People need direct interaction with the living Earth, with what we call nature.
This is empirical fact, research proven.
Direct interaction with Earth and nature has proven benefits for human mental and physical health.
Whether one knows it or not.
Productive interaction is best.
Virtually every "improvement" of civilization has been for the express purpose of reducing this interaction, to the point where most Americans rarely, if ever, personally encounter nature, and even less often productively interact with her.
Human beings need to walk. We evolved to walk. There is a very real link from our upright stance, long legs, and our walk, to our opposable thumbs, our fully available hands, and our big brains.
Nearly every "improvement" since 1900 has been to eliminate walking.
We're obese.
There is a claim that "modern civilization" and "modern medicine" have made people live longer.
On average, yes.
There is a parallel claim that people didn't have long lives, that a person of 40 (or some arbitrary number) was "old."
This is patently false.
The statement "more people died young" does not in any way equate with "nobody got old."
Thomas Jefferson died at 87.
John Adams died at 90.
Death by old age is a result of DNA, and human DNA has changed very little over the past 100,000 to 250,000 years.
Whenever I hear a discussion about climate, or about poverty, or the Global South, underlying it all is the unstated assumption that all the things we did to make it so we never had to touch Earth, or walk, or die young, those things are absolutes, givens, requirements.
We can't, you know.
The less Earth we touch, the less we walk, the less we gain our needs, at least some of them, from direct, productive interaction with nature, the sicker we get.
Our medicine isn't health care. It's sickness maintenance.
And our Earth is dying.
Our Earth is dying from our lack of attention and responsibility.
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