Wednesday, 21 April 2010

The Saddest Article I’ve Ever Read…

…is in the ‘Indy’s Life Style’ section, about the modern world’s disconnect with nature:
In America they have a name for it: Nature Deficit Disorder. Nature, says the writer Richard Louv, is more important than you think.
Think that sounds a little flaky, a little Yankee New Age claptrap? Well, read on…
Nature, continues Louv, is fresh air for the mind. It is the link between life and happiness. But increasingly, it has become a missing link. To more than half of us aged 30 or less, nature is only of marginal interest. Like the girl who, when told there was a wild badger in the garden, glanced up from her ipod and mumbled, "This affects me – how?"
Perhaps instead of telling her, that info should have been Tweeted?
Yet when it comes to public policy, nature is always up there as a big deal. Parks and public gardens are managed with wildlife in mind. And we have never had more freedom to roam. We can go where we like over open hills and downs and commons. Forbidden forests have been thrown open to inspection, and liberally supplied with car parks, loos and picnic tables. The Government is committed to open access all around the coast. We must be the most walker-friendly country in Europe.

So what is amiss?
Oh, I think we can guess, can’t we?
One reason, of course, is that parents worry that their children might be abducted and abused. Or that they could get run over on our busy roads. Or even, according to social research at Hertfordshire University, that they might get their expensive trainers dirty. Unlike the generation that went through two world wars, we are not inclined to take risks. For many parents and children, the countryside has become off-limits, outside the safety barrier, an uncomfortable place.
And who has led this sea-change in the way we view nature?

That’s right. It’s been the Righteous, all along:
But there is another barrier to appreciating nature, and it is this: even when you find it, you are not allowed to touch it. Nature used to be associated with freedom, freedom to see and think unstructured thoughts, and to wander as you please. But all too often the nature experience now involves some corralled "country park" or "discovery centre" or guided tours by people who may or may not know much but are usually pretty hot on the dos and don'ts.
Nature, you see, isn’t to be approached without a full safety certificate, 24 page risk assessment and experienced guide.

And this is England. We aren’t talking about going on safari in Africa here…
I call it the Don't Touch culture. The don'ts include picking or playing games with wild plants, catching pond life or flying insects, foraging for wild food, climbing trees, or burning wood on a campfire. Many people seem to think such activities are illegal.
And why, exactly, would they think that?

Well, because the Righteous have introduced that concept, of course. By harassing and hounding people who pick up stones from a beach, by carpeting the countryside with ‘Don’t Touch…!’ signs, they hope to freeze people into a permanent state of worry, where the only safe thing is to do nothing at all.
Doubt has even been raised about the legal position of picking blackberries by the wayside.
And if that tactic didn’t work, they could always fall back on the pollution angle…
Personal, direct contact with nature is being discouraged by fusspots and busybodies and control freaks who seem to want to regulate every waking moment of our lives.
They don’t ‘seem to’. They do, indeed, want to…
You can read their disapproval in the small print under the welcome sign at the entrance. Look but don't touch. You know it's illegal.

Well, actually it isn't. It is not, for example, against the law to pick wild flowers, though you don't hear many conservation bodies saying so.
And you won’t, either. It isn’t in their interest to educate the public as to what their rights actually are, but to keep them in a permanent state of wondering what, if any, rights they have…
Yet the state never intended it to be like this.
Oh, really? Are you sure about that?

I’m not. Not at all.
It happened in this way: back in the Eighties, after a bit of bother over the sale of wild bluebells and primroses, a law was introduced to make such activities an offence. But to make life easier for the lawyers, it included a blanket clause making it illegal to dig up any wild plant by the roots.

Hence, in the eyes of the law, and for no better reason than a tidy statute, weeds and edible roots are protected with the same force as orchids.
Because lawyers and civil servants are people, just like any other. They’re lazy. They take the path of least resistance, if they are allowed to do so.

And so, we all lose something, if the people we employ to oversee this process of lawmaking fall down on the job.

I’m looking at you, MPs and Lords:
We can also still forage for winkles and cockles, but as the author of a recent book on wild food noted, the law is a nightmare: "I defy anyone not having a firm and comprehensive grip on the law to collect half a dozen different things from the beach without committing an offence." As for mushrooms, an enforceable Code of Conduct allows us to gather a small basketful so long as we do not sell them on, but some public landowners have been reluctant to allow us even that much.
Because the creeping, paralysing fear of doing the wrong thing prevents anyone from doing anything. Just to be safe.
To seek an example of how this alienation from nature is subtly encouraged, you need look no further than the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Designed to meet the needs of seven-to-nine-year-olds, the latest edition of the dictionary includes such modish words as blog, bullet point, biodegradable, Xbox, chatroom and MP3 player, all of which are deemed to play an important part in the lives of children today. But to make room for them, the editor has excised many of the most familiar objects of the countryside, words such as acorn, conker, dandelion, minnow and magpie.

In proscribing minnows and conkers, the editor claims she is only responding to the needs of contemporary life: "Nowadays most children no longer live in semi-rural environments and see the seasons. The environment has changed." What a thought: children who do not experience the changing seasons, nor will have any name for the things they find on a simple country walk.
And that is why I think this is the saddest article I’ve ever read. Because it never used to be like this.

When I was growing up, although I didn’t live in a rural environment, parks (and forests and moors and the shore when on holiday) were my favourite place. Fishing for minnows, picking flowers, hunting for fossils and stones to polish, or just exploring. No worries about traffic (the Green Cross Code took care of that), or paedophiles (we were taught to be wary of strangers, but not to be afraid of them), or H&S (we were expected to be sensible).

Technology is wonderful, but it really is no substitution for a life
How do we break free of the Don't Touch Gestapo?
He suggests a start:a repeal of the Theft Act to once again allow the right of forage.

But I can’t see that being anything other than too little, too late. Without the wholesale cull of the H&S brigade and all the other Righteous from our institutions, this situation isn’t going to be reversed in a hurry.

And generations will grow up never knowing what they’ve lost…

Related: Leg-Iron's post on how extraordinary actions are now frowned on by those the Righteous have brainwashed into fearfulness.

26 comments:

  1. Bloody good article...Totally agree.

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  2. "Nowadays most children no longer live in semi-rural environments and see the seasons. The environment has changed."

    I suspect there's a lowest common denominator at work here - a sneaking feeling that if some children have to live in urban tower blocks, then it's somehow unfair to cater for those who don't.

    It illustrates everything wrong with current educational theory; children are no longer in touch with the natural world so, instead of putting a nature table in every primary classroom, you rewrite the dictionary.

    No wonder the country's education system is going to the dogs*.

    Great article - wish I'd written it!

    *word verification was the decidedly apposite 'dante'.

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  3. The spread of legal prohibitions is even more insidious. Here in North London, Thames Water has been renewing the water mains. On every site, there is a notice which not only extols the virtue of Thames Water in doing this work (you'd think they, rather than their customers, actually paid for it) but adds that it is "dangerous and illegal" for members of the public to "enter the site" (which usually comprises a pile of rubble which might - or might not - be collected by Thames Water's sub-contractors in the next six months or so).

    Actually I'm not sure that it is illegal: certainly no legislation is quoted. Pathetic, I know, but I make it a point of principle to "trepass" on these sites in the expectation that some jobsworth will challenge my right to be there. So far, it seems that the guys actually doing the work couldn't care less.

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  4. I don't see how repealing the theft act has anything really to do with it.

    Getting our schools out from under the grip of the centralised Fabian educationalistas would be a step. Ensuring that courts do not pander to irrational "compo" cases, making people more self-responsible and entities happier to let people roam might help too.

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  5. I have read somewhere that in France my adopted country they do not have the equivalent of H & S. If they don't then what I see in the attitude of the people expecting everyone to take personal responsibility for their actions and not blame everyone but themselves would account for it. Their love affair with nature is defined by shooting everything in sight and yet their wild animal population generally remains plentiful.

    Send your righteous over here the French will gladly shoot them for you as well.

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  6. Eventually this too shall pass. Probably when our weird fear of carbon results in the collapse of our energy supply system and we suddenly have to learn which berries are safe to eat, the difference between edible and poisonous fungi, and how to light a fire by rubbing two sticks together.

    Perhaps all those survival programmes are useful after all.

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  7. That IS a sad post. My boy's 7 & was delighted to see a fox in the garden. He collects fossils, and insects which he examines then carefully releases. I take him netting for minnows etc and encourage him to read. Hopefully he'll grow up with an enquiring mind.
    re: France, there was so much insect life, bumble-bees, hornets, potter-wasps, crickets and so on, (not to mention clouds of butterflies) that the hedges at home seemed strangely silent when I got back. The difference is, I suspect, that woodlands, hedges and meadows aren't constantly "managed" by the council, but left alone.

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  8. It has to be 'interpreted' for you, you see. And the dosages must be carefully measured and monitored, or the maximum safe level may be exceeded.

    Dark ages fall when we know longer know or remember that we once were able to do something.

    Dum vivamus vivamus.

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  9. ...erm... vivimus vivamus...

    And I certainly agree with the sentiment expressed! :-)

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  10. Julia,
    You just reminded me that I must leave my little computer world and go back to hacking back the bamboo at the bottom of the garden.

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  11. Well I think this is excellent news.

    We are just about to move out to the real countryside (as opposed the over managed Chilterns)where the cocks grow, the cows moo, church bells ring and there's no street lighting. Anything that keeps the oiks away is to be encouraged.

    Seriously though, this story is sad because it shows that parents have kow tow'd to the righteous and aren't prepared to get off their backsides and take their children out in to the wider world and teach them how to manage risk and tell the righteous to f off.

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  12. THAT is why I can never get TOO wound up about Poles and other East Europeans catching and eating the wild life.

    In Poland, even Eastern Germany, it is still NORMAL!

    To end up in "The peoples republic (nearly) of G.B" must be a HEL of a culturte shock.

    Imagine bringing your great Grandfather back now, as a 13 year old boy, and putting him in the country side!! THAT is what it is like for people of nations that are NOT so restrictive as Britain.

    Which is rather ironic, since most of them grew up under the Stassi, K.G.B, and whatever other "secret services" the East had.

    (That is NOT to say that they should be there. Just that once they ARE, what can one expect?)

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  13. Its not just a disconnect with nature that is evident but the ability to problem solve. Remember trying to bake some potatoes nicked from home over a fire on some waste land at the end of the road with your mates. Usually spectacularly unsuccessfully and only a satisfactory experience when someone came up with the nicked/foraged raw jelly to wash the taste of raw potato down with.
    Still off we went home to come up with more adventures that involved investigation, invention and a inexperienced desire to do something cool round the now established camp fire of our den.
    These feelings cannot be taught or designed they only occur when we feel we are on our own, outside the law, making it up as we go along.
    Americans are a few steps ahead, look at them when they cook, and cook is a great description because that's it, they follow instruction, no creation, a cup here and another measurement there, absolutely no desire to gather ingredients, have an idea and create a meal.
    Nature defies human constraints of description as does life. Its there and it affects us but those who had no idea what to do when a volcano stopped the planes for a few days are exactly those who never caught a stickleback in a jar and kept in their bedroom until it died.

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  14. I am looking at the sun setting through the branches of a mature oak, listening to birdsong with a glass of red. Will people never learn how little it costs to be content?

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  15. "And we have never had more freedom to roam. We can go where we like over open hills and downs and commons. Forbidden forests have been thrown open to inspection...."

    While I know where you're coming from, I'm not so sure the above is entirely true.

    Your prescient blog post echoes an observation of mine whilst driving through the outskirts of Mansfield today. By the side of the road, as it made its way through a cutting underneath a rail line, grew a small wooded slope. Not the most idelic or picturesque setting to be sure but never-the-less an endless source of adventure for boys of a certain age.

    Except...

    This veritable playground, measuring 30 metres by about as half deep, was surrounded on all four sides by a high green railing and wire fence. Why?

    The trees themselves were unremarkable species, worth no more than the fire wood they will probably one day become. The embankment seemed not attached to any other property (and well away from the railway itself), nor could it ever be a site suitable for development.

    The fence, erected no doubt at considerable public expense, seemed nothing more than a spiteful gesture designed to deny the local urban kids yet another recreational resource.

    And there's the thing. While great and wondrous vistas, glades and hill have been opened for the middle class and the mobile; the urban ragamuffin is left staring at yet another fence in their own backyards.

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  16. the boundaries are made of our minds. anyone seen Trainspotting? where they take a $2 ride into the countryside, their reaction!!!! the goal is no longer adventure, experience and happiness an Xbox and a 50" plasma in a shite flat on a dodgy estate is something to be proud of. this is the saddest fact of all. Its not even the materialism that stinks, it’s the way it is valued against freedom, try asking for yeast and a demijohn in Boots and see how far you get.

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  17. Mike said...

    try asking for yeast and a demijohn in Boots and see how far you get.


    Always willing to learn. WITH permission of AP, I would be SERIOUSLY intersted to hear the full story.

    I used to buy MOST of my home brew kit at Boots.

    Has that ALSO been "banned"?

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  18. "I suspect there's a lowest common denominator at work here - a sneaking feeling that if some children have to live in urban tower blocks, then it's somehow unfair to cater for those who don't."

    Another extension of the 'all must have prizes' mentality? You could well be right.

    "Actually I'm not sure that it is illegal: certainly no legislation is quoted. Pathetic, I know, but I make it a point of principle to "trepass" on these sites in the expectation that some jobsworth will challenge my right to be there. So far, it seems that the guys actually doing the work couldn't care less."

    Heh! But gradually, we seem to be breeding a generation that won't test boundaries and challenge authority.

    That's disturbing...

    "Perhaps all those survival programmes are useful after all."

    Look at the 'flight ban will mean food shortages!' nonsense. So you can't get beans grown in Chile or Kenya? You'll survive!

    "The difference is, I suspect, that woodlands, hedges and meadows aren't constantly "managed" by the council, but left alone."

    You could well be right.

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  19. "Dark ages fall when we know longer know or remember that we once were able to do something."

    I think we do really live in interesting times. In the 'Chinese curse' sense...

    "You just reminded me that I must leave my little computer world and go back to hacking back the bamboo at the bottom of the garden."

    Ah, bamboo. Lovely to look at, but so many species are invasive. We learned that the hard way when we planted the wrong type without a pot!

    "...this story is sad because it shows that parents have kow tow'd to the righteous and aren't prepared to get off their backsides and take their children out in to the wider world..."

    I'm not sure why a lot of modern day parents even have children. They don't seem to really want them very much...

    "Its not just a disconnect with nature that is evident but the ability to problem solve."

    Indeed, hence my link to Leg-Iron's post. Where are our breakthroughs in science and exploration going to come from in future?

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  20. "The fence, erected no doubt at considerable public expense, seemed nothing more than a spiteful gesture designed to deny the local urban kids yet another recreational resource."

    Indeed!

    The proliferation of 'No Ball Games' signs on a lot of green space tells its own tale, too...

    "I used to buy MOST of my home brew kit at Boots.

    Has that ALSO been "banned"?"


    I remember seeing something a while back on the disappearance of the ubiquitous home brew kit. Can't remember where, though...

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  21. boots.com ('cause it's too early!)

    "Search results for 'homebrew'

    0 products found for: "homebrew"

    Information and advice results (0)
    Product results: Displaying 0 to 0 of 0

    No product results could be found

    No content results could be found

    No stores could be found

    No help topics could be found
    "

    Similar for demi-john and it threw up an error in disgust when I tried to search for 'home brew'. However, all is not lost - as well as the specialist shops, Tesco will sell you a variety of kits (online, at least.)

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  22. Na. All is not lost;

    http://www.homebrewzone.com/brewing_process.htm

    As I have said before around the web, I normally have about 500 liters "on the go" in my cellar.

    NONE is made using a "kit". But I started off leaning with Boots kits. :-))

    What IS annoying, is that Boots have probably done this due to some..."deal" with some Quango, or other.

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  23. Or leaRning with them even.

    Add enough sugar, and "leaning" is probably apt.

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  24. the reaction of staff in Boots is more disturbing, mostly kids who look at you like some alien obviously thinking 'demi-john wot' 'make wine, eh!?!'
    The BBC did a series of shows that took a family through th 70's, 80's, 90's gradually allowing them the technology that was available then. An interesting thing was how it affected their interaction with each other from a family to individuals that happen to live in the same house. It wasn't so much that the mother wasn't allowed to work because of some sexist society but without a fridge freezer or many of the labour saving devices that we can all buy for next to nothing at Argos today there just wasn't the time for both parents to work. The son got a cool bicycle 'chopper' and took off down town which the parents thoughts horrifying in terms of safety but agreed that they would have not thought twice about going out with thier mates of an evening in fact they were actively encouraged to.

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  25. I will say again, If I went back to Britain now, I doubt I would reccognize the place.

    The trouble is, like a certain volcanic ash cloud, it appears to be spreading East.

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  26. the nicked/foraged raw jelly

    Oh that has just taken me right back to my childhood! My mother was frequently baffled as to why her jelly refused to set after the cubes had been stealthily pillaged....

    But I know it just wouldn't taste the same anymore :-/

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