The Global Community Study & Activity
From Reconnecting With Nature, M.J. Cohen
Disconnection from Nature in Action
"I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order."
- John BurroughsOn April 18, 1972, Karen, a high school junior who was quitting school, said to her principal: "Dr. Miler, you can't teach me what I want to know because what I want to know is how not to be like you."
Karen's words come to mind more and more as I watch well intentioned folks I love, hurt themselves, each other and Earth. Their best thinking about how to solve our runaway problems has proven not to be as thoughtful as it needs to be.
Karen, after many attempts to "adjust," had decided to drop out of school. She was an excellent student and Dr. Miler pleaded with her to remain. He pledged that he would teach her anything she wanted to know. That's when she told him he did not have the ability to do that. She explained that the effects of his thinking and relationships depressed her. They showed that neither he nor the faculty knew what she wanted to know, no less how to teach it. That knowledge was unavailable to the public in 1972. It is, however, available today through the natural system thinking process.
Although they played their role well in school, Karen's faculty was a cross section of society, then and today. For example, despite the warning labels, 30% of them smoked cigarettes. Because they protected others from the smoke by providing themselves with a smoking area, they were within their legal rights. Smoking was not, and is not, illegal. Karen felt that if cigarettes became illegal, smoking and its adverse effects would not stop. In her social studies paper she wrote "It would be like deer hunting. In many states more deer are poached illegally than are legally killed during hunting season." In that paper Karen also said "We can't make sense of how our society educates and governs us because it is not sensible."
Karen discovered what most people tell me they know. With respect to helping us sustain happy, responsible lives, the education we receive, in and out of school, is often no more effective than the warning label on a
pack of cigarettes. Karen was different than many students. In counseling she learned something extra. She discovered the integrity and value of her subconscious thinking; she started to sense the strings. She found that she wanted and deserved more than what school provided. She began to realize that the world and its people were at risk. Her paper said "We are in jeopardy. We don't just need information, we need an effective process. I want to learn how to build responsible relationships. That is not happening in this school" she wrote, "To teach it or learn it, you must live it. I have tried, in vain, to make that happen here."
At a meeting, the faculty pleaded with Karen to stay in school, for she was an excellent student. "I'm afraid to stay," Karen said. "The abusiveness in the world scares me." She choked, "We are on the brink of nuclear war. And the natural environment is deteriorating so quickly there may not be a world for me to live in." Her tears flowed freely. "There is nothing abnormal with me feeling depressed at times. The hurt I feel is real. It comes from knowing and watching people being killed or bird species decline. I am tired of putting Band-Aids on that hurt in counseling and thinking there is something wrong with me personally. That hurt will only disappear as abusiveness disappears, as sensitivity, peace and birds reappear. That is not happening here. "This school is contaminated, it's a subculture, a breeding ground for our problems."
Mrs. Cook tried to speak. "Let me finish please," Karen said, and continued: "The
school has just bulldozed the natural area on the building's west side to build still another lawn. That area was not only a nesting and feeding habitat for birds. It was a womb for all forms of life, a place that I loved, where I could find peace at lunch time and after school. Compared to being in class, or even in counseling, that place made sense. It was beautiful, it felt right. I could go there depressed about my life and safely feel all the beauty and life that flourished there. In just a few minutes, I would feel much better. I refuse to be touched by the thinking here that has been bulldozed into such stupidity as to bulldoze that natural area." she said.
Dr. Miler interrupted, "Karen, there was no choice. That was part of a legal contract from years ago. We had to fulfill that contract or be sued. And some students smoke marijuana in that area.""I don't smoke marijuana" said Karen, "I feel sad for those that do. I feel even sadder that the law says that I must spend 1/2 of my waking life indoors in school. This environment is bulldozing paradise to make still another lawn. Dr. Miler, you once told me that we learn more from the world around us than we do from books and lectures. I simply refuse to trash paradise or learn to do it. I refuse to let you rub off on me any further. What's wrong with that? It makes sense to me." She seemed stronger for her statement and its intensity.
"Earth and its people are at risk," Karen continued, "Every year in this country, five thousand square miles of nature are being bulldozed into oblivion. How can you possibly teach us to deal with that massacre when you are engaged in it? What are you thinking? What sense is there for me to sit in Social Studies class to discover that our nuclear generating plants are dangerous yet their total electrical output equals the energy this country uses just to run hair dryers? That makes no sense. What do we learn here that helps us stop using hair dryers? To be accepted here, I feel pressured to use one, not to decease. Where is the sense in that? In Biology we learn that a decade ago Rachel Carson showed the danger in using pesticides and chemicals . Since then we've introduced thousands of new chemicals every year into the environment. What are you thinking when you use these chemicals on our lawns here? I don't want to learn to think like that. What kind of a world is school teaching my mind to build?" she asked passionately.
Dr. Miler calmly advised Karen that the school did the best it could. If she left, she would be truant and there would be consequences. She would not be able to attend
college. Karen replied: "I don't care. I choose to learn elsewhere. It's too stupid here. Here, society sentences me to live in an irresponsible mold, a change resistant, indoor learning environment that assaults the natural foundations of life. This environment is so boring, controlled and stifling that most students are drugged out or into something that is outlandish, self-destructive or socially harmful. I'm spending close to 18,000 hours of my most impressionable, developmental years in this nature isolated school closet. That's like growing up in another culture, a destructive one, at that."
Mrs. Cook, the English teacher, objected, "I, and other faculty members, have taught you repeatedly that these things don't make sense." "Not really," Karen retorted, "You merely say these things don't make sense. What you really teach me by forcing me to be in this setting is that I must adopt to being part of a runaway stupidity. You don't teach me how to successfully deal with it. Wake up, Mrs. Cook! You don't know how to stop it so how are you going to teach that? Am I supposed to just accept your belief that the communists and minorities cause our problems? At church we have a conflict as to whether it is right to subdue the Earth as the Bible says. Isn't there a separation between Church and State? You are not compelled here to subdue the Earth, so why do you do it and teach it?"
"This has nothing to do with religion" said Mrs. Cook. "Maybe not to you." Karen replied, "I have friends for whom that woodland was a cathedral. Think about it, weren't the lives of our greatest spiritual leaders shaped by profound experiences in nature? (g/g)"
Smiling, Mr. Langely, the social studies teacher said: "Karen, cheer up. You are going to be the first woman President of the United States." Wiping her tears, Karen stammered "Oh sure, the first president with a prison record. State laws say I will go to prison if I am truant. That sucks! I don't care, I'll take my chances. Go ahead, turn me in. The law has me jailed here right now anyhow. The big advantage to being in this jail is that I can walk out and find a better way to learn. That's what I'm going to do," she stated confidently.
Karen's words bring to mind a study done by a sociologist in Maine. It shows that the students' level of moral in a high school is the same as the prisoners' level of moral in a state penitentiary. My research shows that this does not happen if you teach people g/g techniques that enable their thinking to tap into the strings of the web of life. As I show below, today, Karen would not want to leave school if the natural systems thinking process was part of the curriculum.
The following semester, Karen enrolled in the outdoor school I founded. So did Mr. Langely, as a university graduate student. The program lets contact with nature and nature-centered people teach students of any age how to be more personally, environmentally and socially responsible. In the process, they learn the academics they need to make it happen
OPTIONAL: What is you Karen Index? How much do you agree with her sentiments and how to deal with the issues she identified by getting off the train?
1.........2..........3..........4..........5..........6..........7..........8..........9..........10
disagree..........................so partially agree...........................fffully agreeWas Karen foolish to leave her school? She finished her education through courses that taught her how to reconnect with the strings. Today, those courses and degree programs are available to any interested person through distance learning, guided, home study activities, workshops, internships and degree programs through the internet. Mr. Langely facilitates some of them. Anybody can learn the process at home by simply doing the sensory nature reconnecting activities that manifest it. Karen went on to become a successful environmental lawyer, professor and advocate for sustaining responsible relationships.
Each of us sincerely desires to live responsibly in a healthy, safe social and natural environment. But, we still learn how to think today as Karen was taught to think 26 years ago. For example, today, as then, we pulverize the area around our home and school into a lawn. We do this, even though we know that lawns demand polluting
chemicals and that they replace vital wildlife habitat. But, our ingrained, nature-separated language story floods our conscious thinking. That story says: "Lawns are instinctive" "Lawns are not illegal" "We are within our rights to have lawns." "We are cleaning up the area." "A lawn beautifies this place." "It improves where I live." "It's part of the American dream." "It is against the town ordinance not to have a lawn." "A lawn increases my property value." "I'll feel out of place if my place looks different than the neighborhood." "It makes it easier to sell my home." "It gives me a sense of pride. " "I've always had a lawn." "A natural area breeds dangerous things." "It's the decent thing to do" "I'll feel run down when my place looks run down." "It gives me something to do" "It provides a safe way for me to be outdoors." "Lawns are our culture and history."
Under the above nature disconnecting barrage of stories, and without being nurtured, our web string love for natural areas dissolves. Lawns, golf courses, and many of our other questionable choices, flourish because our nature disconnected stories, not the natural fulfillment of our inner nature strings, carve our destiny.
We bond to our stories. I know and enjoy the people that made the above statements about lawns. They are wonderful friends socially, but with respect to the natural world they are sensory zombies. About 85% of their connection to nature as been amputated from their consciousness. They enjoy the natural world through the applauded, but warped, symbols, behavior and language of a culture disassociated from nature. It provides them with money. They suffer from our runaway problems because the natural integrity of their lives and sensitivities has been as disintegrated as the natural areas that once thrived where their lawns now exist. Their consciousness is boxed into the limits of our society's indoor world view and nature disconnected stories (short, worth reading this link.) (g/o)..
A Student's Reaction to Karen's story:
Just finished reading Karen's story, and found myself back at the small grist mill dam behind my house as a boy. Looking out over Nashoba Brook. Many hours I spent staring off into the water and large trees, sometimes even catching a fish or two. This I believed started when I was about 5 or 6 years old. Back then although there is no verbal remembrance of conversation...something very real happened to me, I felt at home. School and its structure, "Your in math class put on you thinking cap...Now take it off and put on your English thinking cap...Oh the bell just rang time for lunch line up single file" really confused me after I had spent so much time around the Brook and pond.
Did anyone ever find out where their mind went in-between times when you took your thinking caps off?? I did and they accused me of day dreaming, no I was just at the Brook
where I learned that there truly was some form and order to the world. The fragmenting that occurred at school confused me and I was identified with a learning disability when at that time I was sure it was an educational disability that the educators( had/have) didn't know how to deal with. The paradigm shift that they would have to implement would have altered their fear based life forever. So un-like Karen I entered the scapegoat role for those around me.
Drugs became my true friend, at least I could trust them. And as we all know that only lasted a short while, because the very mind set that I was attempting to leave behind was creating the drugs and alcohol that I was paying for with my spirit and the total disconnection from the Real World.
Damn this addictive mind set anyway, damn the disconnection in Colorado. It seems to be so simple as I read this groups thoughts. Nature is conscious running on a true stream of continuous thought. My addictive cultures Damming Up, takes place when I/we attempted to fragment the natural world so we can have Dominion over it, the smaller the group the easier to control. Foster special interest groups and nothing ever has to change, no one has any focus for the future. Hells bells even squirrels know when its time to store food for the winter. I am so grateful to have returned to my true passion and life work which is directly related to bringing myself and others to a place where they can see that true success is found in the experience of the natural world and fostering Beauty and Love rather than Progress, production and then consuming.
Sorry folks I did find a small soap box, my only saving grace is that I speak my truth every where, and to all people, and sadly there a bunch of people that just "Don't Get It". So the rest of the time I ask in prayer that all people listen to the inner Truth that we were all born with, That we are not separate at all from the natural world.
G.A.
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