mark w. paddock: st. louis post may 2, l971
missouri botanical garden / asst. director
did you feel as tho you were floating in space with the swallows and swifts darting pats?
how many of us stop for a moment in our frantic lives to pluck a dandelion head gone to seed, wave it in the air and gaze at the little 'parachute' floating to earth?
what do most of us feel when we watch a bulldoze push, strip and cut the land to make way for some new development? A few of us experience a true physical hurt as we see part of our world destroyed. Others see the beginnings of a new subdivision, a broader tax base ... something that is called land improvement.
when the snow falls, do we allow ourselves to be caught up in its beauty?
or are we caught up only in the worry of getting home thru tied up traffic on slippery streets?
after a long dry spell, when the earth is dusty and cracked and plants desperately need a drink, and cool rain sets in, do we feel a sense of awe and wonder at being a part of this natural system? Or are we more likely to think only of a canceled ball game or picnic, or the inconvenience of picking up children at school?
do we understand weather only in terms of golf games?
as adults most of us experience a ŇonenessÓ: with nature only thru remembering scenes and events of childhood, when the spilling over of self into the natural world was so complete. When we grow up in modern, technological, materialistic society, many of us lose this continuity with nature. We do not have a real sense of belonging in the natural world. We forget that man is just another animal and is therefore part of nature, that man and nature are one. nature is understood in at least two, contrasting ways: the more common concept of nature is of a natural system in which man and his civilization are not a part. It refers to what would be present if man were to somehow vanish from the earth. From this view arises the tendency to think in terms of many AND environment -- of man standing over and against nature or of nature being there only for manŐs use.
however, there is another definition of nature that is more comprehensive and more truthful, for it includes man and his works within its compass. From this view arises the concept of man IN the environment -- man as inextricable part of nature.
these two concepts of nature present the alternatives open to modern man so far as his relation to the future and to natural world are concerned.
the second concept, the one that carries an awareness of the interrelated web of life, truly perceives nature with a special dimension.
Professionally, this awareness is found most often in life scientists (especially ecologists) anthropologists and some urban planners and landscape architects.
we must all understand that biologically man is an animal and therefore only part of the intricate web of life that supports him; his well-being and survival depend on the stability of this web of life. By destroying parts of it and exterminating species, he reduces its intricacy and undermines his own position. In warring against nature, he is warring against himself.
in the past, moral progress has been reckoned in terms of manŐs widening sense of kinship with other men. Continued progress must be found in a growing sense of relationship with all creation. If, as John Donne said, Ňno man is an island,Ó neither is any species. The belief that man alone has value divorces man from the world and permits the kind of destruction in which man neither knows nor cars what he destroys.
The contrary belief is an awareness of the real intimacy of the relationship between man and all things.
aldo leopold said it perhaps better than anyone almost 30 years ago:
"there is as yet no ethic dealing with manŐs relations to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. The land relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations."
such thinking is rare in this era of technological domination of western culture. strangely enuff, it is absent or underdeveloped in country dwellers as often as in urban people. Those of us who experience the perception of nature best probably are urban dwellers who have been given or experienced the right opportunities to develop this perception this awareness of natural world.
the final solution of the environmental crisis will be develop one again within man an awareness of his environment, a perception, a loving ethic. Technology has, in part, got us into this crisis, and a new technology is need to combat the existing problems.
we desperately need pollution control and abatement, recycling of materials, anti-litter campaigns, ecologically sound land use, population control and environmental education. We need these now or it will be too late. But these are, in the end, only expedient measures.
technology will enable us to buy time, but human survival may eventually come about only thru a new life style, a new ethic, a new vision, a new set of values, an all-pervasive acceptance and understanding that man and nature are one.
6/16f/95