Nader on Nature

04/16/2007

Collaboration promises disagreements, negotiation, and compromise, as well as new understandings, warm intimacy, and shared pride.
Ann Pelo

In Ralph Nader's new book, The Seventeen Traditions (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), he reflects on the traditions from his early family life that shaped him. One of the forces that he talks about is nature...

"In the early 1970s, we were well on our way to the total immersion experience of the television age in which most children watched from 40 to 60 hours of TV a week. They read less and their vocabulary decreased. The decades that followed saw the arrival of 24 hour cable television, VCRs, home computer games, and the Internet — each in turn cementing the place of the TV screen in our children's lives. In those years I remember reading about the Fresh Air Fund, a program that offers New York City's poor children a chance to spend a few summer weeks in the countryside. For many of these children it was the first time they smelled fresh cut grass and hay. For some, it was the first time they had seen an authentic sunset, not just the television variety. Today, children everywhere are deprived of exposure to nature in the same way they grow up with their eyes, ears, tastes, and other senses trained on a corporate world of sensual virtual reality — removed, as no other generation in human history, from the daily flow and rhythm of nature.

"How very different were my early years, lived so close to nature's bounty. When I reflect back on the importance of my family and my childhood, I find that my mind often floods with imagery from these natural surroundings that stirred my imagination in those years. What became of a little world to me, as an adult, was a very large world to me as a child. Nature has its own power, drawing us into its magical ambience."

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