Showing posts with label purpose of civilization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label purpose of civilization. Show all posts

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Forest and Nature

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 269-365


In western culture since the Industrial Revolution ( After 1790) the idea grew that there was little connection between the objects in the wold and the individual. Before that time man did believe that he could affect matter and the environment through his thoughts. With the Industrial Revolution however even the elements of nature lost their living quality in man's eye. See the destruction of the forest for example. They became objects to be categorized named torn apart examined.

In his great curiosity to understand the heredity of a flower, say he forgot  what he could learn by smelling a flower looking at ti watching it be itself.

You cannot understand what makes things live when you rob them of life. So he examined dead nature. Often he had to kill life in order to he thought  to discover its reality.

Man's thoughts no longer seemed to have any effect upon nature because his mind he saw himself apart from it. He became blind to the connection between his thoughts and his physical environment and experience.

Nature became then an adversary that he must control.  Yet underneath he felt that he was at the mercy of  nature, because in cutting himself off from it he also cut himself off from using many of his own abilities.

Very natural functions of the conscious mind therefore were assigned to the underground  and cut off from the normal use.

If the purpose of civilization is to enable the individual to live in peace joy security and abundance, then that ideea of disconnection with nature has served him poorly.