Humans and Nature and Technology: A Tragedy

As we delve deeper and deeper into technological advancements, we, as humans, lose our emotional connection to nature. The expansion of urban life since the rise of industrialization has obviously disconnected us from the physical natural world, but the loss of our harmony with nature is even more stark and shocking than our loss of its accessibility. For the individual, the level of one's relationship with nature is shallow and dependent entirely on class; for humanity as a whole, we move further and further away from nature with every technological advancement, which only serves to distance the individual from nature even more.

In everyday life, very few people come in contact with nature. Between school, jobs, errands, social plans, and commitments, humans encounter nature only in a passing manner. We walk through nature, rather than into it. A purposeful attempt must be made to connect to the natural world, and yet this opportunity is only available to upper classes. It takes wealth and connections to go to national parks or to have the equipment to hike or ski, and much of this depends on one's location of residence. Even with these vacations, they last for a short period of time and they are idealized so much that they connect a person only to the aesthetic beauty of nature; an emotional connection is still lacking. All of this feeds into the romanticization of nature's beauty, which can relax and heal the people who have the money to visit landmarks and resorts. A spiritual understanding of nature cannot be achieved through these actions, so humans do not identify with or advocate for nature as much as we used to.

As for the human race, we are urbanizing, deforesting, and exploiting nature at an alarming rate. We are taking natural resources for physical and economic convenience, using them irresponsibly, and releasing the waste into the natural world. Our dependence on nature has moved from being purely agricultural to mostly technological. More and more, we eat food that is made of few natural ingredients and many chemical ones, and we alter the natural course of meat and dairy production to the point where it is widely deemed to be immoral. There is very little that can be called "natural" about the way that we live in American society, which only serves to alienate us further from true nature. Since we do not act in ways that show our respect for nature, we gradually lose respect for everything but nature's beauty.

It's less that I see this behavior around me in my own everyday life and more that I constantly see the absence of reverence for nature. In New England, we are more likely to feel connected to nature in the way that many of us are. We have access to trails, swimming holes, farms, and mountains, all of which are not part of most Americans' lives. I don't know how humans can reconnect to nature at this point. On an individual level, we can all make an effort. But I don't see American society shifting to worship nature, since we came from Europeans who were similarly unwilling to enjoy nature, rather than exploit it. Technology gets in the way of our relationship with nature, and I do not believe that, at this point in history, humans are willing to give up our technological comforts in favor of the natural world.