Instead of creating a new post, hit the "comment" function underneath this post and create what is called a "thread." A thread is a kind of virtual conversation. Feel free to read other people's responses to this question and respond to their responses.
C. Price writes: "And in the pool of changing, countermodern meanings, the most powerful and overarching has always been that Nature is not a changing set of human meanings" (180). She speaks of meanings in the 1980s and 1990s, but what is the meaning of nature today? Is it the same set of meanings she identifies? Does the meaning of Nature remain the same or does it change? What is the meaning of nature for people in your generation?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The word "nature" I believe is an extremely contradicting words with an irregular meaning spread among English-speaking people. Most other languages do not even have such a word, but then we do not know what it really means, so it is hard for us to translate it. For each author that we read, each seems to understand (or misunderstand) the word differently as they all use it in different contexts. Pollan seems to use it as something that we cannot grasp but encompasses everything. Dillard tends to use it as a place, God or an overwhelming force that we contend to. Price refers to it as what she thinks is the common knowledge of the word, as a 'wild' place that does not involve humans or anything that we associate with (such as domesticated organisms), as a kind of negative insight on humankind. Although each has a different output on the meaning, each author emphasizes how that there is an unsure meaning for such a common word and that we have not decided on its proper meaning. Verbal language has become the essential means of communication throughout human kind, so it is imminent that there are words created that either lose or change meaning over time, or that it is difficult to explain what they mean with other ambivalent words. It is like describing the color green: what words can we use to describe it for someone who has never seen it before? Nature seems be a word that evolved in parallel to our evolution: once we became so seclusive to our own species with little interaction with other species in our lives and when we became the ultimate versatile beings but conducive to the fact that we cannot survive other than in the urban habitats that we've created. This is when 'Nature' came in effect. In the 1980's and '90's Price describes the non-anthromorphizing environment as 'Nature' that most, or at least the consumer world, seemed to understand. Presently, this meaning sticks to the consumer world, giving many people this similar idea of 'Nature'. However, on a personal level, the mind removes the boundaries of society, and when each of us feels emotions, interacts with their environment and actually holds a life, unlike the face of a company, we may develop another meaning to 'Nature', or we can decide not to use the word at all. Yes, I am aware that the human life is drastically different from any other organism on this Earth, however we are experiencing the effects of their presence everyday, as well as they are ours. The give-and-take of the earth's system is what I consider part of 'Nature', not the stuff we see outside our window. But then again, what do I know.
The definition of nature can be so technical that it is very hard to define. Nature is almost a form of opinion in that it is different for everyone. Someone in the city might consider Grand Central Park nature. It is even harder to make a generalization about the meaning of nature for people in my generation, but I feel since we are growing up in a world where the environment is a concerning issue there are more of us who do care (and maybe a lot of our parents growing up in the '70s has something to do with it). It is between the ages of 16 and 25 where we make critical choices about our morals, political affiliations, religion, etc and they change moderately over time. Considering the people I have met at school, I see nature as an integrate and important part for life, all lives, whether it be personal or global.
Nature constantly changes. It changes for people who have a negative experience with nature, i.e. a hurricane or blizzard. I think it will especially change when we see some real changes due to global warming.
Post a Comment