Biophilia and Biodiversity 1: Nature – love it or leave it, or is it just a fun playground?

In my last post I stated that nearly everyone connects to the natural world on a fundamental level.  The term Biophilia was first coined by Erich Fromm in his book The Heart of Man: It’s genius for Good and Evil (1964), but was popularized by E.O. Wilson in 1984 with his book Biophila.    Wilson states, “the rich, natural pleasure that comes from being surrounded by living organisms,” and “the urge to affiliate with other forms of life.”

Keeping a child from stepping on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.  Bradley Miller.

From the online Cambridge Dictionary: “The biophilia concept states that we are drawn to environments that have supported human life in the past, so responding to nature is part of our genetic makeup.  The biophilia theory, though not universally embraced by biologists, is supported by a decade of research that reveals how strongly and positively people respond to such things as open, grassy landscapes.”

A week ago, I was at my sister-in-law and her husband’s house in southern Colorado.  Their house is on a hill outside of town.  In the evening a small black bear wandered through the back-garden area, followed a short while later by a large male deer, and then after sunset a small group of Grey Foxes.  Visitors I have taken down to their house are always impressed by their scenic views of two nearby mountain ranges, and then I watch them gasp with joy when wildlife just happens to wander by the house, just as happened last week for me.  I have only ever met a few people in my life who disdain wildlife or the natural world – self-proclaimed city folk for whom the concrete and glass towers of modernity are all that matter.  Yet, even these people want to have green park spaces nearby in which to sit and contemplate their lives.

When I travel around and visit places, people I see are all keen to walk in the wilder areas, visit zoos, safari parks, walk in large gardens (as in stately manors and homes), drive to viewpoints in spectacular settings, as just some of the need for natural areas.  There is a myth that just getting people out into the wild will somehow make them appreciate nature more.  To some this is certainly true, but for many it takes much more than being in nature to begin a love affair with nature.  If it were true that being in a natural setting made one come to love nature, the hordes using ski lifts and gondola’s to get a downhill skiing rush would be nature’s greatest supporters.  Alas, it seems that for many the monumentalism of the scenic vista’s and the hedonistic rush of cold air as one flies down a steep slope is what it is all about.  They play in nature but do not necessarily think of nature as anything but a wonderful setting in which to enjoy themselves.  Many people who visit the wonderful American National Parks are in awe at the splendor of the natural settings (monumentalism) but that does not automatically translate to a deep abiding love of the natural setting they are within.  That it seems is a big step in which the research I read is not well defined.  Just what is it that take people from liking nature to actually loving nature?

There was a time, and not so long ago, when all humanity lived within the natural world all the time.  For over 200,000 years humanity lived as a part of nature, even when city states sprung up (maybe some 5,000 years ago) and the connection with the natural world started to become tenuous, nature was always a backdrop to life.  This, even if we had the belief that we had we had somehow managed to become lords of the Earth with the illusion that we controlled it and wanted to subdue the natural world.  Only in the last 300 years or so, and more, and especially in the last 70 years has it seemed that our natural connection was lost.  I have often said that we are not disconnected from the natural world, but merely highly distracted by modern electronic joy and a hedonistic seeking lifestyle.

As an academic I did several studies to understand how people think about the natural world and about their views on change to sustainable living.  It is amazing how many academics do work that they try to publish but it never makes it through the peer review and editorial process – sometimes because the reviewers comment on methodological problems or because they consider it unimportant.  Sometimes it takes a determined effort to get it eventually published and other times it is simply easier to let it go and find something that else that can be publishable – that’s the life of academic research.  Anyway, some work I decided to let go was about how people thought about wilderness and wild nature.  As you might guess a lot of it is relative and changes as your experience within wild nature increases – something the peer reviewers wanted more work uncovering.  In a nutshell, I noticed that what is labeled wild depends on how much wild experience you have gone through.  In a city, an inner city kid may think that a local neighborhood park with some wild squirrels in it is wilderness.   For an international adventure, wilderness might be an extremely remote area that is both difficult to get to and also hard to escape from if difficulties arise.  It’s all on a continuum.  What connects everyone on that continuum is the feeling that being in a setting that is perceived as wild brings a rush of excitement and connectedness to the natural world that brings a sense of elation and often increased feelings of well-being.  Indeed, the connection to nature is so profound by those who receive nature-therapy do come to understand how a love of nature occurs.

To sum up this post, we see almost universally that most humans have an affinity for parks and wildlife, keep pets that are shown to increase well-being, show increased interest in escaping urban settings to go hiking, birding, fishing, hunting, backpacking, etc… and also are willing to pay substantial amounts of money to have property that has landscape views and spectacular settings.  No, we are not disconnected, we are distracted.  How we take that and move towards a true biophilia is something we do need to think more about and soon.

“The Ph.D. may become as callous as an undertaker to the mysteries at which he officiates…Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.”  Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There, 1948.