A Kew gardener movingly shows his connection to nature. For the sake of our bodily and mental health, we should follow his example
BBC are being very productive for us this week - just as its resource base is being threatened - with this touching story about a venerable tree, Turner’s Oak, in Kew Gardens.
Its survival of the great southern England storm of 1987, which uprooted and destroyed many trees, taught gardeners - particularly Tony Kirkham, head of the Arboretum at Kew - lessons on how to preserve damaged trees, which have applied globally (this Google Books page explains further).
There’s a moving moment in the BBC clip at about 3.45, where Kirkham tears up, as he gives a loving assessment of his relationship with the tree. It’s as clear an example of biophilia as you could encounter.
This reminds us of a recent Open Democracy piece, ‘We’re part of nature so let’s act like it’:
It is only very recently in our evolutionary history that we have come to deny, by the ways we live and think, that we are part of nature. This denial is making us physically and mentally ill, and more self-centred and less accepting of others, and it’s diminishing our sense of meaning.
It’s also setting us up to fail as we tackle climate change, ecological breakdown and other significant challenges.
The work of Jules Pretty and colleagues at the University of Essex reminds us that while our way of life has changed radically since modern humans evolved around 200,000 years ago, our bodies and brains are the same.
Humans evolved in environments where the incidence of threatening situations, whether a venomous snake or attack by other groups, was actually very low. When we were threatened, just like other animals, our flight or fight response kicked in, raising our heart rate alongside other physiological changes.
In the modern world however, the part of our brain that responds to threat is endlessly over-stimulated by stress and anxiety. Our jobs are dominated by pressures to perform, with incessant deadlines and interruptions. Our commutes, whether by car or public transport, are a series of frustrations, antagonisms and delays.
Meanwhile we are bombarded via our phones, computers, and TVs with news of disasters, wars, atrocities, hatred and political strife that stoke our fears.
As a result, in this modern world our ‘stone age’ bodies are constantly on the alert; the various stress-induced neurotransmitters and hormones are released far more often than is normal, affecting our guts, our immune system, our hearts and more.
The solution is simple. We need to spend more time outside; the evidence of the benefits for health and wellbeing is widespread and longstanding.
The social psychology of values can help explain why our lack of time in wilder places is making us more self-centred and less accepting of others, and also diminishing our sense of meaning.
Among other researchers, Shalom Schwartz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has shown that each of us, across all cultures, share the same fundamental values - a total of some fifty or so ranging from ‘unity with nature’ and ‘equality’ to ‘preserving my public image’ and ‘social order.’
These are prioritised or engaged in predictable patterns in response to the environment in which we find ourselves, such as the media to which we are exposed and the culture in which we live.
If we are threatened, our values lead us to look after ourselves and our immediate family; if we are in peaceful, lush places, which in the deep past would have signified abundance and safety, our values lead us to feel in harmony with ourselves and the rest of creation.
Values associated with creativity are also engaged in such situations, perhaps because we have the freedom to try out ideas without risk of food shortages or attack.
We can acknowledge that we are part of nature by spending more time outdoors, especially in environments like those in which we evolved. This makes us healthier and happier, with potential ripple effects on our families, communities and workplaces.
But as well as helping us cope in the modern world, spending time outdoors has the potential to help us tackle the big challenges of our time…