Natural Environments and Human Health. Alan W Ewert
Читать онлайн книгу.
and indicated that this link is related to ecstatic childhood moments, or moments of intense emotion during formative years, most often occurring while in nature. Chawla concluded that these transcendent experiences or enchantment can be found in a spectrum of natural areas, including a weedy patch in an apartment building’s parking lot.
Other researchers in Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the US have found that children tend to show more curiosity and participate in more creative play, including participating in more fantasy and make-believe, in naturally green playgrounds as opposed to manufactured playgrounds. These studies showed a difference in the social standing of children and the social distinctions between girls and boys depending on setting. In nature-based play areas, the social hierarchy among children tended to be based on language skills, creativity, and inventiveness. In manufactured areas, the social hierarchy tended to be established through physical competence and the social distinctions between girls and boys were more pronounced (Taylor et al., 2001; Bell and Dyment, 2006).
Environmental stewardship or strong environmental protection feelings have been correlated with time spent in wild or semi-wild places with an adult who taught respect for nature (Chawla and Hart 1988; Sobel, 2008). The theory is that people protect what they are emotionally attached to; in this case, children become emotionally attached to nature and therefore want to protect it.
Animals, such as dolphins, have been shown to produce healing or beneficial changes in humans, perhaps because of an emotional connection between human and animal. In a 2011 book published by Yale Press, Frohoff and Dudzinski reported on over 20 years of research about human and dolphin interactions. A neuroscientist, Lily, initiated human–dolphin interaction interventions in the 1950s, followed by Betsy Smith, an educational anthropologist, and then David Nathanson, a psychologist, both at Florida International University. Nathanson (1998) and MdYusof and Chia (2012) demonstrated that when children swim with dolphins they become less anxious and more teachable, and their ability to pay attention increases by 500%. Language, speech, gross and fine motor functioning improve for children more effectively than when conventional speech or physical therapy is used.
One of several theories about why healing occurs with dolphins is that the unconditional acceptance stimulates the immune system, enhances self-worth, and gives hope for the future. This fits with the theory put forth by Bernie Siegal, author of Love, Medicine, and Miracles (2011), who said that disease comes from a lack of unconditional love, causing the immune system to be vulnerable. Swimming with the dolphins may increase immunoglobin or I-killer cells, thus stimulating the immune system.
Finally, there are numerous examples of animals warning or saving people from fires, floods and other disasters through a seemingly emotional connection between animals and humans. One typical headline might be: ‘Dog sounds alarm in Magnolia house blaze’, followed by the story about Joey, a normally quiet dog, running through the house barking until the five people woke up and escaped safely from the home (Delaware State News, 2013). Other examples include a pod of dolphins protecting an injured surfer from sharks (Celizic, 2007), and a female gorilla protecting and caring for a toddler who fell 24 feet into the gorilla exhibit at a zoo (King, 2008). Many indigenous people have taken cues from animal or plant behavior over the course of time for seasonal clues or for storm, earthquake, and tidal wave warnings.
This emotional and spiritual link to nature hugely impacts our well-being and ability to live in a compassionate and peaceful world through the immunizing effect for the human psyche, opportunities to recover from mental stress and gain protection from future potential stress, and opportunities for psychological restoration. Humans’ emotional connection to the natural world is profound; when humans do not understand this connection their mental well-being can suffer.
Our connection to the natural environment influences our physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual well-being. There are a number of intricacies to our connection with nature. Some aspects of humans’ connection with nature are absolute; we simply have to have air, water, and food and these are sustained by the natural world. We may never be able to make air, water, and food without nature and if we discover a way to do so, we may not want to because of the importance of the more than physical ways we are attached and interrelated to nature.
This complex and interconnected system of life illustrates that human-made changes in the natural environment can have negative consequences for health and well-being. Next the impact of WorldViews is discussed.
What are WorldViews?
WorldViews are comprised of collections of images and stories that people use to help make sense of the complex world around them (Marten, 2001). In other words, WorldViews are ontological in that they refer to a way of being and knowing about the world. In this case, the word ‘world’ is not used in a geographical sense, but rather to refer to the entire perceptual content of an individual (Aerts et al., 1994).
Our WorldView is personal, though it is conceptualized by social, cultural, and environmental interactions. These interactions dictate to a large degree what we value and how we view the world around us. In this case, the world we view is the totality of our lives, including all to which we relate from our spiritual, physical, affective or emotional, intellectual or cognitive, and social areas of life. On a practical level, having a WorldView increases our understanding of our place and relationship to everyone and everything within our sphere, and therefore can offer us security and comfort. Given that humans live in groups, we tend to share a paradigm (some groups of people call this a story) or a collection of paradigms (stories) which can be seen as a collective WorldView that we use to explain life, the world, and how we should be in the world. These shared views become dominant WorldViews. Paradigms or WorldViews are held for particular areas, such as religion, philosophy, science, political movements, and how we perceive our connection with nature. These societal WorldViews shape behavior, politics, relationships, institutions, and the totality of our perceptions, and therefore how we act as a group. As different WorldViews become dominant they influence so much of our thought or perspective about a subject that this influences the overall direction of development of that area. For example, large-scale archeological evidence of warfare dates back to less than 7000 years ago, but a dominant paradigm today is that defense and warfare are inevitable and part of human life (and death). The rest of this chapter focuses on the development of dominant WorldViews as they pertain to the natural environment and, consequently, how they impact our relationship to the natural world.
Even with dominant WorldViews, there are people within that society and people and groups outside the dominant culture who have had and have WorldViews differing from the predominant paradigm. Sometimes within a culture there are clashes with WorldViews, as displayed in the 2012 US elections concerning control over women’s reproductive rights. Throughout history we can identify dominant WorldViews about nature as well as alternative WorldViews that have been present. As we present the various collective WorldViews in this chapter, remember to think about the voices and therefore alternative perspectives of WorldViews not often talked about in history or in the present, or even known about by many other people. Also remember that WorldViews do not have to be fixed. Given our cognitive abilities as human beings, we can consciously work toward a WorldView that provides sustainability for the human species.
The History of WorldViews/Evolving WorldViews about Nature
Perceptions of nature are driven by WorldViews and impacted by both culture and environment, and have varied depending on the historical time period. While throughout history there have been multiple WorldViews circulating at the same time, humans seem to have established periods where dominant WorldViews can be identified. The moral philosopher Denis Kenny (2001, in Eckersley, 2004) found that over human history there have been four substantially different cosmological stories. These include: (i) the enchanted universe in which the world is alive with forces, powers, and influences, often personified as gods; (ii) the sacred universe of Abrahamic religions in which the world is created by an all powerful, singular God; (iii) the mechanical universe of Newtonian physics, embodying a world that runs like clockwork according to a set of physical laws; and (iv) the organic universe of Einstein, relativity, and quantum physics in which the distinction between