No Way to Be Human: We now occupy a nearly natureless world | Hacker News Reader

No Way to Be Human: We now occupy a nearly natureless world

theatlantic.com

There is a strangeness to this piece that I can't quite get a handle on.

For one thing, it is a transcendentalist tribute, the contours of which are predictable: an intellectual living in Boston owns a vacation home in Maine. They go up there a few times a year to fill up their nature reserves, then import those back into their circles in academia/literature/media at the end of summer. That's been a cottage industry for a couple of hundred years now (Emerson, Thoreau, et al.)

That's not a big deal, I live in Maine, and this kind of mining is good for the economy. What bothers me is the piece feels compelled to cite studies such as an Oberlin "nature scale" (which seems insane) and various surveys and other studies to provide an academic backing to their run-of-the-mill transcendentalism. This approach to naturalism seems to denude whatever point they are trying to make.

As if we need experts to confirm our nature to love nature? Who is this written for?

Great thoughtful comment. I think you answer your question yourself. It is defensively written for the modern intellectual who wishes their beliefs to have a flair of objectivity. Perhaps another question is, why it is not enough for the author to trust they intuition when it comes to well-being?

> why it is not enough for the author to trust they intuition when it comes to well-being?

Good question. I found the section where the author experiences the mind-meld with an Osprey to be the only charming part of the piece. It's an unguarded moment in a guarded essay. It's also downright bizarre but endearing and an experience anyone could have to an encounter in the woods. It's very human. Shame that it's encased in all that objectivity, indeed.

I'd call myself an Alan Lightman fan (Einstein's Dreams is a lovely book) but I think he missed on this one.

Anyone who writes for the internet age will be guarded or brave enough that they might actually be insane.

> Seldom do we go outside on a clear night, away from the lights of the city, and gaze at the dark starry sky, or take walks in the woods unaccompanied by our digital devices.

I am so, so, so tired of people who live in cities acting like other human beings don't exist.

There's a whole world out there, folks, and it continues to exist even after your vacation is over.

I'm not sure I understood your point, especially in relation to what you quote. Could you rephrase that?

The "we" in that statement fails to account for the millions of people who do, in fact, do these things regularly. This failure to imagine that there are vast numbers of people whose lives are different from the author's is something I see frequently, and it's irritating.

I doubt it's a failure to imagine other lives.

I think it's probably deliberately appealing to people who are miserable and feel helpless to change their lives by, say, leaving their city for a rural life.

Not that it's helping them, but it's addressing them.

The reasons why it's impossible to move to a rural area and be done with it are left unstated.

Sentence prior started “Many of us…” I’d say the “we” is referring to those people.

That's fair. I suppose the source of my irritation isn't just that one sentence; it's more holistic. And it's borne out of experiences living in rural areas that people from nearby cities treat like their own personal playgrounds. I just don't have much patience left for an article bemoaning the lack of "nature" when "nature" is still very much there, and its apparent disappearance is the result of deliberate choices, not some irresistible force.

Anyway, I'm going to put down the screen and go outside and look at the dark starry sky now.

You can spot a tourist a mile a way goes the saying in the big cities.

Your irritation is irrational; the group you are talking about is not coherent and it also exists where you live. I agree with you that there are choices being made that makes nature so much worse. I've always been a cityslicker with relatives on farms, my view of those that move in their circles they are a lot more pro destroy the nature.

If you are just talking about the privileges of nature from living in far out suburbs or country side, then I might be inclined to put you in the same category. I won't because our situation will be so different and it would be irrational to make you an enemy without knowing what your situation actualy is.

If your work depends on big ag you can't do much to resist those market pressures, "it is what it is" as they say. However, I've seen people with money spend extraordinary amounts in restoration of thousands of acres as we can find fit among the arable acres.

"And it's borne out of experiences living in rural areas that people from nearby cities treat like their own personal playgrounds."

That has been my sad experience too. I live in a beautiful place. Lack of services keep most people away, but as more people seek to enjoy nature, it gets trashed. I used to go on walks and things were clean, now I can fill a small bag with trash.

There are some local attractions that the world should see, but the locations are not shared online for fear they will be trashed. Those fears are not unfounded.

As for the dark, starry sky - just last night I looked out my window at a cold, clear night and all the stars. It is our there, but who wants to live in a place with spotty cell service, no trash service, a few small restaurants and abundant cold weather?

Your latter gripe is the subject of the article, surely? Nature is there and not everyone makes the effort get out amongst it. Whether our screens and fears of the dark unknown are irresistible is perhaps debatable.

And how exactly do you stay "away from the lights of the city"? Last time I checked light pollution didn't really care whether you live in a city or not, having a strong light source within a quite sizable radius was more than enough to significantly limit what you can see in the sky. There's not a lot of places where humans live and which aren't polluted at night.

Go 50 miles away from your nearest city and look at the sky. There’s a ton of places people live that aren’t light polluted to a level acceptable for amateur astronomy.

There are many places in the world where this is not a thing. I live in a densely populated country where it it simply not possible to get that far away from any city. If you drive 50km in any direction anywhere in the country, you would've encountered quite a few cities. I would have to cross several borders to get to a place without light pollution.

Netherlands? Germany (1 border) or France (2 borders) are fine. NL (I am from there but moved away a long time ago for this and other reasons) is more of an exception than a rule I would say.

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/

It's about 180 km (110 miles) to merely get into a light blue spot for me, and it's actually a quite short distance compared to country's average.

If the "nearest city" includes the edge of the suburbs, then perhaps. But there's a whole lot of sprawl in the US that has smeared the population across the landscape, with corresponding strip malls that have blazing lights 24/7.

There are a lot of hot spots on this map:

* https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/

For the US, one-third of the population lives in coastal counties:

* https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/07/millions-of-a...

Two-thirds of the US population lives within 100mi (160km) of the border:

* https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

I think the pictures that show the entire eastern seaboard as lit up may be misleading if one assumes they represent ground-level experience.

While I haven't been engaged in amateur astronomy for a long time, I vaguely remember an event/meeting years ago that was not that far out in the country, and just a few miles/minutes travel away from the "strip malls" made a huge difference. Northern lights were visible and I think the Milky Way.

I have been out west where it is really dark, so whether or not my recollection is accurate, I do know what undisputedly dark skies are like.

This.

Entirely fair comment, especially considering the night sky-less city experience will be a subset of "urban":

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/urban-and-rural-populatio...

Even urbanites have been known to lose themselves on Hampstead Heath or in Central Park.

+1. Come over to Estonia, author. About 50% of our territory is forest, at least statistically. Many complain (rightly so) about too intensive logging, but there is nonetheless plenty of forest left, even if much of it is planted by humans several decades ago. City dwellers are finding their ways back to the countryside, figuring out solutions to live there all year. Farmers are still alive, many of them doing well... etc. There's lots of happy people living outside bigger cities and towns. I doubt this could be much different in most other countries.

If anything, I'd say nature is finding its way back to city and town centers. Or is this an exaggeration, wishful thinking? Let's think about "everyone's nature conservation" and other similar memes. Recreational areas in towns seem to be greener and way better thought out in my country than they were some 20 years ago, etc.

It's a different, more exhausted planet than some decades ago, but current 20+ generation is clearly acting towards preserving and reincarnating nature as much as they can.

I wonder if these writers are simply projecting. I go hiking, camping, fishing, skiing, diving - I love nature. Yet I also love living and working in the city, away from all the mud and hard work, in high-rise clean buildings with sterile offices and lots of tech.

It doesn't have to be either/or, I can enjoy both and choose when I go for one of the other.

I hear people looking way back and saying that it was better. But my grandmother was rising at 4am to feed the farm animals then work the rest of the day in the field. She also had only two surviving siblings out of 14 or 15 in total. Her words to my father and me were always: study and study well because without that life is damn hard and always lacking.

> After the two young ospreys were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears.

The crying trope has become ubiquitous to signal emotion these days. Why isn't it possible to strongly feel something without the crying meme?

I agree. The shaking and the crying is so over used. It seems like emotion has to be visible and violent for people to believe it's strong.

I garentee that the feelings of brotherhood between him and the bird went one way. This was written by someone who walks in nature, but doesn't take part in it. Like being when I archery hunt, I'm more part of nature than someone standing on their deck feeling the brotherhood of an osprey.

The CNS questions sound like something people who regularly spend time in nature would never say. Except for hipsters who want to be outdoorsy and go on a shopping spree in REI

Often they'll phrase it as "I'm literally shaking".

Pretty my family alone murders a dozen+ chickens a month.

This is completely unsubstantiated but I think Americans watch so much television that they learn the majority of their behaviors from actors and producers who exaggerate everything for the screen.

You're right. And it is so cheap, so vulgar, how can most people not see it?

I think that's because it's about communicating it to the people around you. It's easy to notice someone crying, it's harder to notice someone that felt something strong and showed almost no signs.

,,,says somebody who hasn't experienced any deep emotion in years? Other than mild internet irritation followed by sarcastic commenting, which doesn't count.

You've put your finger on the issue.

Outwardly displaying extreme emotion about everything, as a norm, inherently makes it seem like people who restrain themselves from displaying emotion (or grievances) do not have any. Or none of any importance.

A stranger behaving in this way can trigger memories of what's it's like in a real life relationship where there is a mismatch.

I agree that we live mediated lives but thats just a by product of excess. Living close to nature is not as fun as OP makes it out. Thats why we left that to the animals.

That being said, being too disconnected from nature might create problems we can't yet see.

> The first house with a roof appeared only 5,000 years ago.

Is that true?

Seems unlikely. There were ziggurats in Mesopotamia earlier than that.

Hard to imagine people with that much power not having a roof over their heads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

Additionally, the pyramids at Giza are ~4600 years old and there is evidence of hundreds of houses in the vicinity. It seems dubious that they went from "no roofs" to the great pyramids in only ~400 years.

It's nonsense. Çatalhöyük had houses 9500 years ago (and there are other settlements of similar age or older). The people there would be unlikely to build houses with strong stone walls and neglect to build a roof.

Agreed. I can't imagine that people with even stone tools wouldn't figure out "hey, staying dry is nice" and make at least primitive roofs. A simple thatched or broad-leaf roof (e.g., palm/banana leaves) is not exactly hard technology to figure out.

We are part of the nature. Whether our actions are conductive to a healthy eco-system or not, whether we maintain an environment that keeps the biodiversity in order to keep life viable for the future are the questions. But this cult of a past forgotten pristine nature, this misanthropist vision that every one of our interventions in the nature which we are as much a part of as a beaver or an ant is just religious, superstitious garbage.

>We are part of the nature.

In semantics only. We all know what is generally meant by the term ‘nature’—wilderness, parts of the Earth relatively undisturbed by man’s industrialization.

If we built a planet-destroying nuclear device and used it to turn Earth into dust, would that still be nature to you?

Are crows using tools "nature"?

Yes, crows use poke, dig, find, free, head, tail, touch, more, mount, make. And if they don’t like you, they use kill. Sometimes even killall.

crows are unable to use git, but then even I was unable to use git right after onboarding.

Even if I do not agree completely with the article I think it should be worth pointing that human beings are specially strong in self-domesticating themselves.

For example at shoes, clothing, drinking milk, society, culture, language, agriculture, use of fire etc

Our own artificial environment gave shape to ourselves. And most likely that’s unstoppable.

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