Nothing is without intersections. Nothing stands on its own, immune to the rest of the world. So why do we, as first-world human beings, define “nature” and the “environment” as something apart from ourselves? Why is there a central disconnect between a species of the earth, and the earth itself? Why has the term become “environmental problems” instead of “our problems”? These questions become paramount within the subject realm of environmental studies.
In order to answer these questions, one must first create a definition that adequately encompasses the entire sphere of what the environment or nature is. However, in some circumstances, there is no outside idea or term for this subject. In a small east African village, an anthropologist found that the community had no word(s) that meant “the environment” or “nature,” indicating that the people did not view these terms as things that exist outside of the human realm[1]. Instead, the anthropologist found that the people seemed to see themselves as part of both nature and the environment[2]. How did this ideology come to change in western and modernized society? And why did it change?
Western culture has somehow separated humanity from the rest of the organisms and entities within the world. Instead, humanity has become different and distinct from its surroundings. This change in psychological perspective interests me greatly within the subject of environmental studies. How can mankind be seen as “outside” or “separated” from its surroundings when it is constantly intersecting with them? Humanity continuously alters its environment in a multitude of ways. We cut down trees to create land for farming, which we then alter (the crops) to be more efficient in the process of growing, so that consumers may be more pleased with the product. We interfere with many natural processes through pollution, waste and energy usage. However, it is not just humanity that affects nature. Nature is constantly manipulating the human world as well. Through weather, natural disasters and diseases, the environment that surrounds mankind is consistently utilizing its resources to influence humanity just as humanity influences it.
However, humanity’s unrelenting modification of the environment has come to such an extent that humanity is now affecting itself through its own disturbances of nature. By this I mean that the extent to which we alter our surroundings is now becoming the extent to which we alter our own ways of living and interests. This is due to the dense magnitude in which nature and humanity are interconnected, and reliant upon one another. This intersection is the base of environmental studies and it is the reason to why this field exists in the first place.
Therefore, to me, it seems that the topic of intersections takes on a complexity that is far too advanced to define within one blog post. Intersections are present within everything that we (as well as everything else) experiences every day. Everything is a factor of something else. Everything is interconnected.
[1] Walley, Christine J. Rough Waters. Princeton University Press. 2004.
[2] Walley, Christine J. Rough Waters.