One Nature to rule them all — Letter #4
Dear Francisco,
The Arizona rancher will always have Paris… Wasn’t that what Humphrey Bogart said?
First, let me thank you for your reply and I’m glad you took the time to read my letter and to think about the points I wrote… I really appreciate that, since our lives are always way too busy (I believe this other matter will be a future topic for us to think about…).
Second, let’s go back to business!
I totally understand your point and maybe it’s just the dreaming-writer in me who would love to see Ellesméra at the end of my street, on the left, and Rivendell on the right…
But I gotta say that I think that this has become a little bit more than just a personal problem… Of course, you’re right about the “natural” urban elites’ tendency to see Nature as Paradise on Earth, the Garden of Eden, forgetting about the cons of it… Nature is beautiful, but it kills too… When I read your point, I remembered a moment in my life: I was a tourist in Saint Peter’s Square, in the Vatican, and out of a sudden, a Seagull attacks and butchers a Pidgeon right in front of me (and of God!). It was one of those moments in which reality hits your face: Nature is beautiful, but it kills indeed (it doesn’t only happen on those BBC Nature TV shows)!
Aside from that, I have to insist we do have a problem with the distance between us and Nature… I mean, just look outside and tell me what do you see?
Buildings, buildings, buildings (unless you are one of the fewer and fewer resistance members who sill live in the countryside). Paved roads, concrete everywhere, neon lights, dogs and cats locked up in small apartments, packed meat, fruits you recollect on a plastic bag in a supermarket, cows and goats and pigs in factories… Of course, this is the point we’ve reached on our way to human advancement (and this is easily undeniable: the other side of the same coin is medicine, bottled water, antibiotics, electricity, etc.), but I do believe that on our way, we lost our way…
Look at all these stress-related diseases, these pollution problems we face, the species we’ve endangered… Couldn’t all of them be solved or reduced if our streets were filled with trees, if you looked outside through the window and saw Nature with buildings here and there, instead of the opposite? (Is Singapore leading the way with their City in a Garden concept?)
Of course, this would be a structural change… You’re right. It would be something being explicitly imposed on humankind, when people do have the freedom to perform the changes themselves… Like you said, if I want to go see the mountains, I go see the mountains. And I don’t like to impose things on people, but I feel that by now we are perfectly capable of changing for the better (of course, after we all agree on what’s better! — and that’s the difficult part, right?)?
With all this technology we have at hand, couldn’t we all live better and in peace with Nature, while maintain internet at home, shopping malls and water distribution systems?
Take care,
Ricardo
Read Francisco’s response here.
