(Green Roof. Vancouver, British Columbia)Please consider how much you need the natural world.
I’m leaving this purposely open and ambiguous so that you each come up with your own definition of “need”/ “natural world” etc. and furthermore to define for WHAT you need/ don’t need the natural world. The first line in the foreward to a Sand Co. Almanac touches on this concept: “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot” (vii, Leopold). Reflect on who is “telling you” that nature/the environment are important or not important to you and why.
Post #2: Alyssa Olson
ReplyDeleteI personally believe that I depend on the natural world a lot. Not only do I need the natural world for things such as food, land, and oxygen, but I also need it for inspiration and purpose.
The natural world is necessary for the survival of humans. Over the past few decades our society has shifted its use of the natural world. When our country used to be run mostly by agriculture we are now in a time where industry is booming and farming is mostly over-looked. This shift has led many to not fully recognize the dependence we have on the natural world. Without the trees in my yard I would not be able to breath, without the river I would not be able to drink, and without the land I would have nowhere to grow food or to live. Although most of us don’t go down to the river for water or live solely off the food they grow it is still important to understand our dependence on nature.
The natural world also provides a lot of the inspiration, which I seek in my art. The organic shapes and patterns that exist within the natural world give me many ideas for my designs and seeing as we are always surrounded by nature there is constantly new things to be inspired by. The relationship between humans and nature is what keeps everything alive and without the natural world I would most likely not be able to survive for very long.
Natural world? Or just world?
ReplyDeletePete Hall Response 2
I find it very odd that we make distinctions between the natural world and the un-natural world. Most make this distinction as man made versus non-man made. But are we not natural? Do we not breathe oxygen like all of the other animals? We are not creating anything by our means that is not natural because we are natural ourselves. We are taking natural entities and creating new natural entities from them. Physics says that matter cannot be created nor destroyed; we are not creating something completely new and unnatural when you look at the parts of our created sums. Is it then simply not natural because we have manipulated it?
Although I think everything in our environment, either formed by human hands or not, is our natural world, if I take the normal natural world definition of non-human created entities and consider my need for them, I find that I do “need” them. My basic needs (food, water, shelter) are provided in large part from this classical natural world. The apartment building I live in may not be built from local timber, but the masonry is begat from the soil. The walls are begat from timber. My water may come from a pipe that I pay to use, but is it not water from the Huron River Watershed? I simply pay for the convenience of not having to walk out to Traver Creek to collect water. My food may come from assorted groceries around Ann Arbor, but is it not based on grown and raised items like corn, wheat, and beef? Is my milk not milk because I bought it in a plastic jug instead of milking the cow myself?
I think that I try and keep a wide view of what my world and environment are, and while I understand what is meant by the natural world, I feel that because we as humans exist in the worlds we have created and the world already here everything in our environment is our natural world. Now Mars would be un-natural world for humans.
Also, it’s tough to describe the classical ‘natural’ world without using the word natural or a derivative of.