Last time I wrote, I made the observation that in order for there to be a culture that values its environment, individuals must fall in love with the wonders of their world. I would like to expand upon this with a few short observations.
In mulling over the kinds of activities that fall into this category with any kind of generality that two conditions are necessary (if not on their own sufficient). First, these activities must be flow inducing. This is unsurprising as flow is effectively equivalent to fun itself. The second condition is that they be social. From sports, to seeing the movies, to going rock climbing at the gym, all things in which people generally take consistent joy are social in one way or another. This too should not be surprising as we are, after all, social creatures at our core. Indeed taken together, these two conditions provide a powerful formula which feeds both our desires for fun and for companionship. If we hope to connect people to the wonders of their environment we should take stock of these two ingredients of success.
In mulling over the kinds of activities that fall into this category with any kind of generality, it becomes clear that two conditions are necessary (if not on their own sufficient). First, they must be flow inducing. This is unsurprising as flow is effectively equivalent to fun itself. The second condition is that they be social. From sports, to seeing the movies, to going rock climbing at the gym, all things in which people generally take consistent joy are social in one way or another. This too should not be surprising as we are, after all, social creatures at our core. Indeed taken together, these two conditions provide a powerful formula which feeds both our desires for fun and for companionship. If we hope to connect people to the wonders of their environment we should take stock of these two ingredients of success.
The next observation is that in order for the connection built to have the desired effect (a populous interested in caring for their environment), it must be more than skin deep - it must be informed and rich in understanding. To put it more simply we must not only get people out into their world, but give them subtle familiarity with it. And this means instilling knowledge. Specifically, we are concerned with instilling knowledge that keeps.
In my experience there are two ways to do this. The first is by practice - practiced knowledge is kept knowledge. But here, in our specific situation, we face a problem - practiced knowledge in the environment, at our scale, quickly becomes the destruction of that self same environment. If whole towns took up foraging, or hunting, or even life listing for that matter we'd quickly lose our flora, our fauna, and flatten the environs around us. Especially around population centers we far exceed the carrying capacity of the surrounding habitats. So instead of practiced knowledge we must look to something else - power narrative. The construction of wonder through narrative and performance is an extremely powerful tool for instilling knowledge. Indeed I count it as the reason why the average person knows more about fictional places they know about than their own world. No one has cast a spell and yet there are hordes of people who know exactly how too if they could.
And within a world as wonderful as our own powerful, awe inspiring, biosphere, narrative is not hard to come by. Indeed our whole world is like a vast theatre with countless cast members and an ever changing series of plots, stories, and sub plots. It is just that today, there is no playbill, no theatre guide, and no calendar of performances readily accessible - especially for one's local environment. And herein we find a solution to fulfill all of our observations.
Suppose that someone created that playbill and orchestrated the events. Suppose there were regular adventures to partake in within your broader area. Adventures that would showcase the various stories and dramas being played out around us - stories forever changing across habitats, biomes, and seasons. Suppose those adventures, like many more athletically focused ones today, included time during or afterwards to break bread with your newly found companions and share stories, laughs, and company while having a drink or two. Such adventures could be scheduled with astonishing frequency and consistency given all there is to see in our grand backyards, and could be made to be exceedingly social. With carefully crafted narratives that let the natural world steal the show, understanding and wonder could be instilled, and if that didn't count for enough flow, the hiking, kayaking, snorkeling, and general outdoorsmanship required to partake in these kinds of things has already proven its worth as a flow inducing mechanism. And throughout all of this, and especially with the opportunities for interaction around food and drink, it could be made social and consistent so that people could come to depend on it as a place of fellowship as well.
In this way we'd be able to provide a bridge into the wonderful world around us and work to create a consistent, repeating, relationship with the local environment that could be woven into people's normal routine. Presenting a varied host of motivations it could provide a bridge for people from all walks of life to learn all about the various other kinds of activities that exist within the environmental sphere from citizen science to environmental activism. This could be a place of common ground, a place of fellowship, and a place of joy where people can be reconnected with their world.
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