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09-21-2015, 06:40 PM
It is hard to become an individual in an age of distraction. That is the theme coursing through The World Beyond Your Head, philosopher Matthew Crawford' (http://www.iasc-culture.org/people_faculty.php?ID=95)s latest book. Crawford, who is a senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, convincingly argues that a large part of our identity is shaped by our environment. In order to thrive and develop ourselves, we require environments that afford us total immersion in whatever it is we are doing, allowing us full control over our actions, actions that yield tangible results.
Such environments are hard to come by these days. Public spaces are becoming increasingly commercialized, overwhelmed with advertisements scientifically designed to overwhelm us, infringing on our attention, influencing our actions. Most twenty-first century "knowledge economy" offices are rigged to promote efficiency, not individuality, making it nearly impossible to trace the results of one's work back to the self. "The very possibility of seeing a direct effect of your actions in the world, and knowing that these actions are genuinely your own, may come to seem illusory," writes Crawford.
But not so with nature.
When we hit the trails for a run, ride, or climb, our intentions, attention, and actions naturally harmonize with our environment. Tangible results can easily be traced back to the self.
For example, if our goal is to climb a mountain, at our disposal we have our mind, body (and in some cases, the gear that becomes an extension of it), and the mountain. How mind, body, and mountain work together, or fail to, determines a concrete and easy to judge outcome. We either made it to the top or we didn't. In nature, there are no outside forces pulling us away from our experience. There are neither "complex organizational dynamics" nor "office politics" muddling our results.
Perhaps this explains why so many people report having a coming of age experience in nature. Or why we crave our weekly hike or our daily trail run. The original environment - nature, that is - is one of the few left that fully allows us to flourish as individuals, whether that means developing or reaffirming our sense of self, or working out our problems.
Nature affords us so much more than its aesthetic beauty. It is critical that we protect it from all the outside forces that have encroached on so much else in the world, and in doing so, that have encroached on our ability to truly express ourselves.
Brad Stulberg writes about the art and science of health and human performance. You can follow him on Twitter @Bstulberg (https://twitter.com/BStulberg). -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Such environments are hard to come by these days. Public spaces are becoming increasingly commercialized, overwhelmed with advertisements scientifically designed to overwhelm us, infringing on our attention, influencing our actions. Most twenty-first century "knowledge economy" offices are rigged to promote efficiency, not individuality, making it nearly impossible to trace the results of one's work back to the self. "The very possibility of seeing a direct effect of your actions in the world, and knowing that these actions are genuinely your own, may come to seem illusory," writes Crawford.
But not so with nature.
When we hit the trails for a run, ride, or climb, our intentions, attention, and actions naturally harmonize with our environment. Tangible results can easily be traced back to the self.
For example, if our goal is to climb a mountain, at our disposal we have our mind, body (and in some cases, the gear that becomes an extension of it), and the mountain. How mind, body, and mountain work together, or fail to, determines a concrete and easy to judge outcome. We either made it to the top or we didn't. In nature, there are no outside forces pulling us away from our experience. There are neither "complex organizational dynamics" nor "office politics" muddling our results.
Perhaps this explains why so many people report having a coming of age experience in nature. Or why we crave our weekly hike or our daily trail run. The original environment - nature, that is - is one of the few left that fully allows us to flourish as individuals, whether that means developing or reaffirming our sense of self, or working out our problems.
Nature affords us so much more than its aesthetic beauty. It is critical that we protect it from all the outside forces that have encroached on so much else in the world, and in doing so, that have encroached on our ability to truly express ourselves.
Brad Stulberg writes about the art and science of health and human performance. You can follow him on Twitter @Bstulberg (https://twitter.com/BStulberg). -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
http://rc.feedsportal.com/r/238386117682/u/0/f/677045/c/35496/s/4a0af9fa/sc/28/rc/1/rc.img (http://rc.feedsportal.com/r/238386117682/u/0/f/677045/c/35496/s/4a0af9fa/sc/28/rc/1/rc.htm)
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