Wilderness and Our Children
October 7, 2009
In July, the New York Review of Books had a review which posed the question, "what is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children's imagination?"
Here is my answer: we are producing a generation with a poor Qualiadelic relationship with the wilderness.
The woods has always been a dangerous place, especially in the imagination and in the collective unconscious. It is wise to be cautious and fear it, not just in itself, but also as a symbol of the unknown. This is true now more than ever, since the wilderness represents our own nature, and just as we are destroying the wilderness we are also repressing our nature. It will, eventually and inevitably, come back to haunt us.
Unless, of course, we learn to explore it. Play with it. Re-invent it. Ritual with it. Not just the nature freaks or the mountain men and the earth mothers, but all of us. We have to go back out into mother nature in order to evolve our own, human nature.
A Qualiadelic relationship is more than a symbiotic relationship where two or more living entities grow dependent on each other for survival. Typical symbiotic relationships are moss and trees, bees and flowers, certain bacteria and the stomachs of humans. But a Qualiadelic relationship is a relationship in which both parties don't merely survive together, but they evolve together.
Most symbiotic relationships start out as Qualiadelic. For instance, the bees ability to sense the color or the smell of flowers evolved right along with the flowers' ability to project that color or smell. But after a time the evolution reaches an equilibrium, and the relationship slows to a symbiotic routine.
When the relationship is Qualiadelic, however, it is anything but routine. In short, it is ritual.
Ritual should not be confused with routine, although it often is: we have our morning rituals, for instance... But a ritual, to the contrary, is really a way of responding to a crisis. It is a way of venturing into the unknown. If it works, of course, we repeat it and it does becomes routine until the next crisis, that is.
And so, we need to ritual into the wilderness. We need to explore our nature. Our relationship with the wilderness is no longer Qualiadelic; it isn't even symbiotic. It is abusive. And we know this is wrong, so we are scared of it.
We project this fear onto our children. The fear we have, of our children getting hurt, or kidnapped, or lost while in the woods, has prevented us from allowing them to roam freely. The next generation will have more fear of nature than we do, and because of this they will be even more insensitive toward its destruction.
Fortunately, exploring the great outdoors is one of the best ways to practice Conscious Ritualing. Even if it is only your backyard.
Every nature buff knows the pleasures of exploring the unknown. Outdoor lovers of every stripe have learned the craft of Conscious Ritualing, whether they know it or not, during their adventures into the wilderness. They respect nature, and are properly cautious of its dangers, but they love it, they do not fear it.
We can give our children this love as we teach them to ritual consciously. We can cultivate a Qualiadelic relationship with nature and the wilderness, and in doing so save our selves as well as the planet.
Be Qualiadelic. Be Conscious. Change the routine.
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