Welcome to day 48 of the 100 Days in the news project. For 52 more days I will be pulling news stories from my Google reader and making artwork about it!
Today’s Inspiration is from Johnah Lehrer’s The Frontal Cortex:
The Cognitive Benefits of Nature
Category: Brain & Behavior
Posted on: November 10, 2008 11:10 AM, by Jonah Lehrer
So pardon me if I wax journal-ish but I simply cannot help it. I am in sunny Alabama in a tiny town of no more than 3,000 and I have a peace of mind I have not had in a while…things close down at 8pm. I could never live here, but man oh man, it is not so bad to visit. It’s ind of like visiting a relative: there are a set of commitments that apply no where else but you are off the hook for a lot of other things…
But let’s get to the point. I like Jonah Lehrer’s writing and have blogged about it before. I like the country just as much as anyone but I am a fan of the city too- where I feel relief in being surrounded by friends and familiar services, etc. Lehrer writes about “Attention Restoration Theory (ART) (which)provides an analysis of the kinds of environments that lead to improvements in directed-attention abilities…Nature, which is filled with intriguing stimuli, modestly grabs attention in a bottom-up fashion, allowing top-down directed-attention abilities a chance to replenish. Unlike natural environments, urban environments are filled with stimulation that captures attention dramatically and additionally requires directed attention (e.g., to avoid being hit by a car) making them less restorative.”
Lehrer sums things up to say that this suggests that being in nature improves cognitive function. Which I like to think about, but doesn’t explain away the fact that great knowledge does not seem to be continually emerging from rural settings… you would think all of that cognitive power would lead rural residents to great academic accomplishments…what are all of these gently stimulated people of the world doing with their extra cognitive function?
I’m struggling with this idea a bit. I’m more inclined to believe that a bit of viewing nature as a relaxing and safe place has to do with nature as a place for escape from daily routine for the majority of our nation which now lives in urban settings. Nature is that “other” place, and a place which is easily idealized as it is infrequently visited in a generic fashion-
“Oh dear, observe the blue jay!”
“Yes Darling it’s majestic— look at it checking in on that nest! What a great parent”
( as the jay really fulfills it’s title as the “robbery jay” and eats young song birds for dinner…lovely right?)
Part of me is really disgusted by generic approaches to nature that make it seem like one huge anthopomorphised friend… I am totally an earth loving hippie but nature will also kick you butt:
Hurricanes, Tornados, earthquakes, tsunami, drought…or even the little stuff: brambles, hornets, snakes!!!
Natural environments in some cases seem to offer less danger unless…UNLESS… you are in a region with no medical care and get a small injury that turn into a large one? You trip and fall on a log, any log,fall, hit your head and pass out for days and are nibbled by foxes? You loose your way (happened at least once a year every year in the Smokey Mountains near where I used to live) and are found a week later dehydrated, ravenous and with hypothermia? You go up to peak off of the edge of a water fall and>oops< take a dive off the cliff?
Sure. I’m being a bit dramatic, but part of me thinks that nature only seems relieving when you are a bit out of touch with it and experience it as an “excursion”. The same way people from the country visit the city and see it only as a fun filled place… I know, I know, I am an artist arguing with scientists and it usually doesn’t end well.
But I am the one who would drive from the city every week or so back to my parents house in a small TN town and feel waves of panic as the lights grew fewer and fewer and the road snaked between dark hills. Here, you see one person out walking and it is SCARY! I just like thinking of telling Mark Twain that the wilderness will seem like “the safe place” some day. I think he’d laugh and get it and then give me a hard look and wait for the “just kidding!”
Here, alone in a white on white room at the artist’s residence quarters in York, Alabama I indulge in classic scare tactics:
A shadow show of real monsters I tell you, monsters! And these guys travel in all regions so warn your frontal cortex!!!
Total cost of materials: 0
amount of time spent: 1hr.
amount of fun had: 10 ( perhaps I am relieved and having more fun…)
2 Comments
I think it is fallacious to assume that greater cognitive function would lead to greater innovation, knowledge etc… These things come not only from pure thought, but also build upon already existing human knowledge (great ideas simply do not pop up out of nowhere). Human knowledge tends to be concentrated in in urban areas (at least in the pre-internet era), and so of course that is where innovation arises. The idea that nature improves cognitive function is completely compatible with a history of innovation arising from urban areas.
Thanks for your comment Klio. I’m a firm believer that rural areas possess a fair amount of knowledge and know how as well, but it mostly goes unnoticed until someone with a degree who can write a paper stumbles upon it. The tone of my entire response is intended to be playful. I should add a touch of back ground and say that I am from small towns and still often work in small towns, though I currently live in a fairly large city and work in academia.
My understanding is that each place, both rural and urban, does not see value in the knowledge that other possesses.
The rural will not embrace urban knowledge until is sees function in it, and the urban will not embrace rural knowledge until it’s researched to death.
My overall intention was to make a few jokes and a few jabs. I’m in the woods and feeling good and looking at more pecan trees than people. Your jab in return is appreciated. You get a shadow monster dedicated to you!
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