Nature does not belong to us

From the center of Bolzano, there is a beautiful cable car that takes you up to the Renon plateau. It was a clear day in June and with a group of friends, we were preparing for our excursion to the “horn” of Renon. Passing over some meadows, a child, present with us in the cabin following his parents, exclaimed “Mom look, a sheep!” Indicating, however…a cow.

His mother promptly corrected him “but no love, can’t you see it’s a cow?”. The little boy, about 8/10 years old, scrutinizes the animal with an inquiring look.

“Mom, isn’t that a sheep? I’ve never seen it in person”.

How did we end up like this?

The American journalist Richard Louv in his book “Last Child in the Woods” coined the famous term Nature Deficit Disorder, the syndrome of detachment from nature. It consists of the “set of signs that characterize the human condition in the absence of contact with nature”.

Nature has now become for us a kind of glossy cardboard, digitized and virtualized, increasingly distant from our lives.

Everyone talks about it, everyone yearns to be under the coolness of the canopy of a forest in the summer as well as to be able to climb to a peak at dawn to see wild animals.

The world of natural things has taken on romantic and idealistic connotations that actually do not suit Nature in its most authentic form.

The wild world is often dangerous, unfair, sometimes deadly. Animals are not “cute and cuddly” like in the movies, but they are free and wild, they respond only to their instincts: they are neither good nor bad — this is a distinction that belongs to human judgment — they just live.

With our rigid and purist definitions, the truth is that we are stealing nature from our children, nature as it should be conceived and treated.

If a child living in a big city today has no opportunity to have contact with a common animal such as a cow, let alone for what is deemed wild. What reaction might she have?

Some animals — wild — that were born and raised in captivity when they are let out in the wild don’t know what to do: they stand there, standing still on the threshold for several minutes, sometimes hours, waiting to overcome some sort of invisible obstacle.

They completely miss the pattern, the instinctive pattern that allows them to revive their senses and become part of this great harmony again.

What if we too, as a result of modernity, find ourselves in an invisible cage? Think of lockdowns: for some people it took a pandemic and an order to stay indoors to feel the need to spend more time outdoors. Just as the fear of suddenly running out of food has driven many to tolerate endless queues at supermarkets, punctuated at times by real assaults, suddenly valuing those elements — food — essentials that we have always taken for granted. “Man shall not live by only bread,” says the Gospel according to Matthew. Indispensable forms of nourishment, those of physical, emotional, spiritual and natural nourishment to which we should return in order to aspire to a better quality of life.

The time has come to re-educate to nature and contact with it as a lever to ensure collective well-being, physical and mental; to restore beauty, kindness, ecosystem thinking, emotional intelligence and a formation of values, heritage inherited from the wisdom of the past but negligently neglected.

Only by getting back to know closely the Nature from which we have progressively moved away, we will feel the desire to respect it, finding a new way to make city and country, urban world and wild world dialogue, doing good to us and to the environment. After all, this is what ecology is all about: looking at reality as it is, understanding its connections, accepting its complexity, and striving for harmony between all parts.

Nature is everywhere, it’s out there but it’s also within us. “Anything that can happen to a garden can happen to the soul and psyche: too much water, too little, discomfort, heat, storm, flood, invasion, miracles, death, rebirth, grace, blossoming, healing, beauty,” writes Jungian psychologist Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Precisely for this reason, Thalea and Future Food Institute are working to facilitate dialogue. In this moment of ‘rebirth,’ we are working to build a Thalea Lab in Cilento (cradle of the Mediterranean culture, surrounded by UNESCO sites, immersed in the richest and most biodiverse natural park in Europe and recognized by UNESCO as the Emblematic Community of the Mediterranean Diet) to measure the benefits of the Mediterranean lifestyle. Looking at not only the well-known health benefits of Mediterranean Diet, such as: preventing heart disease and stroke, reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons', protecting against type 2 diabetes, and increasing longevity, but also all the other aspects already explored by science. At this lab, we can measure spontaneous electrical activity in individuals’ brains while they are immersed in the natural environments of the Cilento area.

“We feel this is the perfect time to contribute to a broader impact on human happiness and Nature’s conservation. Neuroscience is a wonderful gift, as it can constitute a bridge connecting the two, helping us demonstrate how they belong together.”- Andrea Bariselli

By combining the multitudinal benefits of the Mediterranean Diet with Pollica’s penchant for longevity, this innovative initiative aims to accelerate collective and multilevel collaboration and instill the awareness necessary to aspire to a complete, integrated, and integral nourishment, in which social and environmental regeneration can be measured. To reconnect humanity with its intrinsic natural ecosystem.

Because Nature does not belong to anyone. It simply belongs to everyone.

The Future Food Institute is an international social enterprise and the cornerstone of the Future Food Ecosystem, a collection of research labs, partnerships, initiatives, platforms, networks, entrepreneurial projects and academic programs, that aims to build a more equitable world through enlightening a world-class breed of innovators, boosting entrepreneurial potential, and improving agri-food expertise and tradition.

Future food advocates for positive change through initiatives in Waste & Circular Systems, Water Safety & Security, Climate, Earth Regeneration, Mediterranean Foodscape, Nutrition for All, Humana Communitas, and Cities of the Future as we catalyze progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Learn more at www.futurefoodinsitute.org, join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube. Or attend a program through the FutureFood.Academy!