After our first class in Natural and Human Systems, I started to reflect on the how humans are connecting with their environment in today’s society. It is quite interesting to think about how over thousands of years the earth was something that was honored and respected and how today, in 2008 we have to start altering how lifestyle habits because of the abuse that our earth has been subjected to. I started to look at how land use has changed over the years and came across some good examples of how the human race is changing the environment around them. Image 1 is a typical home in the 1930’s that is surrounded by land, most likely for farm use. Farming would be one of the main uses for land, and income for the family, therefore the land is kept, and maintained very well
Image 1
The following, in image 2 is a typical city in North America in the 21st century. As you can see there is almost no land to be seen anymore. The purpose for the land in this city is to house the skyscrapers that are to be built and maintained on top of the earth.
Image 2
As time has developed we can see the different uses for land use. Land is o longer kept clean or in original states, but is turned into a way to house unnatural developments. This addresses the question that is we take away the natural environment, and continue to build and develop ourselves in coherence with the unnatural environment, are we in fact part of that unnatural environment as well? Are we, who are originally built as part of nature now turning into some kind of mutants? As our natural environment is being taken over, what is left of out roots, from thousands of years ago, what is being left of our earth? What are we essentially doing, or what we have done to mother nature?
I think that to think about this theory in a different aspect can help of to identify with the problems we face today that have come along with the destruction for our natural environment. How do we fix them? Global warming, natural disasters, pollution, I now know we need to start now to help create and bring back our natural environment.
I think that image 3 has a strong meaning with reference to what i was thinking. This picture shows how there is such a take over of development by man that nature looks out of place. Nature almost doesn’t belong in the society that man has created. I think we need to change that. We as a race need to allow for nature to have it’s place one again.
Image 3
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