In modern California, there is a unique type of “room” one can hire. This is the rentable nest. Perched among trees and in a jungle environment, is the nest dwelling. About it, Niceartlife magazine says: “The nest was created by artist Jayson Fann and is entirely made out of eucalyptus branches. It is large enough for 8 people to relax in absolute comfort with direct connection to the open air and sky. Guests routinely find themselves drawn to the nest. Most are content to simply admire the unusual structure, while others are tempted to take a short nap, to meditate or to read books in it. It is a very special and mystical experience”.
This puts a question mark on the “conventional wisdom” of town planners and architects – because a home perched in nature is the greatest comfort, whereas conventional wisdom prescribes the destruction of nature towards “something good”, like, as they contend, 4 white walls. Mentally, that is a disaster, as the human brain requires a broadening of the range of stimuli it experiences, rather than narrowing it down to, for example, 1 color, white, and similar walls. In contrast, in nature, no two leaves are alike, and no two views are similar. Contrast that to how man returns to the same boredom each day, and keeps himself locked inside his house. Yet for optimal mental health, we need to see not merely 1 species of life-form, but many species. In other words, modern urban houses are ideologically similar to prison cells.
In Osaka, the cultural heart of Japan, there is, again, a mall called Namba Parks. Nature is considered important, thus mall space was given to forests rather than more commercial units. People say that the greenery is enough to make them forget that they are in a city. Nearly everybody surveyed loved it, agreeing that natural beauty is superior to the manmade aesthetics by architects, civil engineers, vehicle designers etc.
Such examples highlight the problem of modern urban landscapes. They’ve completely lost touch with nature. Some say that it is good, the silence of 4 white walls allows for concentration. But if they need such quantitative concentration, it is likely that their mental processes are dopamine-oriented, that is, they are of the wrong type (yes, we can call some mental lifestyles to be “of the wrong type”*, unfortunately (I had never started with that view, I discovered it) – meaning that they cause depression and dementia). This wisdom is lost on mankind. No wonder that the rates of stress and Alzheimer’s disease, the No. 1 killer of the elderly, is set to quadruple in the first half of this century, according to researchers.
- this technically implies “domesticated” – just how (some) dogs** are “of the wrong type” compared to wolves
** (like that one which looks like a sausage and stares at you as if a fool)
The problem is that, in urbania, “I see humans – more and more humans*”, and manmade gimcracks, have replaced individualism and nature, and increasingly, most people get by playing cut-throat “Games” of the type described by Canadian Psychologist Berne in Games People Play. That is the hidden psychosomatic side of globalization. In other words, a lifestyle of individualism/nature is being replaced by urban herdism (as seen in many “normal” corporations and urban gangs), leading to dementia; that is the problem.
- Nevertheless, Individualism does not equal the intellectually bankrupt “Malthusian” view; the true solution is: to increase entropy, as I show later.
In other words, rather than having clusters of low and high (urban) density of population – example of the first being uninhabited rural areas, which are nostalgically viewed in train journeys – humans should live in a uniform density of population across the world, so that inter-dwelling distance is maximized and equalized. That is the structural secret of an individualist society designed to prevent mental diseases.
Ideal education and socio-structural system is found in some tribal societies, like the Piraha Indians of South America, where children (who are allo-parented i.e. considered the community’s responsibility) grow up learning to interact with nature (by picking fruits, hunting etc.) – thereby also relieving adults of menial chores – rather than playing with stupid toys. Some more details about the ideal socio-structural system are covered here:
slideshare.net/fullscreen/ps … ed-utopia/
Anyway, the ancients well understood the importance of maintaining touch with nature. That is why the old leader of all earthmen was Gaia, the Earth-Goddess, who maintained an agreeable peace by clarifying that her philosophy is nature-centrism, of the type mentioned here and seen to reemerge in truly progressive areas like California and Osaka. As Lushkov says, bees are wiser than humans – bees work for society as well as themselves, whereas humans “work” merely “for themselves” and get it wrong, and are stricken down by depression and dementia. If man learns how to care for nature, he will have no problem caring for the fellow man. Then all humans can have the “very special, mystical experience” availed to those who have intimacy with nature.
