Click here (NewYorkTimes) to read about the interface between mind and environment...
Do you think we are hard-wired to respond emotionally to our environment? Is there any validity to the notion of "solastalgia", in your opinion? Why/why not?
3 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Cynthia Williams, Solastalgia, ausome and true. If you live so long in a place, to see changes that would take away beauty is a heartbreaking event.
While I was reading this, I found myself wondering about the link between nature and diseases of the mind. This article, while very impressive, did not seem to take into consideration what links may or may not exist outside of anxiety and grief, such as when it is defined as ecopsychology. From my own experiences with my father, who passed away from early onset Alzheimer's disease, I found myself remembering the five years of noticeable cognition decline and considering the reactions he had to the environments around him. One of the nursing facilities that he was in was a specific memory care facility, so that it was not just a locked-down wing, but an entire locked-down facility, that incorporated indoor plants, trees, fish tanks, and an aviary of sorts, along with outdoor gardens and walkways for those who sundowned. While in this facility my father was the calmest he had been during his entire disease, and the multiple times that he was admitted to the hospital, even after all memory and awareness of surroundings ( in the sense that he knew where he was) had gone, he would be anxious, and needing to be sedated more often than not. While before reading this article, I thought it was just the type of care he was receiving that led to his reactions, i'm now wondering how much of his mental reactions were due to the environment's reflection of nature versus urban settings such as the hospital.
Indeed... to what degree are our minds 'hooked into' (and reflexively responsive toward) the natural ecology? Anatomically modern humans have existed for about 200,000 years... and yet urbanization has existed for only about 6,000 years. Have our brains been able to catch up to our environment? Should they??
3 comments:
Cynthia Williams, Solastalgia, ausome and true. If you live so long in a place, to see changes that would take away beauty is a heartbreaking event.
While I was reading this, I found myself wondering about the link between nature and diseases of the mind. This article, while very impressive, did not seem to take into consideration what links may or may not exist outside of anxiety and grief, such as when it is defined as ecopsychology. From my own experiences with my father, who passed away from early onset Alzheimer's disease, I found myself remembering the five years of noticeable cognition decline and considering the reactions he had to the environments around him. One of the nursing facilities that he was in was a specific memory care facility, so that it was not just a locked-down wing, but an entire locked-down facility, that incorporated indoor plants, trees, fish tanks, and an aviary of sorts, along with outdoor gardens and walkways for those who sundowned. While in this facility my father was the calmest he had been during his entire disease, and the multiple times that he was admitted to the hospital, even after all memory and awareness of surroundings ( in the sense that he knew where he was) had gone, he would be anxious, and needing to be sedated more often than not. While before reading this article, I thought it was just the type of care he was receiving that led to his reactions, i'm now wondering how much of his mental reactions were due to the environment's reflection of nature versus urban settings such as the hospital.
-brayden stewart
Indeed... to what degree are our minds 'hooked into' (and reflexively responsive toward) the natural ecology? Anatomically modern humans have existed for about 200,000 years... and yet urbanization has existed for only about 6,000 years. Have our brains been able to catch up to our environment? Should they??
pdk
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