Biophilia or the biophilia hypothesis outlines that people have a natural and innate inclination to affiliate with the natural world. The hypothesis was birthed by scientists Stephen Kellert and E. O. Wilson (1993) who observed that humans co-evolved with nature over eons. In the process people developed an adaptive response to the world around them. This evolutionary relationship continues to influence our health and wellbeing, physically, emotionally, intellectually, morally and spirituality.
The dimension of spirituality is found in the way people derive meaning from their connection with nature. It is grounded in people's relationship with the other, that is, with something special, sacred or divine that creates a sense of purpose for one's life.
Other significant dimensions derived from biophilia include the aesthetic dimension or scenic beauty, the humanistic dimension which relates to feeling good in nature or experiencing nature emotionally, or the moralistic dimension where one's connection with and experience in nature may charge us to take care of nature. But along with biophilia is its converse - biophobia - where people fear nature and natural things.
Often a fear of nature is stimulated by media representations from horror movies of giant spiders or attacking crows. Nature is also negatively represented in ads promoting insect killers (harmful chemical sprays) for supposedly killer insects, or in movies like Jaws with bloody scenes designed to make the viewer afraid to go back into the water. This manufactured or mediatised fear of sharks is real - but it comes at a time when there are fewer and fewer sharks and many species of sharks at risk, as are several places in their homespace, the marine environment.
Despite these and other media constructions of risk-filled apocalyptic nature disaster movies, benevolent and romantic nature is often portrayed though documentaries in which the beauty of the natural world might encourage us to explore the great outdoors. In stepping outside, we rekindle those evolutionary feelings of biophilia. What's important about biophilia, Kellert and Wilson (1993) assert, is that it is integral to our human health and wellbeing.
With biophilia in mind, today in class we spent time on the edge of the beautiful lake at The University of Queensland. Surrounded by university buildings and with the sound of the lawn mower not far away, the class sat quietly within an intimate and tiny forest of melaleuca trees. As a group we spent time in reflection, observing nature, listening to the birds, watching the ripples on the water, communing with the coots, ducks, ibis and other bird species, and the resident water dragons.
One adventurous water dragon, on the lookout for food, came close, so close in fact that it climbed into the bag of one of the students and sat there for a while, looking quite at home. By not going outside, we would lose the precious memory of such an experience. We spend so much of our time indoors and in a less-natured, even denatured urban environment, and as a result we undergo what Robert Michael Pyle (1993) calls 'the extinction of experience'.
So to what extent does the media influence our lack of nature connectedness in the urban realm? Certainly electronic media is enticing, even addictive, so much so that here I am writing a blog using electronic media - about being in nature. At the same time, I might be watching a beautiful documentary on the wonders of the deep, visiting a zoo, aquarium or the one of the ersatz mariney sea-worlds. Along the way I could purchase a stuffed seal, or a colourful picture painted by elephants.
The media create dramatic renditions of natural events or environmental disputes through news reporting. It offers bite-sized chunks or frames of reinterpreted information so fast that images pass by without us often understanding what the story is really about. Framing of stories, says Matthew Nisbet (2009), is a device for paring down or dumbing down important stories about climate change or nature devastation. The way the story is framed can give more weight to one side of an argument or another. For example, when reporting on climate change, while the IPCC and leading world scientists lay out the researched facts year by year showing the situation is problematic, the media can frame the story in such a way that these facts are open to question. The result becomes community scepticism and lack of support for urgent action.
Nisbet (2009) recommends that: 'To break through the communication barriers of human nature, partisan identity, and media fragmentation, messages need to be tailored to a specific medium and audience, using carefully researched metaphors, allusions, and examples that trigger a new way of thinking about the personal relevance of climate change.'
As the media tends to be our major source of information gathering, and social media the major source of information sharing, it is important for us media receivers to be savvy about the messages being delivered, especially in view of media framing, short sound bites, and the often over-simplification and lack of backgrounding of stories.
Approaches to raise awareness is to use celebrities such as Leonardo dicaprio, Kate Blanchett to promote issues of environmental concern. Other campaigns prefer the use of glorious nature images to appeal to people's sense of the aesthetic. Depicting the beauty of natural environments might have more advertising pull than giving people more facts - which may then be overlooked by those in the mainstream media. A different form of communication is needed suggest Nisbet et al. (2010:329) and a new vision for nature care.
'... building societal action in response to climate change will require a new communication infrastructure, in which the public is (1) empowered to learn about both the scientific and social dimensions of climate change, (2) inspired to take personal responsibility, (3) able to constructively deliberate and meaningfully participate, and (4) emotionally and creatively engaged in personal change and collective action'
The documentary series Years of Living Dangerously (2014, Showtime) is also aiming to present a new way to approach climate change. Perhaps following kind of the advice of Matthew Nisbet and colleagues, the series produced by Hollywood luminaries such as James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger uses other celebrities as interviewers and their reporting of case studies to tell personal stories about the effects of climate change.
The first episode highlights two main stories intercut throughout the show. The program covers the plight of farmers in Syria affected first by severe drought and then by war. Then the show journeys to the town of Plainview, Texas and reveals the role of faith bound up in climate change denial versus the campaigning role of climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katharine Heyhoe, recently named as one of Time Magazine's top 100 influential people.
been
named one of TIME's 100 most influential people in the world - See more
at:
http://www.gospelherald.com/articles/51048/20140428/christian-scientist-katherine-hayhoe-named-among-time-magazines-most-influential.htm#sthash.rgJRmsKQ.dpuf
But with issues like climate change and wider environmental destruction, is mediated nature and celebrity culture enough to change current cultural norms in places like Australia about the need for environmental concern and care? Is it enough to stir our feelings of biophilia enough for community support to be garnered?
In an article titled 'Phenomenologically investigating mediated “nature”', researcher Tony Adams (2005) suggests it might be. Adams explains that the nature of his study was to explore people's experiences of mediated nature compared with the real thing, what he terms 'authentic nature'.
For Adams, mediated nature is depicted 'in innovative, exciting ways ...[which] provide our bodies and senses with fresh perspectives towards nature-related phenomena. For example, when characteristics of nature become mixed with shopping mall composition, we are introduced to new ways of experiencing both shopping and the wilderness (Price, 1995). Or, by mixing nature-related characteristics with theme parks, we may acquire new attitudes about and feelings toward entertainment industries and the natural world (Davis, 1997).' Really?
Assuming that mediated nature provides positive benefits, Adams interviewed people about their experiences with media. The process was revelatory. One of the problems he discovered during his analysis was an imbalance in his research design. He had placed too much emphasis on locating mediated experiences from his interviewees, so much so that he overlooked the authentic nature experiences they were describing. For instance, he did not seem to hear his participants when they spoke about the peacefulness of being in nature, the sensorialness of the experience, and the way they felt they got more out of connecting to authentic nature than mediated nature. Adams was only looking for the way they responded to media, so did not react to the comment made by one of his interviewees who stated:
'Well, to me, it’s great to experience nature on television. You can learn a lot, and information can go into your brain. But it’s not the same thing as actually smelling a tree or actually touching a tree or having the feeling of it.' (Adams 2005:520).
At least Adams' participant made the distinction between authentic nature and hyper-real nature, so perhaps Baudrillard's simulacra may not have as much power as he originally surmised. But back in 1991, Katz and Kirby threw out a warning of what can happen when people put nature at such a distance, that they become unaware of the extent of the exploitation of the natural world.
'The exploitation of nature is coincident with its constitution as something apart and 'other'. Within the ideology of western advanced capitalism, this metaphoric space is attractive in part because it has been constructed as so different from ourselves, as 'poles apart'' (Katz and Kirby, 1991:265).
Despite such a damaging prospect, the gap of being 'poles apart' can be mended by frequent and meaningful experiences in nature. As we spend time in nature, observing the changes of the seasons, the movement of the tides, the rise and fall of sun and moon, and listen to the bird call at dawn, we can be changed by these encounters with nature places. Insight, personal transformation, feelings of spirituality and transcendence can emerge though spending time in the outdoors.
Reconnecting to nature helps us rekindle the feeling of biophilia. This innate quality is part of our unconscious awareness of being human. It might, as Kellert and Wilson (1993) hoped, encourage us to take care of nature so it is not poles apart but a conscious and integral part of our lives.
References
- Adams TE. 2005. Phenomenologically investigating mediated “nature”. The Qualitative Report 10(3): September 2005 512-532, http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR10-3/adams.pdf
- Davis, SG, 1997. Spectacular nature: Corporate culture and the Sea World experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Katz C, A. Kirby. 1991. In the nature of things: the environment and everyday life. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 16(3): 259-271.
- Kellert SR, EO Wilson. Eds, 1993. The biophilia hypothesis. Washington DC: A Shearwater Book (Island Press).
- Nisbet MC. 2009. Communicating climate change: why frames matter for public engagement. Environment 51(2): 12-23.
Nisbet MC, MA Hixon, KD Moore, M Nelson. 2010. Four cultures: new synergies for engaging society on climate change. Frontiers in Ecology 8(6): 329-331.
- Price, J. 1995. Looking for nature at the mall: A field guide to the Nature Company. In W. Cronon Ed., Uncommon ground: Toward reinventing nature, 186-203. New York: Norton.
- Pyle RM. 1993. The extinction of experience. In The thunder tree: Lessons from an urban wildland. New York: The Lyons Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment