The Necessity of Nature in Our Lives
On not forgetting our roots
Richmond Park London (Photo by Author)
January 21 2020
Do you live in a city? As a Medium reader, I’m going to employ a sweeping generalisation and suggest that you do. And for my whole life, up until the last 12 months, I did as well: not just in a city, but in apartments in the middle of the central business district. Not only that, but the 7 odd years before those last 12 months, I was also researching and teaching about cities, and thinking probably too deeply than necessary about what they represent to humanity.
What are cities? They act as magnets to humans, as we as a species are drawn seemingly inevitably towards them. They must be doing something right then. By extension, they must be good for us, right?
Someone even wrote a book saying Cities Are Good For You (1), so that settles that then. The book argues that we are by nature a social species, and most of us are happier and more creative when we are surrounded by other people. It’s why the human population is overwhelmingly shifting toward urban lifestyles, as they provide the conditions seemingly necessary to further our evolution.
But cities are also kinda ridiculous, really. They are a paradox, full of internal contradictions. They are full of life, energy, potential, ideas; they attract people to them effortlessly, just by being who they are. But, conversely: they for the most part lack moderation; they are unsympathetic to boundaries and are compelled towards shifting those that in place; they take more than they give back; and place unreasonable stress on the environment that supports them. Surely they can’t go on like this forever.
Who does that sound like? Yes: perhaps the best way to understand cities, and more broadly this urban age that we are experiencing, is as the adolescence of our species. A period that is messy, chaotic, reckless, self-important; but also unavoidable, hence necessary, and also largely enjoyable.
We are living in a time where human life is at its most unstable and unpredictable, for better and for worse. Yet, life can only exist away from equilibrium after all; we are, technically, only truly at equilibrium when we are dead. Thus, if you are mildy (or perhaps madly) optimistic about our future like me, it is from these uncertain times that we can carve a path into the future that is fundamentally different from anything that has come before. It is this age, just like our own adolescence, that will fundamentally define the future of humanity.
As long as we make it out alive, that is. For in our eagerness to explore, in cities, our potential as a species, we may be in danger of losing sight of what makes us human.
You may have heard of the term Biophilia before (if you are a Björk fan, like me, then you almost certainly have). It is an academic term given to the inherent human inclination to respond positively to, to affiliate with, the natural non-human environment.
Biophilia is an evolutionary hypothesis (2), and when understood in the context of evolution, seems self-evident. Over the past two centuries, humans have transitioned into increasingly artificial surroundings, with many — including my former self — now living in almost fully urbanised, high-density, inner city areas. However, in the larger scheme of things, this period represents only a fraction of the preceding time that we have spent evolving within complex, diverse and challenging natural environments. As a result, so the hypothesis suggests, encoded into our DNA is the tendency to respond positively to those forms of nature that have been vital to our evolution.
That humans are of nature, a part of nature, and reflect nature, should be inherent knowledge, and is for many: it is why we pay more to live next to the river and the ocean, why we like to go on holidays to secluded coastal and rural towns, even why so many of us have pets.
But are these just examples of us holding on forlornly to our previous evolutionary state? Does our collective move towards cities and their technologically-dependent lifestyles suggest something else? That we have come to view our connection with nature as vestigial: a now redundant remnant of past evolutionary conditions (a touch condescending, perhaps, to place in status Mother Nature alongside our appendix).
In fairness, there is some support for this latter theory. For example, are you shit-scared of spiders and snakes like I am? (I live in Australia, so we also have sharks to add to the list.) Shouldn’t we try to be as far away from them, in an evolutionary sense, as possible? To explain and combat this view, we need to go slightly deeper in to the Biophilia Hypothesis.
While the hypothesis suggest our affinity for nature is genetic, it also means that, like other genes, not every individual will express it in the same way. For some, nature might just be a pleasant distraction, to others it can be a source of inspiration or a political ideology. For a few, it might not even be expressed at all, but suppressed like many other genetic traits — Biophilia appears to be a ‘weak’ biological tendency.
So: Biophilia is not a given, but will vary depending on the extent that it has been developed. That is, developed through processes such as learning, direct experience of nature, and the level of social support each individual receives. Once sufficient stimulation and support is provided, this genetic programming is activated and engaged relatively easily. However, until this process occurs, an individual may display a reduced affinity to nature than others, none at all, or even seem hostile to it.
Not that being hostile to some forms of nature is actually ‘unnatural’. While we are positively disposed to many natural settings — calm water, un-complex vegetation and tame wildlife have been shown to be particularly useful at reducing stress for example (3) — it is also important to remove the green-tinted glasses: not all nature is nice, pleasant, and conducive to developing a positive relationship.
Nature can, to put it bluntly, kill us. In a range of unique and impressive ways. Biophilia knows this as well. That’s why it also manifests as Biophobia: an inherent tendency to be repelled by nature, again for our own good.
Orb-weaving spider: almost harmless to humans, but try telling your brain that (Photo by Jon Butterworth on Unsplash)
So what does Biophilia mean for our lives, our health and wellbeing?
The most obvious implication is one that you and I are probably already aware of: that we need to get outside more. And we really do, because there is a wealth of academic research that supports the benefits of time in nature for our physical, mental and even spiritual wellbeing (4). And, remembering the importance of developing this genetic tendency before it fully expresses itself, we should definitely be encouraging young people to be outside more from the earliest age possible (again, I must link back to the work of Björk in this regard).
Another thing we can do is to get outside our comfort zones. That’s not to say that you should go straight to snake handling and surfing in shark-infested waters — but to put yourself into natural scenarios that challenge us and make us feel slightly uncomfortable (this is, needless to say, easier for a male to practice than a female).
More fundamentally however, what I suggest is required is a change in how we understand nature — that it is necessary.
To help, I’ll finish with a comparison with the term ‘recreation’. This is helpful, because times spent in nature — playing outdoor sport, surfing, fishing, gardening, walking in the park, sitting in the park, doing anything in a park — are largely synonymous with recreation (although not vice versa, unfortunately).
If we think of synonyms for the word recreation, we might typically think things that are enjoyable, pleasurable, fun, and (hopefully) healthy. But what about necessary? Because these things are necessary (in moderation of course; please don’t take me for a hedonist) and there is no shortage of research and inherent human knowledge to support this.
If we break down the word ‘re-creation’ — that is, to create something a second time, something that therefore must have been there before — then we see plain in front of us what the problem is. Somewhere along the line, we lost these things from our lives — those enjoyable things, those pleasurable things, those fun things, and above all those healthy things — that we once considered essential and that occurred naturally.
In short, we wouldn’t need a word like recreation to describe these things if we hadn’t lost them from our lives in the first place. Similarly, we wouldn’t need a term like Biophilia if we hadn’t lost sight of the necessity of nature in our lives in the first place.
How can you re-create nature in your life?
References:
Hollis, L. .2013. Cities are good for you: The genius of the metropolis. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Kellert, S R, and E O Wilson. 1993. The Biophilia Hypothesis. Washington D.C.: Island Press.
Stigsdotter, U. K., & Grahn, P. 2011. Stressed individuals’ preferences for activities and environmental characteristics in green spaces. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 10(4), 295–304.
Kellert, S. 2016. Biophilic urbanism: The potential to transform. Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, 5(1), 4–8.