A second look at the modern western connection with nature.
As society becomes more and more digitized, so do the opportunities to make a living online. We can learn a topic online, we can design anything with software we can sell just about anything online and communicate over multiple platforms. With that being said, why do people so choose to live in a major city rather than somewhere private and scenic? We'll get to the answer in a moment but first we must explore the history and psyche of our ancestors.
In the dawning of human civilization, people never had a sense of self as we know of it today. We went about our lives dependent on nature and showed our appreciation for it in many ways. Nature wasn't seen as a threat like many westerners do today. Humans killed to survive and we could be killed as well, it was just the nature of the game. Same can go for today but we are much of a bigger threat to ourselves than nature is.
Imagine walking around the woods 10,000 years ago knowing nothing but basic instincts, kind of like animals. Though we were still much more intellectually advanced than the animal kingdom, the concept of separation from the surroundings didn't exist yet. We were just a part of everything just like the trees and birds. What has changed since then?
A pessimist would argue that it's our instinctual human nature that has separated us from nature. That would mean there would have to be a very traumatic event that would have caused this collective and long lasting distrust. Perhaps it could have the great cataclysms as described by the ancient texts.
We eventually learned agriculture. We found out we could control the production of food. Eventually, people specific to that task of producing the food (the farmer) would be responsible for other's sustenance. When people left the production of food to someone else, that ultimately began our mental separation from the planet.
Slowly nut surely humans have been erecting bigger and bigger cities and more and more people congregate towards them. That brought the onset of civilization and along with that, rules of a civilization. Societal norms and etiquette spread with literature and education. The ruling powers of given jurisdiction would punish people of unwarranted thought with torture and death. Therefore, societal norms were forced to be complied with. But those forced norms usually derived from religious texts that everyone felt they must abide by or they'll be punished by a spiritual entity, in this life or another. People are generally good and caring, that would mean society would promote the good behavior advocated by the religious texts and reinforced by the ruler. That brings us to our next point, peer-pressure to comply and a willingness to comply via threat. Those are the roots of the attack on free thought which are still vastly being applied today.
Fast-forward to today, people are drawn to the metropolis where the concentration of crime, mental illness, sterile corporate presence as well with a bloated authoritarian presence. Self-sustainability from the earth is non-existent, if any sort of it is there, it's not until after a burning instinctual desire to get back to nature had been realized.
The sense of primal presence has been replaced by stimuli in the form of TV, social media and video game. We tune out when engaged with this stimuli and lose all sense of time. We often waste a whole day looking at a screen and walk away with nothing. The good news is that the yearning for this presence is still there after all these thousands of years! This process will take some work and breaking small societal taboos that have been put in place though.
First I recommend finding your own personal spot that no one else will find in the wilderness. Name it, Claim it! Get tired and worn out trying to get to that spot, you have to put some effort into it. Soon you will have more pride in your accomplishment that cannot be taken away from you.
Next I say plant is something there. It can be anything, an apple tree, pine tree, tomato plant, whatever! That will not only want you to return to your spot in order to take care of your plant but you will have a tangible and positive marking on the landscape. You will have transformed the landscape for the positive! In doing that, you will have established a connection with God and the universe. A relationship so personal and loving it cannot be transcribed into words and no one will understand the feeling. You will then be refrained from bragging about your accomplishment because you know no one will understand. They will probably think you're crazy but who cares? It's not their life you're living!
Undoubtedly there are threats in the wilderness but there are more threats in the urban setting. You will have to let go of fear of the wilderness, perhaps bring something with you to mitigate that fear and any other supplies you may need except a cell phone!
Do not bring you phone with you! Cell phones have been designed to suck you in to the material world. The whole point of getting into nature is getting back to the its randomness and the lessons it teaches you. Detachment from you phone in a place where you will initially feel vulnerable is a hurdle that must be overcame. It will require faith and trusting yourself and the unknown, that will give you the gift of confidence.
