Part of What Inspires Me

The other day I was sitting on a curb waiting for the bus.  I spotted a young boy playing with an action figure.  As an avid people watcher, I found that his excitement drew me in.  His imagination had his figurine crashing and banging along the sidewalk and then leaping onto the trunk of a large maple tree.  From there it was a gruesome vertical climb for Captain America.  Suddenly the boy screamed in terror at the sight of a spider inching its way down the trunk.  He immediately backed away with a fearful grimace on his face.  Innately, the back of his hand raised to protect himself as the spider raised its two front legs to reciprocate.  As the initial shock faded he chose to then stand assertively and kicked his foot against the tree crushing the spider.

I have always found that the raw and un-filtered expressions of children gives insight into our nature.  This young boy proved to be no exception.  Just like this boy, often we as people are confronted with aspects of nature that we do not understand and ergo we fear.  Almost as often our impulse to destroy overcomes our desire to understand.  The same psychological mechanisms responsible for crushing the spider can also be extended to the poaching of sharks, whales, tigers and so on.  Like most other animals, we do not associate ourselves very strongly to those outside of our species.  Although we are social creatures towards one another, our social attitudes tend to be restricted only to other humans.  For those few animals to which we do share ourselves with, namely dogs and cats; it’s important to be aware that they have been bred over centuries and millennia to be more human-like than their ancestral cousins.  To think simply about the act of dehumanizing someone is synonymous with maltreatment of some kind.


In short …

• We separate life between human and non-human

• Non-human life is kept at a distance

• We fail to understand that which we keep at a distance

• We fear what we fail to understand

• We destroy what we fear

Clearly this is a drastically simplified line of reasoning to which there are many exceptions.  However this does describe a tendency in our species.  But for the most part it is only a catalyst which enables us to harm nature.  Most often we are in need of incentive, especially today where, for the first time in history, the majority of humanity is living in urban settings and thus far removed from nature.  Therefore the likelihood of encountering an animal threat from nature is remote for the majority.  Instead the incentives come in the form of microwave popcorn, big screen TVs and the infamous SUV.  The incentives coupled with the catalyst described above give birth to a collective indifference making nature easy fodder.


This blog will present everyday solutions that you can apply to your life and to those close to you.  Other times we will examine why and how we harm nature.  With this we can towards striking a balance between ourselves and the nature many of us love.




... next month we'll look at transportation solutions