Natural Environments and Human Health. Alan W Ewert
the frontal lobe to work more reliably. Gould, who supervised Schoenfeld’s research, hypothesized that those early humans who were temporarily sedentary would have benefited by being more anxious; it would increase their avoidant behavior and possibly keep them out of harm’s way. However, as Western society generally became sedentary the lack of movement leading to anxiety has had more negative side-effects than benefits, possibly including more violence.
Wilderness has become a special aspect of nature. Nash (2001) describes the development of the Western view of wilderness as having its roots in a concern for survival and a desire and felt need for humans to control their environment. He postulates that for much of the history of civilization ‘wilderness’ was a place to be feared, as contrasted with paradise—a gentle, easily controlled pastoral environment where food could easily be grown and humans could feel safe from predators and environmental dangers. This view, informed to an extent by Christian ideals and extended by seemingly endless supplies of natural resources, guided the treatment of the New World by the European settlers. It wasn’t until the romantics in the late 18th century and the transcendentalists in the 19th century—both reactions against the rationalization of nature of the 17th century onward—that nature was again perceived by some Western people as aesthetically, culturally, and spiritually important.
The dominant WorldView about nature of the early modernity stage can be summarized as nature was to be used, cultivated, and subdued. Nature was seen as the source of raw materials for growth. Through Western expansion, and based on the Cartesian mechanistic model and Newtonian physics, people believed they could learn mechanistic functions and then control processes, including nature and people. The mechanical universe cosmological story evolved, embodying a world that runs like clockwork according to a set of physical laws, leading to the industrial age and ever-increasing pressure on natural resources. This pressure not only included increased use, but also reliance on the environment to absorb the polluting effects of industrialization.
Once again there were groups of people who continued the traditions of the sacred cycle stage including earthen spiritualities, animistic, and shamanistic traditions in which humans believe that they are integral with nature, sharing the same life essence.
Industrial stage
The pursuit of power and dominance helped usher in an industrial society. In the 1700s, when global population was a tenth of its current size and the world’s resources seemed infinite, the concept of growth seemed like a road to a better life. Nature was integral to growth, providing raw materials and a platform on which to externalize manufacturing costs. Catalyzed by the invention of the first fossil-fuel power in the form of the steam engine, bringing with it unfathomable changes in the magnitude and speed of travel, the industrial age propelled people into a time of rapid change. WorldViews driving the Industrial Revolution included an economy dependent on growth and education based on the assembly model, resulting in a culture of consumption accompanied with materialism and consumerism held in esteem. Nature was an endless means to an endless end.
The belief in economic growth in the late 1700s was the catalyst for an economic revolution characterized by devotion to modern commerce and efficiency (McKibben, 2007) and dependent on consumer spending. Since World War II, growth has been integral in Western policy and aggressively exported to the world at large. The steam engine fueled growth, playing a key role in removing water from mines, transporting coal to the cities using locomotives, ships and roadways, and enhancing the manufacturing process in factories and mills. Even today, 90% of US electricity is from steam turbines.
This modern market economy does not reflect the full costs of goods and services, place any value on ecosystem services, or respect nature and basic ecological principles, resulting in a market that provides misleading information to economic decision makers. The incredible growth manifested in the US during a few short decades (100% growth in years, rather than millennia) led to a turbulent decade in the 1970s in which rivers caught fire, cities became thick with smog, and dependence on foreign oil shocked our economy (McKibben, 2007). Nature was reaching carrying capacity for many pollutants, motivating the first calls for limits to growth including E.F. Schumacher’s (2009) Small is Beautiful. These clarion calls were quickly eclipsed by the political will of the 1980s and 1990s during which economic growth once again took center stage.
During the 19th and 20th centuries education was adjusted to align with the philosophy and perceived needs of the economic market. With the Industrial Revolution came the need to train the population en masse ‘to perform as parts of machines – with precise, repetitive, mind-numbing action’ (Ackoff and Greenberg, 2008). Achieving success with the pursuit of industrialization required that children receive compulsory mass schooling intended to prepare them to be obedient parts of the new economic engine. The resulting mechanistic approach to education paralleled the increasingly mechanistic view of the world (Sterling, 2001).
In large part resulting from the above economic and educational paradigms, the dominant Western cultural narrative or WorldView has become one in which everyone could and should pursue the acquisition of material wealth as the pathway to happiness and freedom. A pervasive narrative has been created that people are separate from one another and the rest of the natural world and that the purpose of life is to primarily serve individual interests. Playing into the humans-are-separate-from-nature narrative was the fact that a transition from rural to urban environments meant that fewer people in the US lived in rural areas, therefore fewer people had nature as a large part of their everyday lives.
In summary, nature continued to be seen as the source of raw materials for growth, a commodity. Capitalist economies externalized environmental costs. Western people saw themselves as separate and above nature. Beginning in the late 1800s, a subculture of nature romanticism developed in Western cultures including authors Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. By the 1900s scientists and writers like Ellen Swallow Richards, Florence Nightingale, and Rachel Carson were expressing the importance of the interface of nature and human health, encouraging people in politics and at home to clean up the environmental pollution as well as take time to experience the beauty and awe of nature. There were people who believed it was important for children to be outside, resulting in the recreation movement to help children have safe outdoor play environments. The mechanical universe cosmological story prevailed in Western economies and was exported to as many cultures as were receptive. Many pockets of indigenous people continued their reciprocal relationship with nature; however, many were simply overrun by the industrial machine.
Technological stage
In the US the last 100 years have seen the beginning of the technology age and changes in society that hugely diminish the time people spend in contact with nature. By 1900 only 40% of US households lived on farms and by 1990, 1.9%. By the late 19th century technology was in place to transmit electrical current on a widespread basis. In 1882 the first central power plant was built in Manhattan providing light to about 500 homes. Technology for light spread rapidly and by 1895 a large-scale power plant was in place at Niagara Falls, replacing Edison’s direct current system with alternating current more efficient for longdistance transmission. The ubiquitous availability of electric light reduced people’s need to synchronize their activities with natural day and night rhythms, creating another physical separation from nature.
The evolution of manufacturing and technology has allowed us to control things that were once deemed uncontrollable. In the not-too-distant past, a society’s livelihood may have depended on local rainfall. Now, not only do we have the ability to ship foods and goods all around the world, effectively making up for poor weather conditions in certain areas, but we even have the technology to actually make it rain through cloud seeding and other techniques. While much of these technologies have enabled us to live healthier, longer lives, they have also had the important side-effect of radically changing our interaction with the world around us.
In 1992 the average US household made 2.3 trips to the grocery store weekly averaging 35–40 minutes each, which equates to 4.3 days per year spent food shopping; in contrast our ancestors in the Paleolithic Age are thought to have spent about 20 hours per week or 85 days per year securing food—while leaving significant time for shelter building and perhaps leisure.