Two questions that Gary asked are:
"How can one experience onself as an integral part of nature - not at a
conceptual level, but as an actual experience."
"How have we lost the experience of our connection with nature."
I would encourage everyone interested in these questions to get a copy of
Albert Borgmann's book "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life:
A Philosophical Inquiry" It's published by University of Chicago Press in
paperback.
Borgmann's thesis is that as we increasingly take up with the world
through our work, leisure activities and family time, in a technological
manner, our capacities as human beings atrophy and our experiences of the
world are diminished. His analysis is much richer and insightful than I can
convey. He's no Luddite. He welcomes the expansion of technologies that
ease human suffering, eradicate disease and lift the drudgery of skillless
burdensome labor from workers. He's also interested in technology that
sharpens human experiences of the world such as new materials for musical
instruments. There's no list of appropriate or inappropriate technologies.
Instead, he arms the reader with a set of concepts that give one the eyes
to see what is gained and what is lost when one opts to jog on a treadmill
in one's living room rather than being a moving body through a landscape;
reckoning with the wind, the inclines; the riches and challenges associated
with the particular season.
How would Borgmann's suggest that we regain "our connection to nature?" He
doesn't call for throwing away technology and returning to pretechnological
times. Instead he asks us to clarify our concerns with technology. Do we
want to perfect technology and expand it or leave gaps, such as wilderness
areas, wild rivers, jobs that call for skilled craftsmen-like work as
opposed to mindless labor, so that we and future generations can have
profound experiences of skilled encounters with the world, unmediated and
undiminished by technology.
Mark Dewart
Indianapolis, Indiana USA