Natural Environments and Human Health. Alan W Ewert
takes our consciousness away from nature and with it our connection with nature. Many people feel alienated from nature and part of that comes from our separation or lack of knowledge about where our food comes from. While we have more food choices than ever in the US and other developed countries, we have less understanding and physical, emotional, and spiritual connection to food, including food gathering, food cultivation, animal killing, and processing.
This sixth shift, from the Industrial Revolution to a technical revolution, has occurred in a relatively short period of time. Now humans are able to live entire lifetimes seemingly without having to encounter nature. Exceptions to this isolation often occur only in the midst of natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, mudslides, rock fall, and tidal waves and tsunamis. Considering the impact such encounters imprint on those who experience them, it is not surprising that many people have a reaction of pervasive fear and mistrust of the natural world (Mitten and Woodruff, 2009). Another effect of the distance from the natural environment that technology exacerbates is that humans are further removed than ever before in history from the consequences of their actions on natural systems. This leads to a vicious cycle of dramatic human-caused changes to the natural systems, more natural disasters, and a buildup of negative health consequences because of our self-polluted living environment. The outcome is a web of crises fueled by our nearpathological pursuit of technological fixes that has brought human civilization to the brink of collapse.
From the first binary programmable computer in the late 1930s to the iPhone today and who knows what tomorrow, technology has altered culture. The transition in birthing practices over time is indicative of a larger cultural shift in which science and technology have become revered above natural processes. By the mid-1900s most hospitals had become sterile, often large complexes more concerned with efficiency and cost rather than patient satisfaction. Outdoor terraces and balconies disappeared and parking lots replaced natural areas (Malkin, 1992; Ulrich, 1992; Ulrich and Parsons, 1992; Horsburgh, 1995).
In June 2013 the American Medical Association labeled obesity a disease, and in doing so went against the recommendation of its own council on Science and Public Health. The human body is adapted to storing extra calories as fat; eating more calories than needed and then gaining weight is normal. Labeling obesity a disease is a signal of how far we have distanced ourselves from natural processes and from taking responsibility for lifestyle choices. We are now in a place where we have to consciously try to connect with the natural environment rather than it being something that happens on a daily basis.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 and the wilderness movement illustrated that even when humans wanted to go into the wilderness they thought of themselves as separate. Wilderness is defined by the Wilderness Act of 1964 as a place where ‘man’ [sic] is separate: ‘A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain’ (Anon., 1964, section 2(c)). The principal author Howard Zahniser, along with John Muir and other prominent preservationists of the time were working within the dominant WorldView of nature being separate from humans, and thus acting to preserve and protect the natural environment by keeping it separate from human civilization. This view of nature came from the same dominant and separate perspective of people who believed that nature was intended for human use and wanted to consume it as natural resources for growth. Aspects of the current environmental movement retain this separate from nature view. Rather than conceiving ourselves as part of the ecosystem, we see ourselves as living outside it and modifying our behavior—recycling, turning down thermostats, eating local, and installing compact florescent light bulbs—to ‘save’ the environment.
Our current WorldView or paradigm, characterized by anthropocentrism, materialism, and alienation from nature, has resulted in humans leaving a clear and unique record in the Earth’s geologic history, causing some geologists to label this historic period the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). While most epochs have lasted millions of years (the Mesozoic lasted for hundreds of millions of years; the Eocene and others lasted more than 20 million years), the most recent period, the Holocene, has lasted 11,000 years, approximately since the end of the last Ice Age. The significant human-driven processes—including nitrogen pollution (humans now synthetically fix more nitrogen than is fixed by all the world’s ocean and land plants, including ocean acidification), overfishing, patterns of consumption, and population growth, that are likely to have lasting effects for tens of millions of years—have influenced the jump to a possible new epoch, the Anthropocene (Zalasiewicz et al., 2008). Zalasiewicz et al. (2011) note that George Perkins Marsh addressed the anthropogenic global change in Man and Nature published in 1864 and in the 1870s Italian geologist, Antonio Stoppani, used ‘Anthropozoic’ to label the transformation caused by humans. While geologists are slow to embrace change, the term Anthropocene was adopted relatively quickly after Paul Crutzen (one of three chemists who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for discovering the effects of ozone-depleting compounds) and Eugene Stoermer (2000) used the term Anthropocene in an article published by the International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme (IGBP).
Geologists will not be quick to pin down an Anthropocene epoch dates. This entry into a new geologic period, demonstrated by humans’ record left on Earth and in particular the stratigraphic record, is especially evident since the onset of the Industrial Revolution (Connor, 2010) and analyses of air trapped in polar ice showed the beginning of global changes in concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane from the late 1800s. Other scientists say the Anthropocene might not begin for up to 50 years from now because future changes may dwarf our current changes. This dialogue is useful in terms of bringing to light the deep impact humans have on Earth, leaving a unique and clear record, though the actual reality of the change and delineation of epochs will be more precise in retrospect, perhaps 100 years in the future or more.
The impact of the last three of these six major shifts in the dominant WorldView of nature has been to reinforce a perceived disconnection of people from the natural world, as well as to reinforce a value of manufactured and non-nature-based goods, including pharmaceuticals and foods that have replaced nature-based goods. Humans’ dependency on fossil fuels comes to light as we extract oil from more difficult sources and transport it over greater distances, risking and causing greater and greater environmental disasters.
As shown by imaging, what humans do in their physical life impacts the neuronal configuration of their brains. The change to an agrarian lifestyle, then to an industrial lifestyle and then to a technology lifestyle, and the associated increased sedentary nature has changed the brain; however, it may not be in our best interests. Neural mechanisms guide our social relationships, including motivation and drive, reward and prediction, perception and memory, impulse control and decision making. As beliefs get inculcated into the culture, newborn members grow up learning the new behaviors and beliefs, not knowing other options. Thus, the new WorldViews become ingrained. In this manner the mechanical universe cosmological story continues to prevail in the technological stage, combined with the regenerative universe story believed by some.
The subculture in the industrial stage, which emphasized the need to clean and preserve the environment for human health and wellness continued into the technology stage. There are many small groups of people now working for more connection with the Earth and a sustainable future. Early in the technology stage, Aldo Leopold (1966) questioned the sentiment of humans as conquerors of nature and wrote in his famous Land Ethic that the land and all of its parts, including humankind, should be considered as members of the same community. Leopold did not oppose the wilderness concept, but rather saw it as a means of preserving the art and skill of travel and wilderness recreation, as a scientific laboratory, and as a reserve for wildlife. This was another indication of a movement in the US seeking to reunite humans with the natural environment and recognizing the importance of nature to the health and well-being of humankind.
Even today many indigenous people live in harmony with nature and natural landforms and have kept the knowledge of this mutual dependency between nature and humans at the forefront of their culture. Some Native Americans, flying in the face of a materialistic culture, continue the tradition of potlach or gift-giving festival, though this practice has been made illegal in Canada and the US. A number