walks to the Brooklyn Bridge and back, I watched a family of Canadian Geese grow up: Mother, Father, first 5 little ducklings then 3. That May I was overcome by the mallow roses that grow on the rocks in Brooklyn Bridge Park, right up to the river, looking as if they were wild. Last fall I ran into a guy fishing off the rocks there and asked him how his luck was, and he told me all about the oysters coming back and the river being cleaned up, although still not clean enough for him to eat the fish, he just threw them back. Over Thanksgiving weekend I went for a walk with a friend in Forest Park, in Queens, which is indeed a forest. Obviously none of this is in the state it was 5,000 years ago, but it is nature. "Nature bats last" as a friend said when I posted an Instagram picture of petunias growing in the cracks of the sidewalk near my old apartment.
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:06 AM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
"New York is now ‘the greenest big city on earth,’ one naturalist said."
The part of the essay that surprised me was that references to nature in popular culture have gone down. On the one hand, there is the metaverse, which no one I know is excited about, and on the other hand, news stories about National Parks being overcrowded are commonplace. the popularity of indoor plants is soaring. Green is the color of the year. It really seems that "Nature" is more popular now than ever in my lifetime. Maybe it will take a little more time before it trickles into popular culture?
I also live in Brooklyn and I'm particularly obsessed with city wildlife. Through the first part of the pandemic, on my daily morning walks to the Brooklyn Bridge and back, I watched a family of Canadian Geese grow up: Mother, Father, first 5 little ducklings then 3. That May I was overcome by the mallow roses that grow on the rocks in Brooklyn Bridge Park, right up to the river, looking as if they were wild. Last fall I ran into a guy fishing off the rocks there and asked him how his luck was, and he told me all about the oysters coming back and the river being cleaned up, although still not clean enough for him to eat the fish, he just threw them back. Over Thanksgiving weekend I went for a walk with a friend in Forest Park, in Queens, which is indeed a forest. Obviously none of this is in the state it was 5,000 years ago, but it is nature. "Nature bats last" as a friend said when I posted an Instagram picture of petunias growing in the cracks of the sidewalk near my old apartment.
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:06 AM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
Proposition 65 Warning: this article contains dangerous levels of privilege, a substance known to the State of California to be carcinogenic.
Snark aside, what he’s describing is tourism. Safe, comfortable tourism that starts from the conceptual trail head of the oceanside parking lot or one’s summer house in Maine. Tourism is great! You can absolutely experience oneness with everything but IMO that’s less a function of nature than it is of being mindful and present; I’ve experienced the feeling he describes in both nature and the city. And of course, as mentioned above, this is above all a systemic matter or access, not one of personal choice or ignorance.
And the ultimate irony of this is that the kind of communion with nature he describes has always been an byproduct of civilization. Without technological intervention, interactions with nature can be scary or deadly. This planet is trying to kill humans constantly, it’s fundamentally why we have the tools and infrastructure we do.
Anyway, in summary, ok boomer. I’m sorry that the world scares and frustrates you, but fear not, you will be returning to nature soon enough, leaving the rest of us to keep the lights on somehow.
posted by turbowombat at 8:28 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
Snark aside, what he’s describing is tourism. Safe, comfortable tourism that starts from the conceptual trail head of the oceanside parking lot or one’s summer house in Maine. Tourism is great! You can absolutely experience oneness with everything but IMO that’s less a function of nature than it is of being mindful and present; I’ve experienced the feeling he describes in both nature and the city. And of course, as mentioned above, this is above all a systemic matter or access, not one of personal choice or ignorance.
And the ultimate irony of this is that the kind of communion with nature he describes has always been an byproduct of civilization. Without technological intervention, interactions with nature can be scary or deadly. This planet is trying to kill humans constantly, it’s fundamentally why we have the tools and infrastructure we do.
Anyway, in summary, ok boomer. I’m sorry that the world scares and frustrates you, but fear not, you will be returning to nature soon enough, leaving the rest of us to keep the lights on somehow.
posted by turbowombat at 8:28 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
For more than 99 percent of our history as humans, we lived close to nature. We lived in the open.
Life was short and brutal, too. It's a bit of a trade.
Most of the time, talk about returning to nature means returning to a curated (unnatural) experience. The real wild is usually murderous, and indifferent at best.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:52 AM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
Life was short and brutal, too. It's a bit of a trade.
Most of the time, talk about returning to nature means returning to a curated (unnatural) experience. The real wild is usually murderous, and indifferent at best.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:52 AM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
Knowledge of the union of the human mind with the whole of nature is, according to Spinoza, the sole worthwhile aim of science. Spinoza specifically equates God and Nature. For him, the Shema reads, “Hear, Israel: Nature is our God, Nature is one.” Resistance to this outlook stems from the dualism that predominates in human thought and endeavor. Dualism divides the human mind from the rest of nature, making it out as a unique exception rather than as an expression of a general property. This leads inevitably to the alienation of mankind from the rest of nature and all the consequent destructiveness, both psychic and material.
posted by No Robots at 9:34 AM on January 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by No Robots at 9:34 AM on January 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
I originally read the title as "There is no way to be human", which sounded really interesting.
posted by emmet at 11:46 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by emmet at 11:46 AM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
So far the majority of the comments have been very negative and reinforce what was written. Urbanized people truly are disconnected from nature and/or simply do not (most of the time) see nature around them. Instead they tend to see 'Nature'™ and dismiss it for the 'nuisance' it is. Examples being leaves or tree fruits messing up the (sub)urban landscape, bird poop on the car, 'weeds' invading the pristine and chemically controlled and greened lawn. Equally, the social disconnect that arises from living in close proximity to others, along with the 'safety' of sitting behind a screen and keyboard, imbues in individuals a level of entitlement and true privilege to make snarky, whining, and negative comments that they would otherwise not utter in close social contact with others.
It is easily forgotten and many excuses/reasoning fail to address the fact you do choose to live where and how you do - 'it is where my job is', 'too far to travel', 'earn more money in the city' ... etc - and for many others there is no choice but to live in a rural area. Instead of taking a positive action to change their circumstances there tend to be a multitude of excuses and reasoning put forward for why an individual cannot change their situation. Piffle, stuff and nonsense is what I say. If you are living in an environment that makes you unhappy then you are the one who can change that. No one else.
For us we chose to live where we do - 30 minutes to nearest State Route, 45 minutes to nearest gas station/supermarket... and so on. What we gain from this 'loss'; a rent which is half to a third what we would pay in a city / suburban area and LOTS of space (more than compensates for the actual additional costs for extra gas etc), the few times we do hear gunshots is typically hunting season, our nearest neighbor is half a mile or more away, we have four acres +/- of land while all around us is untrammeled wilderness, we grow and wild harvest a lot of the foods we eat and our basement is well stocked with supplies we have either made ourselves (canning, dehydrating, pickling) or purchased in during our infrequent sojourns to 'civilization', we are surrounded and mingled in with wildlife of many types (some more dangerous than the regulars with ticks at the top of the list, bears and skunks and snakes are very low down, and insects high up there), our water comes from a well and tastes naturally sweet, our heat from logs we haul out from the woods with a supplementary tank of propane and several 'soda can heaters' for solar capture. There are many more micro benefits too numerous to mention.
However... this is certainly not 'privileged', we chose this way, it is HARD WORK! We occasionally have time to look at the Milky Way when light pollution allows us. The rest of the time it tends to be very dark. VERY. With a snow storm on the way we are looking to lock down, break out candles, and check in with some elderly neighbors about 2-3 miles away that they are OK. The roads will likely be cleared in a couple of days... probably.
For urban/suburban people the biggest 'threat' is other people, traffic, pollution, and so on. Large numbers of people who are living 'isolated' lives either solo or in self-created common interest groups. There are few cities and suburban areas where people can truly trust and rely on others. Regardless of any differences or similarities they may share. Around here our common interest is ensuring we can get on with our lives and making sure others can too. If you truly think about it, how many people in your immediate proximity (apartment complex, neighborhood, street, block) do you know or have regular social interchange with? How many of these would/could you trust? What would you do if the power goes out? IF we need to call EMS or law enforcement we already know that the typical response time on a good day is 45-60 minutes. We deal with this and are prepared.
The pandemic made us realize how poorly prepared people are for a situation where Nature takes control. We saw and heard the panic buying and scratched our heads over this and the 'supply chain' problem. Meanwhile we look in our basement and cupboards at the 3-6 months (minimum) of food we have and shrug our shoulders at the obvious fact - as expounded by the article - that people are out of touch with Nature and have created these small micro-social constructs to give themselves a sense of belonging or a feeling of safety. How frail that construct is?
Nature is red in tooth and claw. We know this around here. It is certainly not a privilege in any way shape or form.
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 12:21 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
It is easily forgotten and many excuses/reasoning fail to address the fact you do choose to live where and how you do - 'it is where my job is', 'too far to travel', 'earn more money in the city' ... etc - and for many others there is no choice but to live in a rural area. Instead of taking a positive action to change their circumstances there tend to be a multitude of excuses and reasoning put forward for why an individual cannot change their situation. Piffle, stuff and nonsense is what I say. If you are living in an environment that makes you unhappy then you are the one who can change that. No one else.
For us we chose to live where we do - 30 minutes to nearest State Route, 45 minutes to nearest gas station/supermarket... and so on. What we gain from this 'loss'; a rent which is half to a third what we would pay in a city / suburban area and LOTS of space (more than compensates for the actual additional costs for extra gas etc), the few times we do hear gunshots is typically hunting season, our nearest neighbor is half a mile or more away, we have four acres +/- of land while all around us is untrammeled wilderness, we grow and wild harvest a lot of the foods we eat and our basement is well stocked with supplies we have either made ourselves (canning, dehydrating, pickling) or purchased in during our infrequent sojourns to 'civilization', we are surrounded and mingled in with wildlife of many types (some more dangerous than the regulars with ticks at the top of the list, bears and skunks and snakes are very low down, and insects high up there), our water comes from a well and tastes naturally sweet, our heat from logs we haul out from the woods with a supplementary tank of propane and several 'soda can heaters' for solar capture. There are many more micro benefits too numerous to mention.
However... this is certainly not 'privileged', we chose this way, it is HARD WORK! We occasionally have time to look at the Milky Way when light pollution allows us. The rest of the time it tends to be very dark. VERY. With a snow storm on the way we are looking to lock down, break out candles, and check in with some elderly neighbors about 2-3 miles away that they are OK. The roads will likely be cleared in a couple of days... probably.
For urban/suburban people the biggest 'threat' is other people, traffic, pollution, and so on. Large numbers of people who are living 'isolated' lives either solo or in self-created common interest groups. There are few cities and suburban areas where people can truly trust and rely on others. Regardless of any differences or similarities they may share. Around here our common interest is ensuring we can get on with our lives and making sure others can too. If you truly think about it, how many people in your immediate proximity (apartment complex, neighborhood, street, block) do you know or have regular social interchange with? How many of these would/could you trust? What would you do if the power goes out? IF we need to call EMS or law enforcement we already know that the typical response time on a good day is 45-60 minutes. We deal with this and are prepared.
The pandemic made us realize how poorly prepared people are for a situation where Nature takes control. We saw and heard the panic buying and scratched our heads over this and the 'supply chain' problem. Meanwhile we look in our basement and cupboards at the 3-6 months (minimum) of food we have and shrug our shoulders at the obvious fact - as expounded by the article - that people are out of touch with Nature and have created these small micro-social constructs to give themselves a sense of belonging or a feeling of safety. How frail that construct is?
Nature is red in tooth and claw. We know this around here. It is certainly not a privilege in any way shape or form.
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 12:21 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Who's 'we', Lightman?
As much as I generally agree with the author's gist, I've read a hundred of these articles and most of them make the same silly mistakes.
First off (and this is mostly a quibble of mine), they universalize the author's experience. I realize that's part and parcel of being a writer, but doing it without bringing yourself into the piece always feels a little... blinkered to me.
Second, and much more importantly, (and as No Robots alludes above), the article is reinscribing the whole man/nature divide while simultaneously being distressed about it. Nature is not over there, some lush arcadian meadow with babbling brooks and bounding deer. You're sitting in it; I'm typing on it. It's all "natural". Constantly reaching out for/bemoaning the loss of some Fern-Gully-ass notion of nature isn't helping; it's making it worse.
Thinking of ourselves, our actions, and the consequences of our actions as all part of the planet is an crucial step in realizing the ways that my cellphone is in relation with the old silver maple I can see from my kitchen window.
I realize that "natural" is an important shorthand, if we're trying to talk about, y'know, outside stuff. I never did settle on a satisfying replacement for it; I tried capitalizing it for a while back when I wrote and thought more about this business, but I've apparently fallen off.
I guess I'm trying to say that reifying this hand-wavy notion of nature is dangerous if you're actually worried about, uh, 'non-human lives and systems on the planet', or 'our' relationship with them.
posted by rhooke at 12:29 PM on January 16, 2022 [8 favorites]
As much as I generally agree with the author's gist, I've read a hundred of these articles and most of them make the same silly mistakes.
First off (and this is mostly a quibble of mine), they universalize the author's experience. I realize that's part and parcel of being a writer, but doing it without bringing yourself into the piece always feels a little... blinkered to me.
Second, and much more importantly, (and as No Robots alludes above), the article is reinscribing the whole man/nature divide while simultaneously being distressed about it. Nature is not over there, some lush arcadian meadow with babbling brooks and bounding deer. You're sitting in it; I'm typing on it. It's all "natural". Constantly reaching out for/bemoaning the loss of some Fern-Gully-ass notion of nature isn't helping; it's making it worse.
Thinking of ourselves, our actions, and the consequences of our actions as all part of the planet is an crucial step in realizing the ways that my cellphone is in relation with the old silver maple I can see from my kitchen window.
I realize that "natural" is an important shorthand, if we're trying to talk about, y'know, outside stuff. I never did settle on a satisfying replacement for it; I tried capitalizing it for a while back when I wrote and thought more about this business, but I've apparently fallen off.
I guess I'm trying to say that reifying this hand-wavy notion of nature is dangerous if you're actually worried about, uh, 'non-human lives and systems on the planet', or 'our' relationship with them.
posted by rhooke at 12:29 PM on January 16, 2022 [8 favorites]
There are few cities and suburban areas where people can truly trust and rely on others.
Cities require reliance on others every goddamn day. In fact, it's far more obvious to us than it is to people who think that gas and technology are the gifts of fairies rather than of a profoundly interdependent civilization.
It's just that we have to rely on people who aren't like us and not our tribe.
posted by praemunire at 12:36 PM on January 16, 2022 [16 favorites]
Cities require reliance on others every goddamn day. In fact, it's far more obvious to us than it is to people who think that gas and technology are the gifts of fairies rather than of a profoundly interdependent civilization.
It's just that we have to rely on people who aren't like us and not our tribe.
posted by praemunire at 12:36 PM on January 16, 2022 [16 favorites]
Definitely echoing that Lightman's view on nature appears to be from a curated idealized tourism position. My partner's family lives in a rural area and while I very much enjoy going out there, it always reminds me how much work it is to live in the middle of nature when your neighbor is a mile+ away. With the seasonal vegetable harvest work, caring for the herd, keeping enough of the landscape shorter so deer ticks remain at bay (it was a really bad tick season this past year), repair of gravel roads and moving trees after storms, etc. I am routinely brought back to a sense that while I love to visit, I don't know that I would have an easy time bearing that sort of additional responsibility on a 24/7 basis. It seems to me that Lightman, a physicist and author, would probably not have an easier time than I would bearing that responsibility, despite his sense of connectedness with the world. He seems to selectively laud the beauty and profoundness of nature without acknowledging that living deeply in nature contains both great beauty and hardship, challenges, and inconveniences. Both urban and rural lifestyles contain multitudes.
All in all I feel like it's pretty well summed up by 7 year old Nick in Michael Apted's 7 Up series "They'd like to come out for a holiday in the country when I'd like to have a holiday in the town."
posted by donut_princess at 1:12 PM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
All in all I feel like it's pretty well summed up by 7 year old Nick in Michael Apted's 7 Up series "They'd like to come out for a holiday in the country when I'd like to have a holiday in the town."
posted by donut_princess at 1:12 PM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
I keep a small garden, in spite of lawn sprays all around me that kill the pollinators mid summer, and mid harvest later. The neighbors don't realize they kill the bees to kill the spiders and fleas. But, I keep at it. I am aware that driving my old van with low gas mileage, is how I get out to see "nature," with fewer obvious marks of civiliation. But if we don't get considerably more than f*in' hand-wavy about the environment lots of it, the apex species, the rare beautious wildness, the perfection of billions of years of compromise, change, nurturance, creativitity, and survivorship are lost. The whole, from microscopic, to enormous sustains us. We are fiercely brutal and greedy, enough isn't enough for us. Writing about it is what some emeriti can do, in hopes it effects attitudes and acts.
posted by Oyéah at 1:56 PM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Oyéah at 1:56 PM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
And, one more thing. We have to work and create the city, every moment we are in it. I taught this in my art classes. We have round eyes, and we cannot see parallel skyscrapers, perspective, rectangles. We are at work making it, the whole time we are in it. This is why "Nature," is perceived and touted as relaxing, it just is, and we don't have to constantly model it.
posted by Oyéah at 2:09 PM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Oyéah at 2:09 PM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
So far the majority of the comments have been very negative and reinforce what was written. Urbanized people truly are disconnected from nature and/or simply do not (most of the time) see nature around them. Instead they tend to see 'Nature'™ and dismiss it for the 'nuisance' it is.
*blink*
Dude, go scroll up and read my first comment. I'll wait.
{examines nails a moment}
Okay: so, where in that entire comment about my personal experience about being an urbanized person do you see any opinion expressed that nature is a "nuisance"?
Or - you're saying that I, as an "urbanized" person, am "truly disconnected from nature", despite the fact that I point out that it is possible to observe saw-whet owls and the constellation of Orion despite heavy light pollution?
Your painting urban people with a broad brush is precisely the kind of attitude and gatekeeping I was decrying above, which convinces people in the cities that only certain kinds of naturalism "count" and that their wanting to study the weeds in a city lot is invalid. It's a gatekeeping which not only does them a dis-service - it does you a dis-service, by cutting yourself off from an entire avenue of connecting to the natural world as well.
And, it's also really rude to people who live in cities - who, despite your snobbery, are not all pampered socialites whining about leaves in the gutters or whatever the hell you're thinking we're doing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:32 PM on January 16, 2022 [10 favorites]
*blink*
Dude, go scroll up and read my first comment. I'll wait.
{examines nails a moment}
Okay: so, where in that entire comment about my personal experience about being an urbanized person do you see any opinion expressed that nature is a "nuisance"?
Or - you're saying that I, as an "urbanized" person, am "truly disconnected from nature", despite the fact that I point out that it is possible to observe saw-whet owls and the constellation of Orion despite heavy light pollution?
Your painting urban people with a broad brush is precisely the kind of attitude and gatekeeping I was decrying above, which convinces people in the cities that only certain kinds of naturalism "count" and that their wanting to study the weeds in a city lot is invalid. It's a gatekeeping which not only does them a dis-service - it does you a dis-service, by cutting yourself off from an entire avenue of connecting to the natural world as well.
And, it's also really rude to people who live in cities - who, despite your snobbery, are not all pampered socialites whining about leaves in the gutters or whatever the hell you're thinking we're doing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:32 PM on January 16, 2022 [10 favorites]
If you truly think about it, how many people in your immediate proximity (apartment complex, neighborhood, street, block) do you know or have regular social interchange with? How many of these would/could you trust?
I know my next door neighbour and he's taking care of my plants right now while I'm out of town. Even the neighbours I'm not actually friends with, I interact with all the time - holding the elevator when they're moving furniture, asking them to turn down the music after midnight, etc. We're not BFFs, but our common interest is ensuring we can get on with our lives and making sure others can too.
What would you do if the power goes out?
You volunteer to direct traffic and give away the ice cream in your freezer.
I mean, I could turn this around and say people who live off the grid refuse to acknowledge the reality that all humans are interconnected and that it's a losing game to try to completely insulate your life from being affected by "outsiders". In any case, uprooting yourself from your community to move from the city to the country, or vice versa, or heck, from any place to any place, is not a simple prospect. Who's going to take care of the kids while you're working? Will there even be work for you? Who's going to give you a ride when your car breaks down? Everyone has different needs and preferences, and if someone is doing something "wrong", it's because they've been dealt different cards and they have different priorities.
In any case, I'd like to echo the commenters above who've said that "nature" and "civilization" are a false binary, because humans are inherently both. Like, bees aren't any less a part of nature because they build colonies. We're ultimately subject to the same forces as every other living thing on the planet.
posted by airmail at 3:00 PM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
I know my next door neighbour and he's taking care of my plants right now while I'm out of town. Even the neighbours I'm not actually friends with, I interact with all the time - holding the elevator when they're moving furniture, asking them to turn down the music after midnight, etc. We're not BFFs, but our common interest is ensuring we can get on with our lives and making sure others can too.
What would you do if the power goes out?
You volunteer to direct traffic and give away the ice cream in your freezer.
I mean, I could turn this around and say people who live off the grid refuse to acknowledge the reality that all humans are interconnected and that it's a losing game to try to completely insulate your life from being affected by "outsiders". In any case, uprooting yourself from your community to move from the city to the country, or vice versa, or heck, from any place to any place, is not a simple prospect. Who's going to take care of the kids while you're working? Will there even be work for you? Who's going to give you a ride when your car breaks down? Everyone has different needs and preferences, and if someone is doing something "wrong", it's because they've been dealt different cards and they have different priorities.
In any case, I'd like to echo the commenters above who've said that "nature" and "civilization" are a false binary, because humans are inherently both. Like, bees aren't any less a part of nature because they build colonies. We're ultimately subject to the same forces as every other living thing on the planet.
posted by airmail at 3:00 PM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
"There are few cities and suburban areas where people can truly trust and rely on others. "
What the what? I've lived a lot of places, and frankly trust levels have been higher in urban and suburban areas.
"f you truly think about it, how many people in your immediate proximity (apartment complex, neighborhood, street, block) do you know or have regular social interchange with? How many of these would/could you trust?"
Allllllll of them? Running errands means running in to everyone I know, all the time. (I mean, I ran into my friend's nanny at the dentist and we were so excited to see each other!) My kids' school principal lives about two blocks from me. Sometimes I run into my brother at the grocery store! My little suburb hosts 9 community festivals in the 9 months it doesn't suck to be outdoors here. I know all of the library employees, which ones live in town, which ones live nearby. I know which of my neighbors are too elderly to shovel "heart-attack snow," and the neighborhood pitches in to clear those driveways and sidewalks.
I mean, honestly: "Instead they tend to see 'Nature'™ and dismiss it for the 'nuisance' it is. Examples being leaves or tree fruits messing up the (sub)urban landscape, bird poop on the car, 'weeds' invading the pristine and chemically controlled and greened lawn."
Was your last visit to suburbia in 1963? My husband volunteers for prairie restoration, and at our last house (in an urban area), we converted nearly our entire backyard to native tallgrass prairie. In addition to every songbird routinely resident in our areas (and 3 of 4 woodpeckers!), we had foxes, coyotes, deer, possums, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, rats, big brown bats (probably also little brown bats, but they're harder to spot in the dark), kestrels, sharp-shinned hawks, great horned owls, praying mantises, annual cicadas, 17-year cicadas, 13-year cicadas, crickets (BY THE BUCKETFUL), at least eight kinds of native bees (I'm not a great bee identifier), honeybees, invasive insects, ants ants ants, cabbage butterflies, monarchs, black swallowtails, spring azures, red-banded leafhoppers, and -- crowning glory of my garden, which had no water features -- an American toad chilling in the shade in my veggie garden and eating my bugs. I actually do okay stargazing here, since residential roads don't have streetlights.
Where I live now, in a suburb, we have an incentive program to get people to plant native prairie plants (and in particular milkweeds) and NOT have grass lawns. We spot coyotes all the time. Foxes. Skunks. Deer.
In fact, as I live in corn country, I would argue that many Chicago suburbs have more "nature" than rural areas, as Chicago is known for its excellent forest preserve system, and suburbs tend to "market" themselves based on parks and greenspace. Whereas in rural areas, monocrop corn and soybeans is a lot more human-mediated and a lot less "natural" than your average backyard.
And just to come back to this: " 'weeds' invading the pristine and chemically controlled and greened lawn." I have REAL BAD NEWS for you about the pesticide burden on even unfarmed rural properties, if there is farming occuring ANYWHERE near you. Pesticide and fertilizer use in American farming far outstrips its use on American lawns (in chemical-per-acre terms), and the low quality of rural waterways reflects the high runoff. As does the higher rate of cancers related to pesticide use that we see in rural areas.
And if you truly live in pristine wilderness, if we ALL made the choice you're making? There would be no pristine wilderness for you to exploit for your enjoyment and survival.
Honestly, this reads like a caricature of urban, suburban, and rural areas with really, really weird ideas about what "natural" is -- thinking that suburban yards are more chemically-controlled than farmland is simply bananas (which, incidentally, require a very large quantity of pesticides!).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:25 PM on January 16, 2022 [13 favorites]
What the what? I've lived a lot of places, and frankly trust levels have been higher in urban and suburban areas.
"f you truly think about it, how many people in your immediate proximity (apartment complex, neighborhood, street, block) do you know or have regular social interchange with? How many of these would/could you trust?"
Allllllll of them? Running errands means running in to everyone I know, all the time. (I mean, I ran into my friend's nanny at the dentist and we were so excited to see each other!) My kids' school principal lives about two blocks from me. Sometimes I run into my brother at the grocery store! My little suburb hosts 9 community festivals in the 9 months it doesn't suck to be outdoors here. I know all of the library employees, which ones live in town, which ones live nearby. I know which of my neighbors are too elderly to shovel "heart-attack snow," and the neighborhood pitches in to clear those driveways and sidewalks.
I mean, honestly: "Instead they tend to see 'Nature'™ and dismiss it for the 'nuisance' it is. Examples being leaves or tree fruits messing up the (sub)urban landscape, bird poop on the car, 'weeds' invading the pristine and chemically controlled and greened lawn."
Was your last visit to suburbia in 1963? My husband volunteers for prairie restoration, and at our last house (in an urban area), we converted nearly our entire backyard to native tallgrass prairie. In addition to every songbird routinely resident in our areas (and 3 of 4 woodpeckers!), we had foxes, coyotes, deer, possums, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, rats, big brown bats (probably also little brown bats, but they're harder to spot in the dark), kestrels, sharp-shinned hawks, great horned owls, praying mantises, annual cicadas, 17-year cicadas, 13-year cicadas, crickets (BY THE BUCKETFUL), at least eight kinds of native bees (I'm not a great bee identifier), honeybees, invasive insects, ants ants ants, cabbage butterflies, monarchs, black swallowtails, spring azures, red-banded leafhoppers, and -- crowning glory of my garden, which had no water features -- an American toad chilling in the shade in my veggie garden and eating my bugs. I actually do okay stargazing here, since residential roads don't have streetlights.
Where I live now, in a suburb, we have an incentive program to get people to plant native prairie plants (and in particular milkweeds) and NOT have grass lawns. We spot coyotes all the time. Foxes. Skunks. Deer.
In fact, as I live in corn country, I would argue that many Chicago suburbs have more "nature" than rural areas, as Chicago is known for its excellent forest preserve system, and suburbs tend to "market" themselves based on parks and greenspace. Whereas in rural areas, monocrop corn and soybeans is a lot more human-mediated and a lot less "natural" than your average backyard.
And just to come back to this: " 'weeds' invading the pristine and chemically controlled and greened lawn." I have REAL BAD NEWS for you about the pesticide burden on even unfarmed rural properties, if there is farming occuring ANYWHERE near you. Pesticide and fertilizer use in American farming far outstrips its use on American lawns (in chemical-per-acre terms), and the low quality of rural waterways reflects the high runoff. As does the higher rate of cancers related to pesticide use that we see in rural areas.
And if you truly live in pristine wilderness, if we ALL made the choice you're making? There would be no pristine wilderness for you to exploit for your enjoyment and survival.
Honestly, this reads like a caricature of urban, suburban, and rural areas with really, really weird ideas about what "natural" is -- thinking that suburban yards are more chemically-controlled than farmland is simply bananas (which, incidentally, require a very large quantity of pesticides!).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:25 PM on January 16, 2022 [13 favorites]
They lost me when they quoted Emerson.
posted by leafmealone at 4:44 PM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by leafmealone at 4:44 PM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
To return to the original article -- some of which I agree with (outdoor time and greenspace is important for kids!), and some of which seems a little bit overwrought -- I think the best thing we can do is not actually to talk about "nature" in an abstract way, or rave about the majestic natural beauty of Yellowstone ... that's far away, and not what "nature" looks like near me. I think the best thing we can do is talk about hyper-local ecosystems and habitats.
Nature always seemed sort-of distant and abstract to me (old-growth forests! majestic mountains!) until I started learning the ecology of my extremely local area (because I got interested in gardening and took horticulture classes through the county extension and it sort-of went from there). Like very specifically, the tallgrass prairie of Central Illinois, BUT also, very specifically, the wooded prairie river bluff ecosystem of the Illinois River Valley. And also the wetlands ecosystem on the flood plain. And the human changes to those ecosystems over time. And this was "nature" that I could actually SEE and identify, and nature that I could take action about, by joining monarch butterfly "flyway" programs to plant milkweed in yards, by restoring a prairie microhabitat in my backyard, by advocating for local codes that supported healthy ecosystem restoration within the human environment of our local city, rather than a generic "plant a tree." It made us all more eager to visit local nature parks, because we knew what we were looking at, and to advocate for the inclusion of natural areas in more traditional parks. And the more we learned, the more we saw, and the more we saw, the more we wanted to learn, and the better we understood ourselves within the actual ecosystem we lived in.
We started with a little decorative garden that was friendly to native birds, butterflies, and bees, with lots of flowers. And we were getting a lot of birds and butterflies. But I honestly cannot even express to you how much the frequency and diversity of wildlife in our backyard increased when we restored a prairie microhabitat there, and as the habitat grew in quality, the wildlife absolutely exploded. All those species that I guess were living in unmowed margins and along creeks and in alleys and so on were just WAITING to move in once we made a hospitable place for them. And it was only like 3600-ish square feet of tallgrass prairie; not even 1/10th of an acre. But it was just this AMAZING difference. (And I never got used to seeing "apex predators" in my backyard, I got a huge kick out of it every time! Even when it ended very badly for the bunnies. (It always ended badly for the bunnies.))
I've moved 200 miles and I have to learn a new ecosystem. Some of it is similar to where I lived before, but the soil is different and the land formations are different and the waterways and their species are quite different, and I'm still trying to learn how I fit in to this ecosystem. (The biggest two differences are that before, I was below the furthest extent of the Wisconsin glaciation period, and now I live within the glaciation area; and before, I lived near a very large river, and now I live near a gigantic lake.) And I do feel a sense of dislocation about it! That I don't understand where I'm living, and what I'm seeing, the way I did before. But I also know that learning about it will make me see more, and seeing more will make me learn more, and eventually I understand this place as well as I understood my last one. And that, more than anything, is what makes me feel connected to nature, and makes me understand myself as part of a larger community of living things in a hyper-local ecosystem.
If someone gave me this article and said, "What, in your opinion, is our best way forward to improve this?" that's probably what I'd say. Nature isn't abstract; it's concrete (heh), it's hyper-local, and reconnecting people to the natural world starts has to start with those hyperlocal ecosystems.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:55 PM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
Nature always seemed sort-of distant and abstract to me (old-growth forests! majestic mountains!) until I started learning the ecology of my extremely local area (because I got interested in gardening and took horticulture classes through the county extension and it sort-of went from there). Like very specifically, the tallgrass prairie of Central Illinois, BUT also, very specifically, the wooded prairie river bluff ecosystem of the Illinois River Valley. And also the wetlands ecosystem on the flood plain. And the human changes to those ecosystems over time. And this was "nature" that I could actually SEE and identify, and nature that I could take action about, by joining monarch butterfly "flyway" programs to plant milkweed in yards, by restoring a prairie microhabitat in my backyard, by advocating for local codes that supported healthy ecosystem restoration within the human environment of our local city, rather than a generic "plant a tree." It made us all more eager to visit local nature parks, because we knew what we were looking at, and to advocate for the inclusion of natural areas in more traditional parks. And the more we learned, the more we saw, and the more we saw, the more we wanted to learn, and the better we understood ourselves within the actual ecosystem we lived in.
We started with a little decorative garden that was friendly to native birds, butterflies, and bees, with lots of flowers. And we were getting a lot of birds and butterflies. But I honestly cannot even express to you how much the frequency and diversity of wildlife in our backyard increased when we restored a prairie microhabitat there, and as the habitat grew in quality, the wildlife absolutely exploded. All those species that I guess were living in unmowed margins and along creeks and in alleys and so on were just WAITING to move in once we made a hospitable place for them. And it was only like 3600-ish square feet of tallgrass prairie; not even 1/10th of an acre. But it was just this AMAZING difference. (And I never got used to seeing "apex predators" in my backyard, I got a huge kick out of it every time! Even when it ended very badly for the bunnies. (It always ended badly for the bunnies.))
I've moved 200 miles and I have to learn a new ecosystem. Some of it is similar to where I lived before, but the soil is different and the land formations are different and the waterways and their species are quite different, and I'm still trying to learn how I fit in to this ecosystem. (The biggest two differences are that before, I was below the furthest extent of the Wisconsin glaciation period, and now I live within the glaciation area; and before, I lived near a very large river, and now I live near a gigantic lake.) And I do feel a sense of dislocation about it! That I don't understand where I'm living, and what I'm seeing, the way I did before. But I also know that learning about it will make me see more, and seeing more will make me learn more, and eventually I understand this place as well as I understood my last one. And that, more than anything, is what makes me feel connected to nature, and makes me understand myself as part of a larger community of living things in a hyper-local ecosystem.
If someone gave me this article and said, "What, in your opinion, is our best way forward to improve this?" that's probably what I'd say. Nature isn't abstract; it's concrete (heh), it's hyper-local, and reconnecting people to the natural world starts has to start with those hyperlocal ecosystems.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:55 PM on January 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
I have lived in the great glittering cities of the world, I have lived on rural farms, and I have lived in the deep forest. I can speak only for myself, but I know deep in my bones and autistic brain, I am happiest with more plants and animals around than humans.
The cultural and political divide between city and country in the USA pains me deeply, for it seems built from misunderstanding and fueled by articles/threads such as these. Neither can survive without the other.
I used to make a life of designing software, sitting in boxes, looking at boxes, filling screens with more boxes. The great financial privilege of that life led me to buy some land (stolen from the indigenous of course) and build a farm where I grow food to feed my community and flowers to delight myself, the birds, the bees and the humans too.
I could not do what I love so much now without my prior life as a software nerd.
Yes, farming, living on rural acreage is an incredible amount of work. I have never enjoyed a job more. It's not the wilderness, but every year, I see more birds, snakes, jack rabbits, coyotes, weasels!, and humans too also enjoying this transformation of empty fields into a food forest.
I do not judge the city folk for their choices and lifestyles, for their work makes mine possible, and vice versa. These artificial delineations are not helpful, as many others have commented. We are all Nature.
posted by birdsongster at 5:18 PM on January 16, 2022 [12 favorites]
The cultural and political divide between city and country in the USA pains me deeply, for it seems built from misunderstanding and fueled by articles/threads such as these. Neither can survive without the other.
I used to make a life of designing software, sitting in boxes, looking at boxes, filling screens with more boxes. The great financial privilege of that life led me to buy some land (stolen from the indigenous of course) and build a farm where I grow food to feed my community and flowers to delight myself, the birds, the bees and the humans too.
I could not do what I love so much now without my prior life as a software nerd.
Yes, farming, living on rural acreage is an incredible amount of work. I have never enjoyed a job more. It's not the wilderness, but every year, I see more birds, snakes, jack rabbits, coyotes, weasels!, and humans too also enjoying this transformation of empty fields into a food forest.
I do not judge the city folk for their choices and lifestyles, for their work makes mine possible, and vice versa. These artificial delineations are not helpful, as many others have commented. We are all Nature.
posted by birdsongster at 5:18 PM on January 16, 2022 [12 favorites]
I have REAL BAD NEWS for you about the pesticide burden on even unfarmed rural properties, if there is farming occuring ANYWHERE near you. Pesticide and fertilizer use in American farming far outstrips its use on American lawns (in chemical-per-acre terms), and the low quality of rural waterways reflects the high runoff.
posted by jamjam at 6:29 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
LAWN PESTICIDE FACTS AND FIGURESThis particular bullet point references fairly old information, and the most recent dates in the PDF as a whole are ~2005, but I’ve seen multiple assertions to the same effect quite recently, and nothing other than your comment which contradicts them. I would have said agricultural use is greater as well, but I looked into it because my city sells compost from yard waste to gardeners, and I wondered how much pesticide residue might be in it.
A Beyond Pesticides Factsheet
• Suburban lawns and gardens receive more pesticide applications per acre (3.2-9.8 lbs) than agriculture (2.7 lbs per acre on average).
posted by jamjam at 6:29 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Four times a year, and it has a smell, at first it smelled like permanent wave treatment, still kinda does. Then I tried regular cat litter again, and it came with a fragrance called fresh linen, it is the same fragrance from the weed, feed, and pesticide spray.
posted by Oyéah at 6:37 PM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Oyéah at 6:37 PM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sometimes, we Mefites can have a little bit of a "not we Mefites" reaction to posts, huh?
Yes, there's nothing new in Lightman's observations, but I think many of the commenters are speaking more from their lives, or their best intentions, than about his writing and, perhaps, intended audience.
When he writes, "We are brothers in this place", I saw it more as Lightman's personal revelation than anthropomorphic projection, and, no matter how much you and yours might frequent parks and restored prairies, the reality is that, IMHO, most live in human bubbles within human bubbles, technologically as well as psychologically, and never have those moments; yes, we are still nature, but we live in crafted worlds that isolate us from the other parts of nature that we don't need/want/value/etc.
Our lives are so technologically mediated that we are constantly encouraged to have that us/it schism. Even living on farms or in rural areas can encourage that, as everything can become a resource or an impediment, as opposed to itself.
Yes, we are all nature. Everything is nature. But the point is the human relationship to everything else, and "we" keep building illusions of separation.
posted by pt68 at 6:38 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yes, there's nothing new in Lightman's observations, but I think many of the commenters are speaking more from their lives, or their best intentions, than about his writing and, perhaps, intended audience.
When he writes, "We are brothers in this place", I saw it more as Lightman's personal revelation than anthropomorphic projection, and, no matter how much you and yours might frequent parks and restored prairies, the reality is that, IMHO, most live in human bubbles within human bubbles, technologically as well as psychologically, and never have those moments; yes, we are still nature, but we live in crafted worlds that isolate us from the other parts of nature that we don't need/want/value/etc.
Our lives are so technologically mediated that we are constantly encouraged to have that us/it schism. Even living on farms or in rural areas can encourage that, as everything can become a resource or an impediment, as opposed to itself.
Yes, we are all nature. Everything is nature. But the point is the human relationship to everything else, and "we" keep building illusions of separation.
posted by pt68 at 6:38 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
"This particular bullet point references fairly old information, and the most recent dates in the PDF as a whole are ~2005, but I’ve seen multiple assertions to the same effect quite recently, and nothing other than your comment which contradicts them."
I got curious because those statistics are quoted verbatim all over the place, but they're ridiculous numbers (like, literally unbelievable), and I couldn't find a direct source. I finally dug it up out of the second reference there, which is a report of a survey conducted by the New York Attorney General's office on pesticide uses on golf courses and how much they're polluting the groundwater. It notes, in small text: "By comparison, when homeowners follow the directions for various annual do-it-yourself lawn care programs, they may apply from 3.2 to 9.8 pounds of pesticide per acre annually. Thus, homeowners may apply up to 3.6 times as much pesticides as is typically used in agriculture. Even at that level, they apply less pesticides than golf courses."
By which the NYAG is saying that homeowners may LEGALLY apply up to that much -- as the instructions on pesticides you buy for your home are actually legally enforceable (which is of interest to the NYAG). If homeowners were to use precisely the exact maximum amount of pesticides allowed by law, they COULD use up to 3.6 times as much pesticide per acre as is actually applied to agricultural fields (which are having to report their use for their crops to be salable).
I have met hardly anyone who isn't a chemist or a horticulturalist who even bothers to read the whole bottle; I haven't met anyone who carefully and exactly applies the EXACT LEGAL MAXIMUM PESTICIDES to their lawn.
But regardless, we have a hypothetical maximum amount of pesticide that COULD be applied to a lawn, with literally zero data backing it up -- they just figured up what the legal maximum amount of lawn pesticides per acre you could apply per year would be -- set against very GOOD agricultural data of pesticide use. IOW, that "3.6 times as much per acre" is not a real number and there are no data suggestion residential homeowners apply anything like that much.
According to EPA data, agricultural use absolutely dwarfs home and garden use -- agriculture actually uses 10 times as much herbicide as all residential users purchase (residential users being much less likely to actually use what they buy, and more likely to put it in the garage and forget it); residential use of fungicides is negligible. The one area where residential users buy more than agricultural users is insecticides ... but this includes ant bait. Wasp spray. Termite exterminators. It also includes mosquito repellent. The EPA also counts DISINFECTANTS, including household cleaning products, such as Lysol and antimicrobial soaps, as pesticides, and they make a huge showing in residential purchasing!
The EPA is confident that 90% of pesticide application (of all types, including bug spray) is done by agricultural users -- the remaining 10% is about evenly split between commercial and residential uses. It looks like MOST of what home and garden users buy is insecticides, insect repellents, and disinfectants; herbicides appear to make up a much smaller proportion. 5% of applications are residential (the other 5% commercial).
There are apparently 400 million acres of cropland in the US, more or less, and 40 million acres of lawn (according to NASA satellite estimates, as reported in a bunch of mainstream news sources). So with agriculture using 90% of all pesticides, and residential customers purchasing (and sometimes using) 5% ... even if ALL of that 5% is lawn chemicals, and ALL of it gets used, it's not actually possible for lawns to have more pesticides applied to them per acre than agricultural land does. There's not enough pesticide being sold to residential users for it to be true.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:13 PM on January 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
I got curious because those statistics are quoted verbatim all over the place, but they're ridiculous numbers (like, literally unbelievable), and I couldn't find a direct source. I finally dug it up out of the second reference there, which is a report of a survey conducted by the New York Attorney General's office on pesticide uses on golf courses and how much they're polluting the groundwater. It notes, in small text: "By comparison, when homeowners follow the directions for various annual do-it-yourself lawn care programs, they may apply from 3.2 to 9.8 pounds of pesticide per acre annually. Thus, homeowners may apply up to 3.6 times as much pesticides as is typically used in agriculture. Even at that level, they apply less pesticides than golf courses."
By which the NYAG is saying that homeowners may LEGALLY apply up to that much -- as the instructions on pesticides you buy for your home are actually legally enforceable (which is of interest to the NYAG). If homeowners were to use precisely the exact maximum amount of pesticides allowed by law, they COULD use up to 3.6 times as much pesticide per acre as is actually applied to agricultural fields (which are having to report their use for their crops to be salable).
I have met hardly anyone who isn't a chemist or a horticulturalist who even bothers to read the whole bottle; I haven't met anyone who carefully and exactly applies the EXACT LEGAL MAXIMUM PESTICIDES to their lawn.
But regardless, we have a hypothetical maximum amount of pesticide that COULD be applied to a lawn, with literally zero data backing it up -- they just figured up what the legal maximum amount of lawn pesticides per acre you could apply per year would be -- set against very GOOD agricultural data of pesticide use. IOW, that "3.6 times as much per acre" is not a real number and there are no data suggestion residential homeowners apply anything like that much.
According to EPA data, agricultural use absolutely dwarfs home and garden use -- agriculture actually uses 10 times as much herbicide as all residential users purchase (residential users being much less likely to actually use what they buy, and more likely to put it in the garage and forget it); residential use of fungicides is negligible. The one area where residential users buy more than agricultural users is insecticides ... but this includes ant bait. Wasp spray. Termite exterminators. It also includes mosquito repellent. The EPA also counts DISINFECTANTS, including household cleaning products, such as Lysol and antimicrobial soaps, as pesticides, and they make a huge showing in residential purchasing!
The EPA is confident that 90% of pesticide application (of all types, including bug spray) is done by agricultural users -- the remaining 10% is about evenly split between commercial and residential uses. It looks like MOST of what home and garden users buy is insecticides, insect repellents, and disinfectants; herbicides appear to make up a much smaller proportion. 5% of applications are residential (the other 5% commercial).
There are apparently 400 million acres of cropland in the US, more or less, and 40 million acres of lawn (according to NASA satellite estimates, as reported in a bunch of mainstream news sources). So with agriculture using 90% of all pesticides, and residential customers purchasing (and sometimes using) 5% ... even if ALL of that 5% is lawn chemicals, and ALL of it gets used, it's not actually possible for lawns to have more pesticides applied to them per acre than agricultural land does. There's not enough pesticide being sold to residential users for it to be true.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:13 PM on January 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
(Also I just kept thinking, "Do you know how much it would COST to use 3 times the amount of agricultural pesticides on an acre of lawn?" So I looked at a popular lawn pesticide to figure up the legal maximum -- it'd take you 32 bottles of retail Round-Up Lawn herbicide to cover an acre. The legal maximum application is every two weeks. Let's assume a 6-month growing season, so 13 applications. At $25 retail, that runs you north of $10,000 just in herbicide. Let's make it a quarter-acre lot -- not uncommon in farther-flung suburban areas. Do you know ANYONE who's buying 8 bottles of Round Up for $200 every two weeks???? That's madness. (Also you gotta wonder if you're buying pesticides like that if you're going to get a visit from regulators, because they'd think you were illegally applying pesticides to other people's lawns without a license.))
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:28 PM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:28 PM on January 16, 2022 [5 favorites]
I've lived in city apartments and in houses where all but the sturdiest pedestrian would think twice about walking as far as the nearest neighbor. Sometimes people live out in the middle of nowhere JUST BECAUSE they're the type of people who don't like having other people around, and wouldn't be the friendliest people to turn to in a crisis.
Granted, this might not have been as common a scenario in horse-and-buggy days, when your average rural dweller couldn't zip to the nearest town when they needed something. Grandma took the kids and moved into town when Grandpa joined the Army because she didn't want to be the only adult for miles around if something bad happened (one of her kids had already died in that situation).
I guess I don't really have a point, unless it's, isn't it great that so many places are different? And f you're lucky, you get to choose a place that suits you, or hopefully one that comes close. And we have the Internet! it's a small world and all that. I guess my pain medication's kicking in.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:43 PM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Granted, this might not have been as common a scenario in horse-and-buggy days, when your average rural dweller couldn't zip to the nearest town when they needed something. Grandma took the kids and moved into town when Grandpa joined the Army because she didn't want to be the only adult for miles around if something bad happened (one of her kids had already died in that situation).
I guess I don't really have a point, unless it's, isn't it great that so many places are different? And f you're lucky, you get to choose a place that suits you, or hopefully one that comes close. And we have the Internet! it's a small world and all that. I guess my pain medication's kicking in.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:43 PM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Regarding lawns... covered on the Blue already here and here. The only reason I devote my precious time to cutting grass is ticks. Keeping grass short gives them little place to hide from birds and possum (much maligned, they consume great numbers of ticks and are generally NOT a rabies vector compared to other predators like fox and coyote). Additionally, we use the grass clippings to make growing beds using the Ruth Stout Method - no dig, no weed, no feed, no water.
I love it when people extrapolate a few comments and draw their own conclusions about someone as a result of their interpretation of some sentences. THEN resort to assumptive comments and insults simply because they as an individual feel that the comment is directly related to them when clearly it was not. There is zero snobbery in having your head inside a chicken box while you scrape the poop off the sides or being up to your elbow of an animal about to give birth, giving birth, and then having to dispose of a stillborn animal.
I choose to live in the countryside, I work in a large city. There are palpable differences in the general energy I feel in both locales. It is interesting to watch when we have visitors who spend 95% or more of their time in an urban environment. 'How do you walk along a road with no sidewalk?' is one of my favorites. There are clear divides between what feels 'comfortable' within the two extremes for both of us.
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 9:46 PM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
I love it when people extrapolate a few comments and draw their own conclusions about someone as a result of their interpretation of some sentences. THEN resort to assumptive comments and insults simply because they as an individual feel that the comment is directly related to them when clearly it was not. There is zero snobbery in having your head inside a chicken box while you scrape the poop off the sides or being up to your elbow of an animal about to give birth, giving birth, and then having to dispose of a stillborn animal.
I choose to live in the countryside, I work in a large city. There are palpable differences in the general energy I feel in both locales. It is interesting to watch when we have visitors who spend 95% or more of their time in an urban environment. 'How do you walk along a road with no sidewalk?' is one of my favorites. There are clear divides between what feels 'comfortable' within the two extremes for both of us.
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 9:46 PM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
And for the SECOND time in my life I live withing walking distance of an old, but still used cemetery (oldest burial 1810; newest 2021)! Cemeteries are so cool, and so peaceful. Sometimes urban cemeteries are like little oases of green, and rural cemeteries are like little villages of their own. Postman's Park was one of the loveliest places I saw in London.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:55 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:55 PM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
"we" keep building illusions of separation
and then cracking the sads at anybody with the temerity to mention that doing this is the biggest part of what keeps us miserable.
posted by flabdablet at 12:19 AM on January 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
and then cracking the sads at anybody with the temerity to mention that doing this is the biggest part of what keeps us miserable.
posted by flabdablet at 12:19 AM on January 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
I love it when people extrapolate a few comments and draw their own conclusions about someone as a result of their interpretation of some sentences. THEN resort to assumptive comments and insults simply because they as an individual feel that the comment is directly related to them when clearly it was not. There is zero snobbery in having your head inside a chicken box while you scrape the poop off the sides or being up to your elbow of an animal about to give birth, giving birth, and then having to dispose of a stillborn animal.
Never said there was.
However, in my opinion there IS snobbery in saying things like:
You say that "the few times we do hear gunshots is typically hunting season" - why mention this unless you perceived that urban areas are full of shootings? You mention that you grow your own food and can and pickle a lot of your food - were you unaware that people in urban areas do this too, to the point that it's become a city hipster stereotype?
I'm suggesting that these kinds of comments suggest that you may have some kind of unexamined bias against a city lifestyle overall - and that you feel that your choice of lifestyle is somehow more "noble" or "pure" or whatever. And that that is coming across as snobbery to the people who visit you.
I mean, sheesh - when people who visit you ask about whether you can walk on a road with no sidewalks, instead of chuckling about why urban visitors would ask you something so funny, why not say "sure, let's go take a walk and I'll show you why it's okay"?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:06 AM on January 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
Never said there was.
However, in my opinion there IS snobbery in saying things like:
So far the majority of the comments have been very negative and reinforce what was written. Urbanized people truly are disconnected from nature and/or simply do not (most of the time) see nature around them. Instead they tend to see 'Nature'™ and dismiss it for the 'nuisance' it is. Examples being leaves or tree fruits messing up the (sub)urban landscape, bird poop on the car, 'weeds' invading the pristine and chemically controlled and greened lawn.When there was a comment just ten comments above yours that said things like:
You may not be able to see the Milky Way from Brooklyn, but you can see the moon. Sometimes you can see Orion too. And you maybe can't often get to a forest - but maybe there's a street tree on your block you could start paying attention to. Or a vacant lot near your bus stop that's got some weeds growing in it, and you may notice one of them has this really interesting-looking flower. That all counts.It's not a question of "reading something and assuming it's about me when it isn't". It's a question of whether you have a bias against people who've made the perfectly valid choice to live in a city but are still trying to find an outlet to the natural world, and whether your comments about how funny it is that these urban people who visit you can't figure out how to walk on a road with no sidewalk suggests a bit of a bias that people who live urban are somehow making a mistake with their lives.
You say that "the few times we do hear gunshots is typically hunting season" - why mention this unless you perceived that urban areas are full of shootings? You mention that you grow your own food and can and pickle a lot of your food - were you unaware that people in urban areas do this too, to the point that it's become a city hipster stereotype?
I'm suggesting that these kinds of comments suggest that you may have some kind of unexamined bias against a city lifestyle overall - and that you feel that your choice of lifestyle is somehow more "noble" or "pure" or whatever. And that that is coming across as snobbery to the people who visit you.
I mean, sheesh - when people who visit you ask about whether you can walk on a road with no sidewalks, instead of chuckling about why urban visitors would ask you something so funny, why not say "sure, let's go take a walk and I'll show you why it's okay"?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:06 AM on January 17, 2022 [8 favorites]
It’s a former rural American dwelling in one of the US’ least populous zip codes it is my firm belief that most rural folk blind themselves to the misery and general shittiness of their lives by trying to claim the moral high ground or being generally smug about those stupid city folk.
posted by interogative mood at 5:28 PM on January 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 5:28 PM on January 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
This may seem like a fine distinction, but commercial sprayers in my neighborbood apply weed 'n feed, plus pesticide. They go door to door offering to rid you of spiders via their services, and both feed and weed your lawn as well, they work in a 4x per year application. I personally have had to hand fertilize my cukes and tomatoes because the pollinators are gone, and only the most hardy bugs survive, grass hoppers and mites. The birds in my neighborhood are not seed eagers but bug eaters. We don't spray. But there is drift, and anyway. I never sprayed weed 'n feed when I had children barefooting it.
posted by Oyéah at 7:23 PM on January 17, 2022
posted by Oyéah at 7:23 PM on January 17, 2022
The author of this article seems actually relatively uninterested in the reasons that getting access to nature is hard for people: lack of transit, lack of access to parks, long working hours, etc.
To reinforce this, I live in a metropolitan area with (as I understand it) better-than-average public transit, and more-parks-than-average. That said, it's impossible to access most of the East Bay Regional Parks if you don't have a car (it will take more than an hour and a half to get there via bus, and may require a multi-mile walk to even get to the park).
A recent article from a local journalism platform about some of these issues: Oaklandside: The problem and potential of Oakland’s parks
Urbanized people truly are disconnected from nature and/or simply do not (most of the time) see nature around them. Instead they tend to see 'Nature'™ and dismiss it for the 'nuisance' it is.
How many "urbanized people" have you actually talked to about this, though? I live in a 45+-unit apartment building in a major metropolitan area, and there's competition for who gets a 4'x6' spot in the (horrible, rubble-filled, please ask me about how much time and money we have spent sifting out rocks and adding compost) planter behind our building's parking lot to plant herbs or tomatoes or whatever (we don't get the light for tomatoes, but we all keep being optimistic).
Also, some of us urbanized people note the seasons by which songbirds are around. It's not yet time for the house finches to start singing, to my sadness (winter is my least favorite season and spring is the best).
I could turn this around and say people who live off the grid refuse to acknowledge the reality that all humans are interconnected and that it's a losing game to try to completely insulate your life from being affected by "outsiders".
I'm someone who isn't very good at maintaining in-person friendships for various reasons (autism, anxiety, social awkwardness, etc.) and I can immediately think of at least two neighbors in my building who would be willing to look after the cat if I knocked on their door and said "hey, having a crisis, can you feed Penny?" They'd probably even water the garden if I asked them to.
posted by Lexica at 3:54 PM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
To reinforce this, I live in a metropolitan area with (as I understand it) better-than-average public transit, and more-parks-than-average. That said, it's impossible to access most of the East Bay Regional Parks if you don't have a car (it will take more than an hour and a half to get there via bus, and may require a multi-mile walk to even get to the park).
A recent article from a local journalism platform about some of these issues: Oaklandside: The problem and potential of Oakland’s parks
Urbanized people truly are disconnected from nature and/or simply do not (most of the time) see nature around them. Instead they tend to see 'Nature'™ and dismiss it for the 'nuisance' it is.
How many "urbanized people" have you actually talked to about this, though? I live in a 45+-unit apartment building in a major metropolitan area, and there's competition for who gets a 4'x6' spot in the (horrible, rubble-filled, please ask me about how much time and money we have spent sifting out rocks and adding compost) planter behind our building's parking lot to plant herbs or tomatoes or whatever (we don't get the light for tomatoes, but we all keep being optimistic).
Also, some of us urbanized people note the seasons by which songbirds are around. It's not yet time for the house finches to start singing, to my sadness (winter is my least favorite season and spring is the best).
I could turn this around and say people who live off the grid refuse to acknowledge the reality that all humans are interconnected and that it's a losing game to try to completely insulate your life from being affected by "outsiders".
I'm someone who isn't very good at maintaining in-person friendships for various reasons (autism, anxiety, social awkwardness, etc.) and I can immediately think of at least two neighbors in my building who would be willing to look after the cat if I knocked on their door and said "hey, having a crisis, can you feed Penny?" They'd probably even water the garden if I asked them to.
posted by Lexica at 3:54 PM on January 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
More lies rural folks tell themselves — better access to nature than those city folk.
posted by interogative mood at 4:36 PM on January 19, 2022
posted by interogative mood at 4:36 PM on January 19, 2022
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Anyway, this reads just a tiny bit curmudgeonly to me? Not that it doesn't resonate... Although it's definitely one of those articles where you could search-and-replace "smartphones" with "those newfangled periodicals," and the result might have been written 100 years ago.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 5:10 AM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]