Student Centered: American Dissociation from Spirituality
Lizzie Nelson
While I was reading Lane’s Landscape of the Sacred for class I noticed the author discussed Americans recent obsession with nature as they country becomes increasingly industrialized thus indirectly furthering itself from the natural environment. These grand mountains and rolling plains the American name has become synonymous with have recently been sights of high popularity as residents of cities flock to them to get away from the pavement streets, gas guzzling cars, and non-stop commotion that any people had come to love. However, this hustle and bustle in area where people are living increasingly closer together has, ironically, isolated a generation and separated them from their American past. One of navigation of the unknown, of wide open spaces and star filled skies. The author quite accurately says that “people are drawn to nature in direct proportion to their sense of separation from it” (p.220). I think this quote is telling of a very simple characteristic of human behavior: we need nature to feel relaxed, we need nature to free ourselves from our surroundings and really reflect on greater concepts and ideas like our place in the universe. It is almost comical that in order to make such grand discoveries and create such strong connections with other, you must pull yourself away from possible resources of knowledge, like libraries, and put yourself in an expanse of wide open space, one that in theory is more isolating than the city you came from. But that, in turn, forces you into the exact products of being alone that hiking is supposed to.
While I was reading Lane’s Landscape of the Sacred for class I noticed the author discussed Americans recent obsession with nature as they country becomes increasingly industrialized thus indirectly furthering itself from the natural environment. These grand mountains and rolling plains the American name has become synonymous with have recently been sights of high popularity as residents of cities flock to them to get away from the pavement streets, gas guzzling cars, and non-stop commotion that any people had come to love. However, this hustle and bustle in area where people are living increasingly closer together has, ironically, isolated a generation and separated them from their American past. One of navigation of the unknown, of wide open spaces and star filled skies. The author quite accurately says that “people are drawn to nature in direct proportion to their sense of separation from it” (p.220). I think this quote is telling of a very simple characteristic of human behavior: we need nature to feel relaxed, we need nature to free ourselves from our surroundings and really reflect on greater concepts and ideas like our place in the universe. It is almost comical that in order to make such grand discoveries and create such strong connections with other, you must pull yourself away from possible resources of knowledge, like libraries, and put yourself in an expanse of wide open space, one that in theory is more isolating than the city you came from. But that, in turn, forces you into the exact products of being alone that hiking is supposed to.
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