Integrity 101:
The Remarkable Benefits of Thinking and Learning with Nature
(return
to start of course)
SECTION NINE
Results
In the Orientation
Course Cohen has designed an exceptional online NSTP program
that provides its participants with activities that they do in
an attractive local natural area. The program provides an experienced
online person as a guide and course facilitator, a guidebook,
and a few people who also do the activities and, online, share
what they learned with and from your activity experiences. As
you participate in it, each thing you learn you own and can use
and teach. The benefits include increased wellness, mental health
and resiliance. (Cohen, 1991; Jones, 2001 #17).
People learning
to use NSTP online have, within six weeks, said the effect is
like removing a pair of dark sunglasses. They experience and
appreciate the world anew, in its own, clear, unpolluted brilliance
(Cohen, 2002). In the light of enjoying ABC in Nature, destructive
relationships with people, places and substances almost effortlessly
diminish as they are replaced by responsible, non-polluting rewards
from natural sensory attractions that previously lay hidden.
For example, we have for decades had an abundance of affordable
alternative technologies, social processes and models that would
significantly increase our compatibility with natural systems
and each other. These improvements lie idle because we have not
restored the ABC consciousness necessary for motivating the public
to insist upon their use (Jones, 2001Jones, 2001 #19).
Cohen designed
NSTP while in the balance and beauty of bright stars and 87 different
habitats in North America's National Parks and Forests (Jones,
2001
#13). "It helps us bring our thinking back to basics,"
explains Cohen, "so we may travel a more sensible path in
co-creation with natural systems.
"The natural world is
the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated
from this community is to become destitute in all that makes
us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence."
...........- Thomas Berry
Thousands of
gratifying nature connected personal and community experiences
during Cohen's fifty five years in natural settings convey the
value of NSTP (Cohen, 1997; Jones, 2001 #18). So do the beneficial effects of thousands
of other peoples' transformative experiences in Nature (Jones, 2001 #21). "The documented
benefits speak for themselves but only to minds willing to listen,'
insists Cohen.
Good experiences
in Nature have shown to be the major reason that people care
about the welfare of the environment (Chawla 1998). Conversely,
each time we solve a problem without NSTP being part of the solution,
we unknowingly dig ourselves deeper into our unsolvable problems
and the effects of NADS. (Cohen 2002y).
"We cannot win this battle
to save species and environments without forging an emotional
bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not fight
to save what we do not love."
...........- Stephen Jay Gould
"What greater grief than
the loss of one's native land."
...........- Euripides circa 450 B.C.