Continued from Page 5
Disconnection from Nature in Action
"I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses
put in order."
- John Burroughs
On 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
agree |
Was 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. Even in 1999, people in the greater Seattle,
Washington area knowingly continued this practice until local Salmon runs
were placed on the Endangered Species list. Our, and their, 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. Do you think it would make a difference
if people were educated to call them "Addictions" instead of
"Lawns?"
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 nature
disconnected stories (short, worth reading this link.) (g/o).
The process by which we educate people today has not worked well and
is not changing. The leaders that run our government, industry and institutions
have grown from child to adult during the 45 years since Silent Spring.
They have lived through wide ranged public education that produced the
Wilderness Bill, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water and Air Legislation,
Earth Day and many others. However, their psychological addictions to money,
power and prestige continue to deteriorate the envoronment and people.
87% of the public is stressed enough to admit that they are not happy at
the workplace, over 75% of our medical disorders are stress related. Yet
today, as in 1964, the web of life string activity stops with the cutting
of the strings. Instread, it should start at that point and use the Natural
System Thinking Process to help people reap the benefits of knowing and
sharing thoughtful sensory contact with the strings to improve personal
and global wellness.
SUMMARY F:
Our nature separated lives are guided by nature disconnecting
stories that produce stress as they suppress our natural attraction string
loves and their intelligent ways.
OPTIONAL: On a piece
of paper, record the SUMMARY letter above (A: B: C, etc.) along with the
numbers (below) that indicate your amount of agreement with the summary
statement a)
as a stated truth (1-10) and
b) as a 0-100 % percentage of your daily time
that you think you practice this truth. Note how you feel about the difference,
if there is one, between your a-score and b-score.
1.........2..........3........4.........5.........6.........7.........8..........9.........10.
disagree..........................so partially agree...........................fffully
agree |
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