(1992) suggests that the word dominant is inaccurate and believes that the disconnection from or superior feelings over nature is a result of fear. As humans lost the value-of-belonging (Flinders, 2002/2003) they experienced inner doubts and fears; they felt a lack of self-worth; they did not feel loveable and capable, which are the two ingredients necessary in order to sustain healthy relationships (Clarke, 1998). Roszak (1995) agrees that a deep despair underlies Western culture. Many humans seem lost, unaware of their indigenous roots, and unaware of being part of something larger. We are in a vicious cycle of consumerism as the foundation of our economics, and economics have degraded the global environment. As personal identity becomes further entangled with consumer behavior, it becomes harder to challenge existing patterns of consumption.
The impact of a sense of landlessness
According to Bowers (2006), the wonders inherent in nature are often usurped by modern temptations and economic greed, causing relationships with nature to become insignificant. The cosmology story of enchantment, in which the world is alive with forces, powers, and influences, used to come alive for many US children and others as they played or worked day after day in the outdoors, contributing positively to human development of creativity and values (Cobb, 1977). As the modern way of life in industrialized societies has removed many humans from the natural world, people have forgotten the enchantment or have never known it. Many humans, as individuals or societies, no longer have a personal relationship with the land in which they reside. This makes it easy to disregard humans’ place in the biotic community. Baker (2008), echoing Leopold, calls this almost complete detachment from nature landlessness. She describes landlessness as the constant absence of awareness, respect, and kinship with the land, advancing the loss of wild, untouched places as well as the overdevelopment of urban areas. Leopold (1966) said that landlessness is significant because when people do not love, value, or associate with nature, there is little desire to protect it and explained, ‘The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with the land among a people, many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness’ (1966, p. 210). Landlessness therefore perpetuates more landlessness. Landlessness also negatively impacts spiritual, mental, emotional, and social health and development.
Box 2.2. Women may react to stress with tend and befriend behavior
This perception of connectedness also manifests today as relic and relevant behavior around stress. Suzanne Braun Levine (2004) reported that women identified their biggest work challenge as plugging into a source of collective professional energy; they want to be a part of supportive collaborative networks, now described as a tend and befriend response. Sparked by noticing in her stressful work experience that women formed supportive groups, Shelly Taylor began exploring women and stress and labeled the behavior she found tend and befriend. The tend aspect involves nurturing activities that help protect self and others and the befriend aspect involves creating social networks to aid in tending. She and her colleagues hypothesized and later gained evidence for the idea that under stress women are devoted to their offspring (possibly matching the energy to the attachment that babies need for survival). This response, underpinned by the hormone oxytocin, by opioids, and by dopaminergic pathways, suggests that oxytocin may provide an impetus for affiliation. She suggested that females create, maintain, and use social groups, especially with other females, to manage stressful conditions (Taylor, 2006).
Landlessness is a loss of a culture’s sense of place. A sense of place is rooted in the concept that people used to, can, and do form emotional, spiritual, and meaningful bonds with natural areas, making the welfare of the land personally significant (Williams and Stewart, 1998). Developing a strong sense of place provides the foundation from which caring relationships with nature are built (Russell and Bell, 1996). As explained later in the book, the paradigm of place-based education is a means to help students develop a fascination and enchantment with nature and regain a personal connection to the land. A sense of place deepens the sense of community with the biotic world, including strengthening relationships among people and societies (Noddings, 2005). Sobel (2008) and others suggest that building this personal connection to the land helps students comprehensively explore the social, political, cultural, and natural components that define their community. With a sense of place it is hard for people to be passive, indifferent observers. The welfare of one’s community, including the natural elements, becomes personally significant and people usually then choose to actively integrate into their personal community (Haluza-Delay, 1999; Lane-Zucker, 2004; Gruenewald, 2008). Elaborated later in this book, spiritual, mental, emotional, and social health all improve with grounding in a sense of place.
Emerging consciousness
At the level of absolute truth, there is no reason to suffer. But at the relative level, we’re all in considerable pain. The cause of our discontent is our mistaken feeling of separateness. This isn’t based on anything tangible. It’s based on beliefs and concepts. The duality of subject and object, self and other, is an illusion imputed by the mind. Pema Chodron from No Time to Lose
Yet humans are not separate from nature even though a substantial portion of people around the world have changed their relationship with nature in ways that negatively impact health and well-being. Laws of science now recognize that all human activity is inherently embedded in the natural world, which sustains us. We are still connected through co-evolution, biological, psychological, and spiritual needs, emotions, and probably intuition. While we often are physically separate from nature, our disconnection is a perception of disconnection. As Chodron said, humans have a mistaken feeling of separateness; but this is not true of all humans.
Some indigenous people risk their lives and their culture daily in order to stay connected with nature. They have retained a WorldView that they are a part of nature and that nature is a part of them, and have maintained that perspective through to the present time. Their culture exhibits values-of-belonging and their members typically feel like they belong. For tens of thousands of years these indigenous cultures have taught a story about inherent goodness and the connectedness of a living universe. Following this ancient wisdom, science is now discovering evidence that humanity is hardwired for connection and compassion: from the vagus nerve, which releases oxytocin at simply witnessing a compassionate act, to the mirror neurons, which cause us to literally feel another person’s pain. Darwin emphasized that humankind’s real power comes in the ability to perform complex tasks together, to sympathize and cooperate; he did not say that human survival depended on competition (Shadyac, 2010).
These indigenous societies have been largely marginalized (Apelian, 2013). Cultures that have a close connection to the natural world have been mistreated and maligned, yet they exhibit the moral resolve to maintain interwoveness with nature. Those groups that are in remote areas and who have a deep positive relationship with nature have been less affected by the dominant society, but with the intense use of certain natural resources, including trees, oil, and gas, few people and areas are untouched by the dominant paradigm of greed and consumption. As we learn more about cultures that are rooted in their land and exhibit values-of-belonging—for example, Apelian’s (2013) work with the Nharo Bushman—we can continue to learn about living in harmony and connection with nature. For too long, the notion that power and material gain equals civilized has dominated globally, because until the deer have their historians, tales of the hunt shall glorify the hunter.
At the same time many people have recognized that we need to integrate and interweave our lives more with nature. Even within the dominant culture during the age of industrialism and growth people have championed a closer relationship with nature. As we moved into the 20th century, the leaders of environmental movements, including Rachel Carson, Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, Aldo Leopold, Dana Meadows, John Muir, Ellen Swallow, and Howard Zahniser, were motivated to educate people that the world was facing an emerging environmental crisis. The environmental movement, sometimes criticized because nature can still be treated as other, has gained support and made progress
