Excerpts below are from the book “Losing Eden”
by Lucy Jones
“Around that time, I read about a depressing concept, coined by the American author, ecologist and lepidopterist Robert Pyle: the ‘extinction of experience’. As fewer children connect with nature, it will follow, he argues, that if they become parents, their children will in turn have an even more tenuous connection with the natural world. ‘Its premise involves a cycle of disaffection and loss that begins with the extinction of hitherto common species, events, and flavours in our own immediate surrounds; this loss leads to ignorance of variety and nuance, thence to alienation, apathy, an absence of caring, and ultimately to further extinction.”
“In 2005, the influential American writer Richard Louv coined the phrase ‘nature-deficit disorder’ to refer to the impact of a lack of connection with nature on people’s health. ‘It describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses”
“psychoterratic’, which describes both earth- (terra) and mental health- (psyche) related emotions, feelings and conditions. Psychoterratic illnesses, for example, are earth-related mental health issues such as ecoanxiety and global dread. ‘Solastalgia’ – an admixture of solace, nostalgia and destruction – describes a feeling of nostalgia and powerlessness about a place that once brought solace which has been destroyed. Another new term is ‘species loneliness’, to mean a collective sorrow and anxiety arising from our disconnection from other species. The environmental writer Robin Wall Kimmerer describes it as ‘a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship’.”
“The writer and naturalist Richard Mabey puts this well: ‘our imaginative affinities with the natural world are a crucial ecological bond, as essential to us as our material needs for air and water and photosynthesising plants’.”
“environmental historian and California-based academic Roderick Nash explains, appreciation of wilderness began in the cities and the ‘civilizing process which imperils wild nature is precisely that which creates the need for it’.”
Following text is from New_ Public
Benji Mauer, User researcher
Boston, MA
“This year, my favorite public space was the public beach in Boston, Carson Beach. Shaped like a crescent, it was a place where all kinds of people in the city gathered. There was no pretension, and it was an objectively beautiful place. Nearby was a long promenade over the water to Castle Island.
I had a brief vision of “beach democracy” — looking at the gazebos and pavilions scattered along the coastline. I could imagine people coming together (socially distanced) from across the city to work on our shared problems and goals as citizens.
I think for those elements to be translated into digital spaces a few things would have to be true:
- It would have to be calming on a deep level — nature sounds of waves crashing, beautiful images full of blue and green — possibly an actual recreation of the specific location.
- It would need to be a gathering place for people from a particular locality (not spread across the world) — who have a sense of shared material fate.
- It would need to be random and serendipitous — you don’t plan who to sit next to on the beach — you find an open spot and you go to it.
- It would have to be limited in size — if it’s an infinite space, nobody would have to randomly interact with their neighbor.
- Facilitation would begin after informal connections have been made talking about the weather or other smalltalk.”