Triath wrote: The fact that we have felt we are different and even built civilizations, concrete zoos, according to Desmond Morris, and worked to consciously (or un-consciously) separate ourselves from the natural world, even ironically placing parks at the center of mass metropolitan areas, for our "entertainment."
If we look closely we can see that cities still contain their own ecosystems, and also that they impact and are dependent upon the world's ecosystems. It certainly gives the impression that we are "separate" from the natural world "outside": we don't have to see where our food comes from, where our air comes from, where our energy comes from, and many other resources we use to sustain our lives. Then there's all the waste that flows out of them back to the ecosystems.
I think to prove our "separateness" from nature we'd create more "transcendent" symbols of it, which would decrease our impact and dependence on nature; cities instead concentrate this impact and dependence. Cities aren't transcendent so much as imposing, and as symbols of separateness from nature are merely cosmetic. In practical terms cities are everything but separate from nature. So why not self-contained city "bubbles" or giant space-stations? Wouldn't they be more appropriate expressions of "separateness"?
Personally I think it's important that people realise how much we
do make an impact and depend on this planet. To lose perspective of our real situation is a dangerous hobby.
Triath wrote:Natural religions sees this as man moving away from his origins or his inner connection with Nature, but man has been building masses of stone and metal during our earliest stages of evolution. What if this separation is not a "bad thing" so to speak and man acting on the inner belief that he is different. The fact that humanity can step outside and see the world the way a majority of animals cannot may presuppose he is something different, something else.
I live and work in a forest, and can say that we don't need to create a separation or distance from nature to be different. The way we manage our environment, whether through farming, through gardening or through nature conservation, even constructing our buildings, is not something common to other species (parallels can be made, but we've taken it to a different degree). We can be right in the midst of wild nature and already we express our "differentness".
On the other hand, I don't think cities have to represent our separateness, they can integrate ecological principles of interdependence and biodiversity, including all the concrete and electric, without losing the integrity of human "differentness".
Isolation of Consciousness is a goal, it is characterized by the word Xeper (Kepher) which means: "I have come into Being."
Yes, I recognise that word. Only a conscious being could make that assertion, lol.
Would you say it resembles in some way Descarte's "I think therefore I am"?
For me Individuation, not isolation, is the goal. I don't separate from the world around me, I work to become a whole unit within myself, distinct from the world around me, not to be confused or "merged" with it, and yet still connected to it in a holistic way.
"Evolution does not isolate us from the rest of the Kosmos, it unites us with the rest of the Kosmos: the same currents that produced birds from dust and poetry from rocks produce egos from ids and sages from egos." Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology
You might be interested in this article of mine:
http://thegroveofquotes.wordpress.com/ecopsychology/And thanks for your links.
