In the world created by “screens”, the word “natural” is becoming less and less common?

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The author of this article, Alan Lightman, is both a physicist and a novelist. Some of his ideas about nature are not new. Since industrialization, countless humanists have conducted many profound reflections on the relationship between man and nature. Rousseau and Emerson, who he cited in the article, were also very popular in China.

However, if there is no reasonable solution to the concerns about technology, then such concerns can easily fall into emptiness. Moreover, if we look back at the claims and concerns of Rousseau from a contemporary perspective, we will find that this issue is particularly complicated: on the one hand, technological progress has greatly improved our quality of life, and on the other hand, after the scale of technology, there are indeed backlashes against nature and human nature. More importantly, due to the close distance, it is difficult for us to make a complete and retrospective value judgment on a certain technology at the moment, just as social media polarizes the already divided population, but it also has the spreadability and instant communication efficiency that no previous era has had. This is just like Rousseau's concerns about the railways back then. If it were the case, today's theme should be: Which is more important: "Improving people's livelihood" or "destroying the ecology"? How to weigh the pros and cons at a certain stage?

Recently, I met astronomer Pascal Oesch, an assistant professor at the University of Geneva. Professor Oesch and his colleagues have the unique honor of discovering the most distant object known, a small galaxy called GN-z11. That galaxy is so far away that its light takes 13 billion years to travel from there to Earth.

GN-z11 is a high-redshift galaxy found in the Ursa Major constellation. It is the oldest and most distant known galaxy in the observable universe. © Astrobites

I asked Professor Ursh if he felt a personal connection to the tiny dot of light on his computer screen. Did it feel like part of nature , the same world as Keats, Goethe and Emerson, a world where “vines festooned the eaves of thatched cottages, and laden the old trees with apples”?

Ursh replied that he looked at these distant lights every day.

Of course they are part of the universe, he said. But think about this abstract process: A few tired photons from the GN-z11 fall on photodetectors on satellites orbiting the Earth, generating tiny electric currents that are converted into numbers 0 and 1, which are then transmitted to Earth in the form of radio waves. The information is then processed in data centers in New Mexico and Maryland and ends up on Professor Ursh's computer screen in Geneva.

Today, professional astronomers rarely peer into the sky through a telescope; instead they sit in front of a computer screen.

Many of us spend hours every day staring at our televisions, computers and smartphones, and it’s not just astronomers. We rarely step out on a clear night away from city lights to gaze into the dark night sky, or take a walk in the woods without a digital device to keep us company.

We spend most of our days in buildings made of wood, concrete and steel. Despite our technological advances, our direct contact with nature has been greatly reduced. Our lives are saturated with media.

© Tenor

We have created a world without nature.

Yet, for more than 99% of human history, we have been closely connected to nature. We live outdoors. The first house with a roof appeared 5,000 years ago, television has been around for less than a century, and web-enabled cell phones are only about 30 years old.

For most of our 2 million years of evolutionary history, Darwinian forces have shaped our brains to give us an intimate connection with nature, a quality that biologist EO Wilson has called “ biophilia ” (Biophilia, as defined in Wilson’s 1984 book Biophilia as “the desire for contact with other life forms”).

This closeness is beneficial for survival. Choosing a habitat, foraging for food, reading the signs of an approaching storm all contribute to a deep connection with nature.

© Harry Gruyaert/Magnum

Social psychologists have observed that this sensitivity remains deeply embedded in our psychology today. Further psychological and physiological research[1] suggests that spending more time in nature can increase happiness and well-being, while less time in nature can increase stress and anxiety.

Thus, there is a profound disconnect between the nature-less environment we have created and the “natural” emotions in our minds.

In reality, we live in two worlds: one that is intimately connected to nature, deeply embedded in our ancient brains, and the other, the unnatural world of digital screens and artificial environments, constructed by our technological and intellectual achievements.

We are waging a war against our ancient selves. The costs of this war are only now beginning to become apparent.

In 2004, social psychologists Stephan Mayer and Cindy McPherson Frantz of Oberlin College developed a tool called the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) to determine a person’s biophilia. Participants are asked to respond to each statement as “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “neutral,” “agree,” or “strongly agree,” and an overall score is calculated.

Some statements made on CNS tests include:

·I often feel at one with the natural world around me.

I view the natural world as a community to which I belong.

When I think about life, I imagine myself as part of a larger life cycle.

I feel an equal sense of belonging to the Earth, just as the Earth belongs to me.

I feel that all living things on Earth, human and non-human, share a common “life force.”

In recent years, psychologists have conducted a number of studies investigating correlations between CNS test scores and established experimental measures of happiness and well-being. In 2014, psychologist Colin Capaldi of the Public Health Agency of Canada and his colleagues combined 30 such studies involving more than 8,500 participants.[1]

Psychologists have found a significant correlation between nature connectedness and life satisfaction and happiness. Capaldi and his team concluded: “Individuals with higher levels of nature connectedness tend to be more conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and open to nature…Nature connectedness is also associated with emotional and psychological well-being.”

© Form Nutrition

There are many examples of such correlations in specific settings. Patients recover better after surgery in hospital rooms with leafy plants or windows looking out onto gardens and trees. Workers in offices with windows looking out onto pastoral landscapes report lower levels of anxiety, more positive attitudes at work, and greater job satisfaction.

We don’t have to look far to find literary expressions of the “feeling of bliss” that comes from being immersed in nature. In his 1844 essay “Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “In such a climate, there are days in almost every season of the year, when the world is perfect, when air, celestial, and earth are one, as Nature would do to her offspring… We step quietly from our little crowded houses into the evening and morning, and see every day enfolded in its embrace the beauty of the sublime. ”

Poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019). © NPR

In our busier, more technologically intensive present, it takes more effort to quietly escape from our tiny, crowded homes. But poet Mary Oliver did it. In her 1972 poem “Sleeping in the Woods,” Oliver writes that she “slept more peacefully than I ever have, lying like a pebble/on a stream bed, with nothing/between me and the white fire of the stars/except my thoughts, floating gently/like moths through/the branches of the perfect woods…By morning/I had disappeared at least a dozen times/into something better.”

Forests are particularly effective for restoring the mind. Doctors and psychologists in Japan have developed a form of psychotherapy called shinrin-yoku (forest bathing). The idea is that spending time in nature, especially walking in a forest, can improve mental health. The study involved hundreds of healthy volunteers, using standard psychological tests to assess mood and anxiety, and compared those who spent a day in the forest with a control group who stayed out of the forest.

© Shizuka Ryokan

The results showed that after a day in the forest, there was a significant reduction in hostility, depression and stress. This effect was not only reflected in psychological tests such as mood scales and anxiety scales, but also in quantifiable chemicals measured in our bodies that showed a decrease in anxiety and stress levels.

Numerous studies recently summarized and published in the International Journal of Biometeorology[2] show that forest bathing significantly reduces levels of cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone. This is not surprising, since hormones are messengers between the brain and the rest of the body. Our brains evolved over millions of years to adapt to life on savannahs and plains, not thousands of years in enclosed buildings.

One of my most profound encounters with nature occurred several years ago on an island in Maine. A pair of ospreys lived near our house on the island, and my wife and I would observe the birds’ behavior in season.

In mid-April, the osprey couple returns from wintering in South America to lay eggs in the nest. In late May or early June, the eggs hatch and the chicks grow. The father dutifully brings fish food to the birds in the nest every day, and the chicks grow up. By mid-August, they are big enough to leave the nest and take their first flight.

© Giphy

Throughout the season, my wife and I document their arrivals and departures. We keep an eye on the number of chicks each year. We observe that in early August, weeks before they leave the nest, the young ospreys begin to flap their wings to gain strength for flight.

One evening in August, the two young ospreys were preparing to take off for the first time as I watched them from my second-floor circular balcony. They had been watching me all summer, just as I had been watching them. My balcony was about the same height as the nest, and to these newly-leaved birds, I seemed to be in their own nest.

They completed a half-mile loop in the air and then suddenly came flying towards me. Although slightly smaller than an adult, a juvenile osprey is still a large bird with powerful, sharp talons.

My first reaction was to duck because their claws could tear my face open. But something kept me grounded. When they were only 15 or 18 feet away, the two birds suddenly flew upwards and away.

But before that terrifying climb, our eyes met for about a second. Words cannot describe that moment. It was a look of connection, of mutual respect, of the recognition that we shared the same land.

When the two young ospreys left, I found myself shaking, tears welling up in my eyes. I still don’t fully comprehend what happened in that moment. But it was an experience of deep connection with nature, a sense of wholeness. In a striking study a few years ago,[3] Selin Kesebir of London Business School and psychologist Pelin Kesebir of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that descriptions of nature in novels, song lyrics, and film plots have declined since the 1950s, while descriptions of man-made environments have not.

The researchers first carefully selected a list of 186 words that reflected nature and human connections to it, but did not include scientific terms. Nature words in the general category included animals, snow, soil, fall, river, sky, stars, and seasons. Examples in the birds category included hawk, heron, and robin. Examples in the trees category included elm, redwood, and cedar. Examples in the flowers category included bluebells, lilac, and rose.

© Nico Krijno

For comparison, the scientists chose words that reflect man-made environments, such as bedroom, street, and lamp. The researchers then used online databases such as Google Ngram, Songlyrics.com, and IMDb to track the frequency of nature words and "non-nature" words in various cultural products since 1900.

Of course, a growing vocabulary would cause older words to be used less frequently. However, the Kayserbies did not find a decline in the use of older words related to the man-made environment. They also ruled out another competing factor: people moving from rural areas to cities over time. Although this trend certainly exists, the growth of urban populations did not suddenly accelerate in the 1950s, which would be in stark contrast to the decline in the use of natural words at that time.

The researchers conclude that the decline in cultural references to nature, and its decline in the popular imagination, must be linked to technological changes starting in 1950, particularly the advent of indoor and virtual activities such as television (1950s), video games (1970s), computers connected to the internet (1980s) and smartphones (1990s-2000s) – in other words, the world created by screens.

In fact, a 2018 Nielsen study[4] found that the average American adult spends more than nine hours a day looking at digital screens—more than half of our waking hours.

So, what exactly have we lost in this unnatural, digital world of our own creation, other than psychological dissonance with our ancient selves?

© Take Care of Texas

First, as I described, we lose the psychological health benefits of being in nature, contrasted with the increased stress of living without it. Second, our young people are suffering psychological damage from being disconnected from nature and overly immersed in screens.

In his influential book Last Child in the Woods, journalist Richard Louv coined the term “nature-deficit disorder” to describe children who experience increased rates of mental illness and depression due to a lack of immersion in nature.

A recent study summarized in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing[5] showed that while children are spending more time indoors, their mental health problems are increasing. In contrast, the study also concluded that spending more time in “green spaces” can improve children’s attention, reduce stress, and even correlate with higher scores on standardized tests.

Then there is the artificial world of the screen itself. In a survey of more than 44,000 caregivers of children and adolescents in the United States, Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, and his colleagues found[6] that screen time of more than one hour a day was associated with decreased psychological well-being, including less curiosity, poorer self-control, more distractibility, difficulty making friends, emotional instability, and poorer ability to complete tasks. The oldest group of adolescents (14 to 17 years old) spent an average of 4.6 hours a day in front of a screen.

All of this is worrisome, and requires intervention. But I think there’s something else we lose when we distance ourselves from nature, something more subtle and harder to measure: a sense of being rooted in the land, a connection to something bigger than ourselves, a calm in the face of a fast-paced digital world, a wellspring of creativity, and the wholeness I feel when I make eye contact with an osprey.

Nature nourishes our spiritual self.

© Giphy

I mean a sense of being part of something larger than ourselves, a connection to something ancient and real in an ever-changing world, an appreciation for beauty, and awe of the weird and wonderful universe we inhabit.

We all feel that indescribable something when we walk into a forest, sit by the sea, or gaze up at the sky on a bright night. Somehow, we are reconnecting with our ancestral selves and the chain of life that stretches back to pristine oceans and pure lands.

Technology, in its broadest sense, has caused these dislocations. There are, of course, many different types of science and technology, and most of them have greatly improved the quality of our lives. The printing press, the steam engine, antibiotics, the automobile, the vacuum tube, the silicon chip, electricity, the birth control pill, anesthesia, the refrigerator. Televisions, computers, and smartphones can also improve the quality of life if used in moderation and without interfering with our experience of the wind, the rivers, the sky, the meteor showers, the trees, the soil, and the wildlife.

Technology itself has no thoughts and no values. We humans have thoughts and values ​​and can use technology for good or evil.

I’m not naive enough to think that the technological evolution of our modern world will slow down or even stop. But I do think we need to pay more attention to the costs of this technology and the vital importance of experiencing nature firsthand.

And by “price,” I mean what Henry David Thoreau said in Walden: “The price of a thing is the life sacrificed for it.”

The new technology of Thoreau’s time was the railroad, which he feared was taking away life. Literary critic and technology historian Leo Marx echoed Thoreau’s fears in his 1964 book, The Machine in the Garden, which described how American rural life was interrupted by technology and industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Max certainly couldn’t have imagined the internet and smartphones, which came decades after him. Now, I worry about the prospect of the “metaverse,” an all-encompassing virtual world, and the race in Silicon Valley to build it.

Again, it’s not the technology itself that we should be focusing on, but how we should use that technology in a way that balances it with other aspects of our lives.

Many years ago, I took my then two-year-old daughter to the beach for the first time. I remember that we had to walk a long distance from the parking lot to see the sea. Along the way, we passed various signs of the sea: sand dunes, shells, crab claws dried in the sun, small piping plovers, sea lavender bushes growing between rocks, and the occasional empty soda bottle. The air was filled with the smell of salt and freshness.

My daughter followed a winding path, crouching here and there to observe interesting rocks or shells, until we crested the last dune.

© Gifer

Suddenly, the ocean appeared before us, silent and vast, its turquoise surface unfolding until it merged with the sky. I worried about my daughter's reaction to the vast, pristine nature she had never seen before. Would she be scared, delighted, or indifferent? For a moment, she froze. Then she smiled.

References:

[1]www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00976/full

[2]www.researchgate.net/publication/235394485_Effects_of_woodland_walking_on_salivary_stress_markers_cortisol_and_chromogranin_A

[3]journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691616662473

[4]www.nielsen.com/zh/insights/2018/time-flies-us-adults-now-spend-nearly-half-a-day-interacting-with-media/

[5]www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0882596317301859[6]www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6214874/

By Alan Lightman

Translation/Yuba and Thin Bamboo

Proofreading/Rabbit's Light Footsteps

Original article/www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/01/machine-garden-natureless-world/621268/

This article is based on the Creative Commons License (BY-NC) and is published by Yuzhu and Shouzhu on Leviathan

The article only reflects the author's views and does not necessarily represent the position of Leviathan