Today we come to understand the relationship between man and nature from a psychological point of view.
"Almost nothing we see in nature is ours"
In this day and age, many people have lost their sense of connection with nature. Not only will they lose the experience of organic connection with inanimate nature, such as trees, mountains, etc., but they will also lose their ability to empathize with living nature (i.e., animals).
Those who feel empty are usually fully aware of what it should be like to react energetically to nature, so they may know what they are losing.
They may say with great regret that although others will be touched by the sight of the setting sun, they themselves are relatively indifferent to it;
And others may think the sea is solemn and awe-inspiring, but they themselves stand on the rocks by the sea without feeling anything.
Our relationship with nature tends to be destroyed not only because of our emptiness, but also because of our anxiety.
After listening to a report on how to protect herself from the atomic bomb, a little girl went home and asked her parents, "Mom, can't we move to a place without sky?"
Fortunately, this child's frightening but enlightening question is more of a satire than an illustration, but it is a good illustration of how anxiety can hold us back from nature.
Modern people are so afraid of the atomic bombs they have built themselves that they must flee the sky, they must flee into a cave — they must flee from the sky that traditionally symbolizes vastness, imagination and release.
On a level closer to everyday life, my point is that when a person feels emptiness within himself (which many modern people feel), the world around him is also empty, dry, and lifeless. These two experiences of emptiness are two sides of the same barren state of life relationship.
This sense of emptiness that does not feel the beauty of nature will prompt us to take more unbridled demand from nature and use nature.
In today's society, people's interest in nature is becoming more and more technical, and people are more concerned with how to master and manipulate nature. People use technology to remove the charm of nature.
Modern man has pursued the mechanical, measurable aspect of experience with great success.
Nature thus becomes an object that is calculated for the purpose of making money, just as a geographer draws a map for commercial purposes.
In this developmental process, nature is separated from the subjective emotional life of the individual.
Modern people's overemphasis on commercialism is part of the reason for its emergence, and emptiness will be its result.
There are sonnets that describe what is happening:
The world was too close to us, and soon after,
Gain and lose, we destroy our strength;
What we see in nature is hardly what is ours;
We've pulled out our hearts, a slutty request!
This ocean that revealed her bosom to the moon,
This wind will roar day and night,
And the flowers that are gathering together like sleeping flowers at the moment,
For these, for all of them,
Our feelings are no longer there;
It cannot move us one—the great God!
I'd rather be a pagan addicted to old creeds;
So maybe I can stand on this pleasant grass,
Looking around without making me feel lonely and desolate;
Watch Proteus rise from the ocean;
Or listen to old Terry's trumpet.
As human beings, nature has our roots, and not just because of the fact that the chemical composition of our bodies is essentially the same element as air, grass, or dirt.
And also because we are also involved in nature in many other ways.
For example, the cycle of seasons or the shift between night and day can be reflected in our body's rhythms, hunger and fullness, sleep and wakefulness, sexual desire and sexual satisfaction, and countless other aspects.
We and the sea have a changing state of mind, diversity, vagaries and adaptability. In this sense, when we are associated with nature, we are simply putting our roots back into their original soil.
But on the other hand, human beings are very different from the rest of nature.
He has a sense of self: his personal same sensuality distinguishes him from other living or non-living things. And nature does not care at all with the individual identity of human beings.
One of the most important aspects of our connection to nature is the need for human beings to be self-aware. Regardless of the impersonality of nature, one must be able to confirm oneself, to be able to fill the silence of nature with the vitality of his own heart.
This requires a strong self-one, that is, a strong personal identity one by one to be fully connected to nature and thus not engulfed.
For to truly feel the silence of nature and its inanimate character poses a considerable threat.
For example, if a person stands on the headland of a rock and looks at the great undulations of the waves in the sea, and if he is fully and realistically aware that the sea never "sheds a tear for the sorrow of others."
It doesn't matter what anyone else is thinking", a person's life will be engulfed, but it will have almost no impact in the huge, ever-moving chemical movement of the universe, then the person will be threatened.
Or if one immerses oneself in the feeling of the distance to the peak of a distant mountain, and allows oneself to be "god-man" towering over the peaks and abysses, while at the same time realizing that the mountain "has never been a friend of mankind and has never promised anything it cannot give", one may be crushed on the stone ground at the foot of the mountain, and his disappearance as a person will have no effect on the walls of the granite, then he will feel fear.
This is the profound threat of "nothingness" or "non-existence" that one experiences when one is fully confronted with its relationship with inorganic existence.
And constantly reminding yourself that "dust returns to dust, soil returns to soil" is actually just an empty comfort.
For most people, these experiences that arise in connection with nature can be too much anxiety.
They will escape this threat by shutting down their imaginations and turning their minds to practical and tedious details like what to eat at noon.
But escaping anxiety or rationalizing ways of escaping will only make a person weaker in the long run.
To be creatively connected to nature requires a strong sense of self and great courage.
The secularity of modern people has made most people lose this courage.