This earth has so many wonderful things to offer, including what is still unknown. The responsibility to keep this earth safe lands in the hands of mankind. Humanity may not exist if the responsibility is ignored.. In the chapter “For the Love of Life,” published in the non fiction book The Future of Life (2002), naturalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward O. Wilson discusses the effects the nature, including what is still unknown, has on the prosperity of mankind and argues that humanity has an obligation to preserve nature because of its genetic unity. Wilson supports his claim by justifying the reasons for conserving and preserving nature including how technology can never fully replace it, describing habitat preferences as a component of biophilia - which is explains human’s predisposition to love …show more content…
Wilsons states, “The human habitat preference is consistent with the ‘savanna hypothesis,’ that humanity originated in the savanna and transitional forests of Africa,” (14) which Wilson suggests is the origin on biophilic instincts. The savanna hypothesis proposes that the existence of mankind originated in the savanna and forests of Africa and therefore suggests that humans innate tendency to love, and have a connection with, nature stems from there. Biophilia describes the positive effects the natural world has on the mental health of humanity. Wilson states, “If biophilia is truly part of human nature if it is truly an instinct, we should be able to find evidence of a positive effect of the natural world and other organisms on health.” (17) It has been proven through studies how the natural world can have a certain positive effect on mental health. Some cases have shown people become comforted by images of nature after being in a stressful or alarming situations, while others have displayed inmates who were provided with a view of a forest of farmland and resulted with less stress related
The bond between humans and nature, it is fascinating to see how us has humans and nature interact with each other and in this case the essay The Heart’s Fox by Josephine Johnson is an example of judging the unknown of one's actions. She talks about a fox that had it's life taken as well as many others with it, the respect for nature is something that is precious to most and should not be taken advantage of. Is harming animals or any part of nature always worth it? I see this text as a way of saying that we must be not so terminate the life around us. Today I see us a s experts at destroying most around us and it's sad to see how much we do it and how it's almost as if it's okay to do and sadly is see as it nature itself hurts humans unintentionally
Throughout the Romanticism period, human’s connection with nature was explored as writers strove to find the benefits that humans receive through such interactions. Without such relationships, these authors found that certain aspects of life were missing or completely different. For example, certain authors found death a very frightening idea, but through the incorporation of man’s relationship with the natural world, readers find the immense utility that nature can potentially provide. Whether it’d be as solace, in the case of death, or as a place where one can find oneself in their own truest form, nature will nevertheless be a place where they themselves were derived from. Nature is where all humans originated,
As time passes, our population continues to increase and multiply; yet, on the other hand, our planet’s resources continue to decrease and deplete. As our population flourishes, human beings also increase their demands and clamor for the Earth’s natural products, yet are unable to sacrifice their surplus of the said resources. Garret Hardin’s work highlighted the reality that humans fail to remember that the Earth is finite and its resources are limited. Hardin’s article revealed that people are unable to fathom that we indeed have a moral obligation to our community and our natural habitat — that we are not our planet’s conquerors but its protectors. We fail to acknowledge and accept that we only have one Earth and that we must protect and treasure it at all costs. Despite all our attempts at annihilating the planet, the Earth will still be unrelenting — it will still continue to be present and powerful. Human beings must recognize that we need this planet more than it needs us and if we persist on being egocentric and covetous, in the end it is us who will
In this article, “The Shadow of the Past” Clive Ponting, proclaims the vital importance for our modern global civilization and offers a provocative and illuminating view of human history and its relationship to the environment. Ponting points out that as our species increased in population, it had a direct effect on our environment and our ecosystems could not support our increasing number. He argues that human beings have repeatedly built societies that have grown and prospered by exploiting the Earth’s resources, only to expand to the point where these resources can no longer sustain the society’s population and subsequently collapsed. Ponting is trying to get across a point by saying that if humans continue to markedly use resources or create unnatural resources, the natural ecosystem will not be able to follow these changes and it will soon be destroyed. Agriculture is what caused our population to grow which lead to a greater population. As our population grew, the more land we needed to cultivate on, the more ecosystems we destroyed. Since agriculture is our most important res...
Environmental activist, David Suzuki, explains how the progression that allowed Homo sapiens to advance into a “super species” may be the primary factor to what ends the wellbeing of our future. In his excerpt from “Rediscovering Our Place in Nature”, Suzuki goes into detail about how the components of life on Earth should not be compromised for the desires of a portion of the people who live there.
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, John Muir, a naturalist, and Marsden Manson, an engineer for the city of San Francisco, engaged in a heated debate over the construction of a dam in Hetchy Hetchy Valley. Muir wanted to preserve nature for the future, so he objected to the dam because he felt it would destroy the beauty of the area. On the other hand, Manson believed building a dam would provide water and electricity to the thousands of people who lived in the city of San Francisco, and this would preserve the well being of the human race for the future. Both men had good points and arguments to support their views; however, in the end you have to look out for your own kind. If there is a choice about the well being of the human race or nature, I believe there is only once choice to be made – the future support of the human race.
In the last hundred years, over 160 species of flora and fauna equating to millions have gone extinct (“The Sixth Extinction”, 2013). The harmful and selfish acts of man, with absolute disregard for the lives of non-human organisms, have caused colossal and devastating damage to the earth (Bekoff, 2014). All these destructive actions have been themed by Bekoff as “unwilding”. We are living in the Anthropocene, the age of humans. In a world where “unwilding” has unfortunately become a norm. Rewilding is the opportunity for us humans to reverse the destruction we have brought upon the natural world (Monbiot, 2013) if we humans did not “unwild”, rewilding would not be necessary now (Bekoff, 2014). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate the issues fuelling the controversy between proponents advocating rewilding, and opposition groups. It studies the movement of rewilding the earth, and the “rewilding” of people’s hearts (Bekoff, 2014), together with their positive impacts. In addition, it looks at the potential obliteration of our
In The Diversity of Life, Edward O. Wilson reflects on how the living world became diverse and how humans are destroying that diversity. In the book’s preface, Wilson defines biodiversity as “the totality of inherited variation in all organisms in a selected area” (Wilson ix). He adds that modern technology will allow for us to find many new species that were previously unknown to be in existence.
In “This is Your Brain On Nature”, Florence Williams explains psychologist David Strayer’s experiences and theories about Nature and how it affects people and the mind. Strayer believes that nature acts as an antidote to stress, and improves cognitive thinking as well. Williams presents several experiments conducted by Strayer about how nature is directly connected to our health with supporting evidence, but in some situations his hypothesis doesn’t very well apply.
The earth is made of every single molecule in the air, every breath an animal takes, every wind that blows, every rain drop that falls, every leaf that falls from a tree. In today's world, many people take advantage of Mother Nature, and give no respect to wilderness and earth. Oil mills are constructed and land is torn apart to make more room for the industrial, modern world. Many humans have forgotten about the beauties of nature, and are not concerned by the fact that Mother Nature is slowly dying. Our societies have begun to grow apart from the earth and the non-human world. In Donelle N. Dreese's essay, The Terrestrial Intelligence, he refers to Linda Hogan's collection of essays and believes that "her book, with all its stories, recreates the life of the natural world that has been objectified, and it redefines non-human creatures that have been negatively stereotyped" (12). Reese analyzes Hogan's essays and comes to a conclusion that Linda Hogan is trying to get the message across that humans, animals, and the earth are all connected one way or another, and that no matter how hard we try to detach ourselves from Mother Nature, we will never escape this relationship. Even though at times it seems as if humans have completely broken off from Mother Nature, there is still a connection there that not many people take notice of. Linda Hogan believes that humans are slowly killing the land, animals and even their own people, and by doing so, humans are trying to detach themselves from their roots, the Earth.
Mollison, 1991, also states that harmony with nature is only possible if humans can discard the notion that we are superior to the natural world. He states, “We are not superior to other life-forms; all living things are an expression of Life. If we could see that truth, we would see that everything we do to other life-forms we also do to ourselves. A culture which understands this does not, without absolute necessity, destroy any living thing.”
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, “Today’s global human population is over 7 billion. Every day, the planet sees a net gain of roughly 250,000 people” (3). That’s a substantial number considering that that number is more than twice of the population in the 1900s. As our numbers continue to increase the amount of resources needed for survival are decreased because the resources get used faster than they can be replaced. Joseph R. Simonetta states, “We are depleting our natural resources: our forests, fisheries, range lands, croplands, and plant and animal species. We are destroying the biological diversity on which evolution thrives (this is being called the sixth great wave of extinction in the history of life on earth, different from the others in that it is caused not by external events, but by us)” (Seven words that can change our world, 6).
The Stress Reduction Theory (SRT) proposes the idea that nature “posits a healing power of nature that lies in an unconscious, autonomic response to natural elements that occur without recognition and most noticeably in individuals who have been stressed before the experience”(Bratman; Nature Experience, cognitive function, and mental health). Scientists tested this theory through the usage of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). By analyzing the brain activity demonstrated in the images, facial expressions and other factors that indicate changes in emotion, scientists, consequently; children are not fully familiar with their emotions and couldn’t describe what they were feeling in detail. The fMRI brain images indicated massive differences in the children who had had a nature experience prior to the brain scans (the control group) compared to those who had not. The second theory Attention Restoration Theory “centers the power of nature to replenish certain types of attention through conscious, cognitive processed in response to natural landscapes.” The Attention Restoration Theory (ART) focused primarily on the differences in attention spans and behavior of children who lived in urbanized areas compared to those who live in greener areas. In a natural experiment Taylor “compared children from the same population in a housing complex in Chicago, whose living conditions and demographic characteristics differed only by their views from home: a small pocket of urban park or a barren concrete area.” (Berman, Tennessen, Cimprich and Taylor; Nature experience, cognitive function, and mental function). Children in both areas demonstrated the effects of an environment on the behavior and proved the Attention Restoration Theory. A minor
But biophilia architecture can be used as another example to elaborate human beings have an innate emotion affiliation towards nature and organisms. It is very common that people tend to keep a pet or house plants in their apartment, this can be seen as biophilia phenomenon too. It because keeps a pet or plants can let people have a closer relationship and interactions with nature. As my family own a dog, we like to spend the time to play and talk to him. Although we don't share a common language, we seem to know each other, and he can bring a pleasant atmosphere to our family. Another significant example is humans tends to choose a location with beach and abundant sunlight as their vacation destination, such as Thailand, Hawaii, etc. This is because those locations provide people with an opportunity to contact and interact with nature, and those nature environments have a positive effect towards humans, such as help us to relax and stay happy.
Anthropocentrism is the school of thought that human beings are the single most significant entity in the universe. As a result, the philosophies of those with this belief reflect the prioritization of human objectives over the well-being of one’s environment. However, this is not to say that anthropocentric views neglect to recognize the importance of preserving the Earth. In fact, it is often in the best interests of humans to make concerted efforts towards sustaining the environment. Even from a purely anthropocentric point of view, there are three main reasons why mankind has a moral duty to protect the natural world.