My View on "Into the Wild"

Is it ironic how Chris ends up escaping from the society he dreaded at home, but he got stuck at the "Magic Bus"? It bothers me that I was not able to see him return home as a new man. Certainly his values had changed drastically. It was as if he tested himself to see how far he could push himself. He did an excellent job on surviving for so long and improvising when he did not have anywhere to go or barely anything to eat. He was able to land jobs in towns that he did not know anything about. I thought about the process that I had to go through this summer to get my social security card in order to work and then I was amazed at how he got a job in so little time when he lacked his birth certificate, id, and his social security card. He is a very clever character and I think he deserves more credit than what some people in our class gave him. Personally, I would have freaked out after the hurricane, but Chris did not; he kept moving and he remained positive, which took a lot of the people he met by surprise. GREAT MOVIE!

Hoarder/Environmentalist

Recently I watched an old episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive. I noticed in this episode, the hoarder continued to get emotional and even angered at the workers who were doing the job of putting the trash in the dumpster. She told the crew that she was an environmentalist and that metal should not be thrown away, it should be recycled.




Through out that episode, the footage of her home is, at some points, unbelievable. It's impossible to think that anyone lives there. She has rats and roaches, along with other creatures crawling around under all of her trash. In one part of the episode, it shows her walking into a room and literally having to climb up the junk like stairs. When her and the filming crew got into the room their heads were almost touching the ceiling.




My point is, I can not understand why/how people like this can say or convince themselves that they are environmentalist? The way the woman is living is not healthy. I completely understand that Hoarding/Being a hoarder is a mental disorder, but I do not understand this notion that she is being an environmentalist.

Satellites everywhere:0

Recently in the news there has been information about the latest satellite, the UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite) falling to earth. I found this video that was captured as it fell over Canada creating a bright light show in the sky. People watching this may be astounded by the magnificent sight of this falling debris, but I just can not help but wonder about all of the other 900 satellites orbiting around us and how many of these are actually still operational. The UARS was originally built and functioning in 1991, but less then fifteen years later it was shut down, so it essentially has just been hanging out up there for six years. With as many satellites as there may be out of order in space it appears to me we are not just junking up our space here on Earth, but we have extended the junkyard past the exosphere. Not only are we suggesting more and more satellites to be sent into space, but also NASA has introduced the idea of having gas stations in space. From the information I have gathered I disagree that our ideas to expand our knowledge is being obtained in the most sufficient way. All that we extend into space eventually makes its way back to earth sometimes carrying toxic chemicals and must be shot out of the sky. But no worries most of these satellites remains wind up in our oceans! Out of sight, out of mind I guess the same goes for the planets that may also be gathering up any amount of our leftovers...

A. Harper (continuation of disscussion in class)

I feel as though I was not able to explain my point of view on the film Into the Wild. Majority of the people in class agreed on the fact that Chris was "being one with nature" and I feel very different. In the film Chris killed some animals, which in my opinion would be him trying to be the dominant being in nature; instead of him treating all beings as one and letting them animals live their life, in nature. I also feel that he could have made an even bigger impact if had used the resources he already had--college education, money, status etc.--to better the society that he already was apart of.
I still feel that his act of "going into the wild" was a sense of rebellion. If he had hippies for parents, or if he had parents who valued their relationship with their children, or if he had parents who totally abandoned him, he would not have gone into the wild and taken such drastic measures to be on his own.
I also remember someone in class saying that Chris was trying to find happiness. My opinion on that is, if he were trying to find happiness he would have found refuge in at least one of the people he meet on his journey. The fact that he wanted to do all of this "journeying" on his own shows that he is not trying to be one with nature nor is he "Ecologically Thinking."
One more thing, a lot of people in class said that he "did much better than I would have done"; honestly, he did not. He was too educated to not already know that going into the wild alone would end up fatal if he went completely alone (or he could have simply researched the deadly berries found in Alaska). He's death, in fact, was a sign of nature being smarter than humans (showing us that we don't stand a chance when up against nature). If Chris, being the "highly intelligent" person he is, could have took an extra hour to read the book on berries, in it's entirety, he would have known not to eat those berries. If he would not have ran to a set of berries, flipped through the book to see that exact berry, and reading only that part, he would not have died. In the book he realizes, after the fact, that the two berries look exactly alike; all of these other wild things that he had done and experienced, something as simple as him rereading (something he should have been accustom to already) was the result of his death.

A False View of Nature

I hardly ever watch t.v anymore, unless it's the news or something on Discovery. I'm not sure why, but I decided to flip through the channels the other day. I stopped for a second, and there was a commercial on. A family was "camping" with their nice warm fire. They seemed to be having a great time. I started thinking that this has got to be a commercial for some kind of off road vehicle, because they were in the middle of the forrest.

If I were to pause the scene, you would think that maybe it was a car commercial, or a bug spray commercial, maybe even a prevent forrest fires commercial.

But no. No shot.

It was an iPad commercial.

My first thought: WHAT THE F?

...what does an iPad have to do with camping?

The commercial didn't want me to go out and buy an iPad. It made me want to do the opposite. What is Apple trying to tell us? What's left of "nature" is going to be better with an iPad? Bringing an iPad into the wilderness totally defeats the purpose of camping.

I think the part that aggravates me the most isn't that a person is bringing a $600 mini laptop thing with them. It's the fact that they aren't appreciating the beauty of the environment. They're so consumed in this manmade thing, that they forget what they're even doing. Who knows how much longer there will be places for people to even camp out anymore. People need to leave the appliances at home, and enjoy what little is left of real beauty.

Different statistics I've found on the internet:

1. 11% of the northern hemisphere, and 7% of the southern hemisphere defined as "wilderness"
2. 46% of the Earth can still be called wilderness, or be described as having little human interaction
3. 10% of the Earth is protected by either preserves, conservations, or national parks.
4. Hardwoods covered 85% of Europe thousands of years ago, now they only cover 3%.

I am so bothered by this.

Moral of the story: iPads in what's left of the great outdoors is a FAIL.

Stung out of Samsara

Today I saw a news story on CNN about a 61 year old woman who attempted to swim from Cuba to Florida. After 40 hours and 67 nautical miles Diana Nyad finally gave up, but not because of exhaustion or an asthma attack (which thwarted her last attempt to swim this distance). Instead she was stopped by her inability to fight “Mother Nature.” In this instance Mother Nature manifested itself in the form of jellyfish stings. Although some sources say that she was stung by Portuguese Man-of-Wars, in the CNN interview she said that doctors said they were Box Jellyfish, considered by some to be the most venomous creatures in the world. Despite her apparent failure, she did not seem to feel particularly defeated. She claimed that it was really a triumph of the mind, and in her mind she knew that were it not for the jellyfish she would have been able to finish her goal. This is the part of the interview that intrigued me. It seems to me that such extreme goals like swimming the English Channel, climbing Mount Everest, etc. are undertaken for the most part to prove that man can indeed conquer nature. I doubt that CNN would have been following this story for the past two months had Ms. Nyad made swimming 100 miles in an indoor pool her goal. She already holds the record for “open water swimming without a shark cage” from her 1979 swim from the Bahamas to Florida. This record implies that longer distances have been swum with the aid of a shark cage, a human tool to separate the out of place human from one of the naturally occurring perils of the ocean.

Ms. Nyad’s satisfaction with her performance implies that she did not feel the need to conquer the elements and prove her mastery over nature and its defenses. She only needed to conquer her own mental limits, and that she did. In various sects of Buddhism, there are various forms of meditation. Some considered seated meditation to be most effective, others use the meticulous creation of mandalas to be a better use of meditation time, and then there are those who think that any task, as long as it is approached with concentration and intentionality can be the path to awakening and release from the ego. Given this approach, I can think of no better meditation than a 40 hour struggle with the forces of your mind and of the universe. Perhaps the end should not be seen as giving up, but more like giving in to vastness of the universe and our mere impermanent and insignificant existence in it.

Day 1: Service Learning

Okay, so I can't describe the experience that I had today.
I'm volunteering at the Wilson Charter School helping a 6th grade class with math. During the orientation, I was very impressed with the professionalism of the staff and how happy they were to be doing their job, but these were just administrators, not teachers. They seemed to really care about the wellness of the school. I was excited to start because the people who are involved at the Wilson School are there for the benefit of the Broadmoor neighborhood.

For those of you that don't know Broadmoor was a neighborhood that was completely flooded after Katrina and the government basically wanted to cross the neighborhood off the face of the earth. The neighborhood didn't let it happen and rebuilt the area based on their own determination. The environment of the staff seemed extremely open and willing to work. I thought this until I went there today during the school hours.

Right off the bat, I heard teachers continuously yelling at these students for reasons unbeknown to be. It seemed as if every teacher was hollering about something. But I wasn't ready to judge yet. So I went to my 6th grade math class to help them work on their skills. The teacher super nice and she seemed to really care about her students. So she gave me a group of kids to work with who needed extra help.

These students are amazing. I told them that I wanted to be their friend and that I'm not here to be a teacher just someone who you can come to for an hour and get out of class and hang out with. They worked really hard and did everything that I asked them. Until one of them started asking me about my education experience. One girl asked me what high school I went to and I told her, "Ursuline Academy." She said that it is her dream to go there but she knows she will never be able to go to a "good" school because of where she lives and the school that she is at now. These words are so harsh. I tried to encourage her to work hard because anything is possible. I told her that if she wants to go to Ursuline all she has to do is put the determination into it and make the best experience out of grammar school.

Then the children told me that they don't like their teachers because they are always hollering at them. One child even told me that "The reason we act so ghetto is because when the teacher takes away our games or yells at us, the only way we know how to respond is like our parents. All they do is yell at us, so that's what we do back. We don't wanna do it that way but that's how it be." They also said that their teachers treat them like they are dumb and that they are afraid to come to study sessions or special ed classes because the other students make fun of them when they are taken out of their regular classes. They said they go to their special ed teacher because all he does is give them the answers and they memorize it and then they get A's but they never actually learn it. So I told them to bring any other subject that they need help with and we can take five extra minutes to go over it because I can't have these children not learning when they want to. I even told them that if they need a tutor after school they can call me because I care about these kids already after their first day. I want them to do whatever they want to do and go to whatever schools they want to go to but obviously somewhere someone told them that they can't.

It was heartbreaking to think that somewhere in their lives, someone told them that the school they go to isn't good enough and that they will never be able to go to a school like Ursuline. But really what makes Ursuline different than any other school? Its possible to succeed anywhere but the difference is the environment. These kids aren't getting the positive environment that they need to succeed. I think that's why this school depends heavily upon student volunteers. They are so grateful to have students come and just listen to them talk about their teachers and their classes. I know that their teachers mean well and that they want them to succeed somewhere but the students don't know how to respond to it.

So I need some advice guys. I want to be there for these kids but I don't know how I by myself can change the mentality of these adorable children. All they want to do is learn but they don't know how to and it breaks my heart.

As I left they asked me to bring them with me back to Loyola. I seriously wanted to cry. This experience is going to be one of the most challenging things I have ever done.

To mute, or not to mute?

There are plenty of ways that you can watch a film to mess around with your sense. I usually just watch a movie. That's it. Over the weekend, I was assigned to watch the movie "Che" for my Spanish Caribbean class. The whole movie was in Spanish. I don't speak spanish. I'm not positive if it's easier to watch a movie in a different language, or just turn it on mute. The constant fast talking took away from the movie a little. In high school, I took three years of Spanish but translating that movie would probably be the most difficult level of Spanish that I've ever encountered. I spent more time thinking about what some of the words meant than actually paying attention to what was going on in the movie. Once I started paying more attention to the visuals, and not the words, it became a lot easier for me to understand what was going on in the movie.

A picture can really tell you more than words could describe.

What would you say though? Turn a foreign film on mute, or let it go?

Do you think it will be distracting or what?

The Circle of Life (thanks Lion King)

So tonight I just saw the Lion King in 3D, and there was a quote in the beginning of the movie, when Mufasa is telling Simba about the “Circle of Life,” and it instantly made me think of the “Mesh” which Morton describes in the Ecological Thought, and how we are all interconnected. Now, though the Lion considers himself the “King” of everything the sun touches, he recognizes that everything needs and depends on everything else. We, as “humans” can relate, even to the idea of being “King,” because lets face it....we think we own this world. So here is the wisdom of Mufasa:

Mufasa: Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. As king, you need to understand that balance, and respect all the creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope.

Simba: But dad, don't we eat the antelope?

Mufasa: Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.

Feng Shui?

People's feelings and moods change a lot depending on their environment. If you go in a room that's cramped with boxes, maybe after moving into a new house or something like that, a person may feel trapped and nervous. If the same person goes outside and lays down under a shady tree, I would assume that they are freeing their mind of what's inside the room, and relaxing. The way that we feel everyday is greatly effected by our surroundings. On Wednesday, I laid in my bed trying to study for two major quizzes that I was going to have the next day. In one hour's time, I must have read through the chapter 3 times without remembering a single thing. This was probably due to the pile of clothes that I was laying next to, my hot pink and orange walls, the bubbling fish tank in the corner, or the idea that my macbook pro was sitting right on my desk, open...sort of mocking me in a way.

I was at my house, since I'm a commuter. I walked downstairs to our guest bedroom. The bed was empty, without even a pillow. There was no computer, or t.v. Just me, the bed, and my books. My eyes were drawn strictly too my books. There was absolutely no stopping me. One hour into studying, and I could probably recite the chapter to anyone that asked.

By organizing, or moving to an organized environment, people might just be more calm. The less substance, the more you can focus on what's important.

Relating this to film: If there's a straight on shot of a man sitting on a rocking chair on his porch infront of his beige house, he's probably got no worries in the world. The feng shui of the shot can tell us that he's calm. If you're watching a movie that takes place in New York city during Christmas time, the feng shui of the scene is probably going to be hectic because of the bright lights, and mass amounts of people. You can, in most cases, put yourself in the scene and imaging how the environment would effect your feng shui.

Question: Has anyone ever realized that it's much easier to study in one place than another? Or that's it's much easier to go shopping at one mall as opposed to another? Maybe it's easier to take one route instead of another route? The reason is probably because the environment is having an effect on you.

The Mesh

I don't think people will ever put themselves at the same level as an animal. Students in our class may have a more open mind about it, and people who think ecologically might think that we're the same. I doubt though that the minds of "takers" of the world will ever put themselves on an even level with anything else except humans.

Back in the paleolithic times, humans were considered hunters and gatherers. Everyone, and everything was even. Men and women live egualistic lives. Hunters only hunted what they needed, and gatherers only picked what they needed. When we move into a more civilized age, like the neolithic age, early humans started learning a basic for agriculture. Then I guess around 10,000 B.C.E, Mesopotamian colonies were domesticating animals, growing plans, and learning how to drain and flood the land unnaturally. This is when humans began taking. They put themselves in charge of animals, and plants. I think this is when humans first began to think that Earth was created for us.

Not only do people put themselves on a different level than animals, but they put themselves on different levels from people. Everyday I drive home from school and see the same man wearing a dirty black shirt, and some old jeans standing on the median holding up a sign saying "Will work for food. I'm tired and hungry. God is luv." You're not going to tell me that you've never looked at that man and thought that you were better than him. Look at our lives. We live in nice homes/dorms, take things when we don't need them, want something new all the time, and swear to god that our lives suck so bad! That man on the street lives in the abandoned store right across the street, if I'm not mistaken. Every bit of food that he gets, he eats in rations to make sure that he's got something for tomorrow just incase no one gives him a bite. Those clothes on his back are good enough until he finds a construction worker's old shirt on the ground or something.

Now let's take a look at someone who may not be homeless. An autistic person is thought to never have the life that we "healthy" people have. They physically look different than other people. Sure they've got a rough life. And sure no one wants to be them. The biggest difference that I ever see though is their smile. They are always happy. They will never be treated like everyone else. You're always going to have people that talk to them like a baby. Would you like it if you were talked to like a baby? You would probably get mad. Then they just sit back and smile. They enjoy life for everything it is. We get pissed off all the time, and have probably had about 10,000 worst days of our life. We don't appreciate life. It's taken for granted.

If being civilized and healthy means always wanting something new, never being satisfied, being in pissy moods, getting in fights, and under appreciating things is "life" then I think that the homeless people and autistic people are getting the better end of the deal.I do not wish to be homeless, or autistic. I want to appreciate the world the same way that they do.

We won't know the concept of living until we are happy.

Shadow Flicker video

So here is the video I mentioned the other day in class. Since I completely forgot to do it before now, I will finish this blog post after class today and comment on the video. Feel free to comment on it too!

The Perfect Moment

Have you ever looked up at the perfect moment? For example: If you didn't look up at that specific moment, you totally would have missed something. Maybe you make eye contact with someone 20 feet away, in a crowed room, because both of your heads are turning at the same exact time. Or maybe you're at a sporting event that doesn't have instant replays. If you blink, you could potentially miss something game changing and will never be able to see it again.

I've been paying attention to this a lot lately, and it's changing the way I look at things. Yesterday when I was walking up the stairs to the second floor of the library, I stopped. I never ever stop, but something told me to stop and look out the window. I thought it was really cool because there are a couple of maroon squares in the windows. I was directly in line with a maroon square, and Iggy's head was framed right in the middle of that maroon square with the rain pouring in the background. It looked so epic.

Maybe this was just a random change of pace to an everyday library ritual. Now I'm starting to wonder how many other things I'll be able to see if I take a step to the left, or turn a few seconds earlier on the way to other daily rituals.

As for the eye contact thing. Do you ever wonder why it seems like your head is turning fast until your eyes meet someone else's from a somewhat distance, and pause on their eyes as they pause on yours?

It's funny how timing plays the a huge role in just about any activity.

(this probably makes no sense, but this is what's on my mind right now)

GRN Agenda

Last Monday I went to the LUCAP meeting to see a screening of the Defend the Gulf 2011 from the Gulf Restoration Network. The film was really an amalgamation of various short films with very different formats. This allowed me to observe multiple approaches to conveying a message. Having interned for the Gulf Restoration Network, I know that they are very message oriented and intent on delivering information from a certain perspective with a definite slant. Their agenda came through very clearly in the first video which was focused on the BP oil spill. This film was shot with a very documentary style and used lots of clips and pictures from other sources (news channels, newspapers, etc.), the clips chosen made it clear that GRN is not a fan of the clean-up efforts. They were also fairly blatant with their opinions on the government’s involvement in the situation. At one point they even edited a clip of Obama to switch to a black and white color scheme while a voice over accused him of inaction. If the words alone hadn’t been accusatory enough, the filming method definitely villainized our president.

Several of the videos utilized extreme wide shots to give good views of the local ecosystems and remind people of what we stand to lose. A couple of the videos were sponsored by the Cornell Ornithology lab, so there were lots of shots of bird migrations and close-ups of various avian species. Shots such as these are meant to inspire the desire for preservation in those who appreciate nature and wildlife. Of course not everyone possesses an appreciation of these environmental factors; they had methods meant to appeal to other audiences as well. For those who value economics they offer the statistic that the Delta ecosystem provides services that can be valued between $12-47 billion, it’s a pretty wide range but it helps some people to make these concepts more tangible. For people who benefit from visual examples and explanations they explain the rate of wetlands loss as losing a football field of wetlands every 45 minutes. One video also took a satirical approach which used a metaphor of a spilled cup of coffee as a way to mock BP’s handling of the spill situation. This video screening was a good example of how video can be manipulated as a medium to press a message upon on audience, including an environmental message or agenda.

Rear Window

The other night I watched the Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window. It was discussed in our reading as an interesting take on a film frame acting as a window through which the audience observes the story. In this movie the main character is literally observing the story through a window. The whole story unfolds across the back courtyard of his building where he is able to see into his neighbor’s apartments. This movie helped me to understand the meaning of “rhyming element” which had confused me somewhat in class. This movie was overflowing with them and they were critical in explaining and advancing the plot.
Since the movie begins with Jeff observing the daily routines of his neighbors, their habits become the rhythm of the film. Next door is the newlywed couple who we can assume is busy getting to know each other behind closed blinds. On the top left is Miss Torso, who can be found dancing during the day and entertaining a steady stream of gentlemen callers at night. Then there is the songwriter in the unhappy marriage and Miss Lonely Heart who drinks and eats with an imaginary friend every night. Lastly there is the top floor lady who lowers her dog down to the yard everyday in a basket. It is this last element that becomes one of our greatest indicators that all is not well in the hood.
Just as Jeff and Lisa’s suspicions start to seem totally ungrounded and outlandish, one of the rhyming elements in the film is interrupted. One evening the little dog that traveled by basket daily was found dead in the courtyard, murdered. The discovery of his death sends his owner into an outrage that interrupts everyone’s routine. This disruption knocks the whole system off kilter and chaos ensues culminating in the suspected murderer crossing the courtyard into the protagonist’s safe haven and tossing him out the very window through which he has seen so much. The disjunction of the rhyming elements stimulates the plot and unleashes a series of dramatic events which eventually conclude with peace and routine restored to the building, with a few small improvements.

Nature Calls

“Environment” can generally be described as our surroundings, near or far. We have our home environment, our work environment, the environment at large, and all those in between. This makes it difficult to pin down a true meaning for the word environment when in different contexts it holds different implications. The only sure thing is that total isolation from “environment” is impossible. It is the realm in which we and everything else exists and therefore cannot be severed or secluded.
Nature is an even harder term to define since we have been raised to feel separate and detached from “nature” when really we are a part of it. As children we learned to explore nature, appreciate nature, or sometimes fear nature, but always we approached it as a foreigner visiting an unknown land. Nature was a bird’s nest found on the ground, but not our wood framed house. Nature flows through the stream in our backyard, but not through the faucet in our sink. The line at which something “natural” becomes “man made” or “unnatural” is nearly impossible to pin down. It is hard to know at what point our interference and manipulation take the nature out of a product of the earth and turn it into a product of the human. Although I don’t know at what point the human race crossed over from our natural beginnings, I do know that most of our current actions, products, and lifestyles do not fit in with the harmony that is nature, and instead seem to constantly interrupt the balance.

Nature, Environment

To properly explain a subject, you have to have no bias towards that subject. Since we are directly and intimately involved in nature, it is contrary to reason that we would be able to explain it. Like we said in class, 'a structure built by a human could be compared to a structure built by a bird.' If a nest built for shelter and protection is defined as a part of nature, so are the homes and cities built by humans for that same purpose. Humanity and what we have/will create is directly tied to nature, so it is impossible to fully and clearly explain nature in its entirety.

The environment is equally difficult to explain since everyone has their own environment and their environment affects their development directly. It is the space we live in and the space in which we lived and our experiences in that enviornment that shaped us. The environment is nature and nurture combined. There are also types of environments in what I think of as the social category, i.e. urban and country, 'bad' and 'good' etc. Although 'bad' and 'good' environments are subjective categories, these are usually defined as enviornments which affect growth negatively and positively.
These environments are pretty easy to comprehend, but where it gets hard is understanding another person's personal environment. Its also pretty hard to unwrap ourselves from our own environments and experiences. Even if we do this, I think its infeasible that we can really understand or be aware of other people's environments because we have not been directly affected by them. Even when our environments become shared, its hard to understand their environment completely since they have their own experiences and pasts with which to shape their own personal environment... the great thing about interaction is when you meet someone you share environments, affect each other, and become part of their own personal environment and vice versa.

These questions are circles. It's a never ending answer. Whatever nature and environment are is personal. Since we are constantly involved in nature and our own environments, all of us are changing and affecting each other. All of us meaning humanity, nature, and environment.

What is nature? Jana James

As a child, I always believed nature was just about everything that was not able to be inside a house such as grass, rivers, and wild species/animals. I created these images in my mind of what experiencing nature would be like as I would sit in my science classes in elementary school. For instance, traveling in forests and in the mountains; you are able to see different animals and experience different climates. I also believed nature is some things pertaining to humans such as human feces, which I now know would be considered human nature. Over all, Life is nature.

Na na na nature.

It's not only this class that has tried and failed to define "nature."  From the wide variety of definitions I found from a quick search on Dictionary.com—my best virtual friend; I foresee myself bringing him up often in these posts—the definition of nature can be general or specific, abstract or concrete, and in- or exclude humanity.

Three of the 20-something entries go so far as to define "nature" with aide of its derivative "natural."

• the natural world as it exists without human beings or civilization.
• the elements of the natural world, as mountains, trees, animals, or rivers.
• natural scenery.

Trying to figure out what this word means is like being lost in the Hundred Acre Wood, we just get looped around and around.  Of course if we want to figure out what "nature" means we probably need help figuring out what "natural" means.  Come on, dictionary!

Maybe, though, it's not so ridiculous.  It's not like anybody draws a blank if someone says "nature" to them.  We've all got some concept of it.  We might each have a few concepts of it that may or may not agree, but everybody has some idea of what nature is.  The word is pretty vague by its nature. Look at me making jokes!

The definition I found that I liked the most reads "the fundamental qualities of a person or thing; identity or essential character."  Sure that sounds abstract, as if I'm taking it in a philosophical sense—natural rights, human nature, all that mishegas.  But no, I'm not off in the clouds, and I think that's the most specific definition I can give to this word.  Nature is the state of how all material objects are.  It's what they look like, it's what they do, it's what's done to them.  Nature is he condition in which the universe is at any given time.

Okay, so that did get lofty.

What is Environment/Nature?

When I was younger I thought nature was only animals and plants; and that environment was everything outside. Now I think of nature as anything natural. I've never thought about what I really consider environment; my thoughts on environment haven't changed much. Now that I hear a lot about being "Eco-Friendly" I try to educate myself more on what's harmful to our environment.

The environment

Our environment is that which surrounds and shapes us. Environment can refer to the natural world, that is, nature. It is impossible for us to control nature; we can only modify it and fight against it. This has forced us to adapt to it and find new ways in which we can live at peace with each other. Sometimes this means destroying it for our own good. Since nature is physically ungraspable, we can sometimes spend a lot of time trying to understand it and re-create it.

The environment can also be the physical world we construct, such as buildings and roads. Although we have a lot of freedom to create our environment, once it’s constructed, it limits us. We tend to see nature as open and an opportunity to explore and learn, but we see the constructed environment as a boundary of what we can and cannot do.

The environment can also be abstract, such as a feeling you get when you enter a room, or the relationship among people. Regardless of what type of environment we are faced with, it can cause a change in our attitude or way of thinking. We might have to adapt or find a way to fight it because it is a leading force in our lives.

nature and the environment

Nature, in my opinion, is composed of all naturally occurring living and non-living factors that we see around us. The environment, on the other hand, is in most cases our man-made surroundings such as our homes and schools. While the natural world can be our environment, in most human cases it’s not. We have created these “unnatural” places to shelter us from nature or the naturally occurring environment that surrounds us. Since the time of the first humans, we have been constantly attempting to control nature and create an environment that keeps us separate and in our mind safe from it. Despite our attempts to separate ourselves from the natural world, our well being and our environments depend greatly on it. Living in New Orleans, a city that exists only through the control of the Mississippi River, I am constantly reminded of how intertwined my man-made and personal environment is with the natural world, despite attempts to ignore or overcome it.