ROOTSU

					Introduction
As time continues to advance, we as humans follow its lead. However, in the process of following time, we have let our understanding of the natural world fall behind us. Throughout history, the development of the human race has gone further than ever imagined possible. Our development in terms of constructing communities reaches far beyond that of animals. Now, we see humans that live in more developed and capitalized countries are the cause of our negative influence. The behaviors of man that have changed our way with nature include that of our interactions with food, our economic system and our societal disconnect with our surroundings.
Food
	The first human behavior we have lost our way with would be that with our nourishment. As we have developed greater and greater technology, we have also decided to apply that great knowledge to the way we receive food. It is often argued that the complication of our agriculture system is reason to why humans have become less attuned to nature. Certain companies in modern society have made agriculture more about profit than feeding the hungry. Such an example would be The Monsanto Corporation, which we as a class have discussed a great deal while after seeing the film Food Inc. (CITATION CITATION) Rather than making seeds more able to grow or more bountiful, this corporation has decided to apply the best of humanity’s understanding to make money. Other corporations dealing with different foods, such as Pockey Farms (CITATION CITATION CITATION), have also disregarded their relationship to food. By feeding cows, chickens and pigs hormones, forcing them to live only in their filth and physically abusing them we have made living beings into less than living. We have punished animals, commercialized them and make them identified only as what we see on our plates. The normalization of animals on our plates rather than on our fields is the first behavior of humanity’s that disconnects us.
	Instead of eating for our health, we have started eating for pleasure alone. Man has made eating into a selfish act instead of a way of sustaining life. We do not look for nourishment. We look for all that we can take and what will satisfy our want most. It is the case of quantity over quality. The problem also shows itself in form over function. Humans have grown accustom to pleasantries that the rest of the world cannot have. We choose to have only the most beautiful food: the most vibrant tomatoes on the bushel, the thickest cut of meat and the ripest fruit on the tree, meaning that the food that isn’t perfect is useless and thrown away. Too much of a good thing has only proven further that things are worse off for all parties involved. By making food less about sustenance and more substance, humanity has further disconnected from nature.
	We can try to overlook the amount of things we eat ourselves, but we cannot escape what we have left on our plates. The sheer amount of food marketed to people continues to increase with every new flavor. We continue to make portions larger and larger and the results of that is an obesity epidemic and enough wasted food to feed everybody twice over.

                                 			Capitalism
        The second human behavior that has caused this distance between humans and nature would be that of our overall economic system. The system of our economy depends on the principles of supply and demand of certain products, but the system is flawed in that it doesn’t consider the needs of people and generalizes all things we ask for as wants or demands. Also, as the human world becomes more advanced and convoluted we begin to lose sight of the way the supply is supplied. Once enough middle men get in front of the supply, we don’t know where it is coming from or what is happening to it. We have also based this economy on money, which has proven to be a vehicle for feeding our wants rather than our needs. Society has replaced love and health and happiness with this thing that promises to give us these things in the end, yet they seldom seem to get it.
        For the greater part of our economy is about getting more: more money, more objects, more women, more houses and cars and boats and better clothes. The result of this is the empowerment of the supplier, making the needy or demander at the mercy of the supply’s whim. Since we all want more stuff to be happy, the supplier can ask for all the money THEY want, thinking that the more money will result in happiness. Corporate giants are rewarded when they make the medicine more expensive, make cigarettes more addictive and make chips more salty because they only understand that the demand is unlimited. And we have almost convinced ourselves that they are right; corn syrup is considered nourishment, cars are needed to go anywhere and cell phones are how to have friends. We need a job to get money, not to help the community.
The endless back and forth between taking and taking results in piles and piles of things we don’t want. These things offered happiness and did not give it. So the mixer, the snow cone maker and the jewelry hanger end up somewhere else. The ambiguity of that somewhere is where the problem lies. When things are considered disposable, infinite and needed, the resulting effect on the surrounding environment is not positive. Man has let the trash seep into the things that can truly provide us the feeling of love we long for so much: the oceans, the roots of plants, the stomachs of animals and the atmosphere we gaze at. By continuing to fill landfill after landfill, we are only making a greater testament of human emptiness.
                                   		     Proximity and Intimacy
        But perhaps the most endangering behavior of man is that of their distance from nature. To truly know our relationship with nature (or anything), we need to get close to it, see it, listen to it, so on. We continue to get further and further away from these relationships as we expand as a species. Cities and roads have made us strangers to the things that brought us into this world, the things that keep us in this world and the things that will let us one day leave the planet. We cannot begin to speak for the trees until we have listened to them, understand their plight and understand their anguish (The LORAX).
 I sit in this library, surrounded by books and desks (the skin and bone of trees) and look at a screen made out of oil plastic and electrical wire, above it is a stylized artificial plant and I wonder where I’d be if I could be anywhere. I think about what I’ve learned from Amy and Josie and my entire seminar. Have I become indigenous to this place? The question of where a person’s place is comes about in every college student’s life. Over the trimester, I’ve learned that my place is anywhere that I am whole: in my bedroom, in the river, in the snow, with my friends and family and with my hobbies. I’ve found that human behavior is to love what I am familiar with. We as humans are numb to the unfamiliar. With more and more humans on earth every day, it will be easy to forget our familiarities with the land and only think of the people and things we become attached to.

                              		          Resolution
Although our behaviors have changed over the centuries, our nature hasn’t. As we become greater in our evolution, it is possible to have our environment to grow with us. The human understanding of things grows every generation and we are finally beginning to see the repercussions of our behaviors, for in our nature is a concept that has guided us throughout existence: Biophilia. Edward O. Wilson (CITATION 671). If there is one thing that follows man’s desire for understanding, it is the love of our surroundings. We as humans can change these behaviors because I believe that we are only doing these destructive things out of habit and ignorance.
                              	       		   Food
	To address the first human behavior I’ve mentioned, there are several things we could do to reduce food waste, limit fertilizer and pesticide use and prevent the abuse of living organisms. By making the process of food shipping and production more transparent and understandable to the public, we could prevent a lot of profiteering and systematic abuse. It has been shown many times that if people are more aware of their food supply then that would result in much more conscious eating and purchasing habits. By having more transparency in the food production system the consumer starts to have more power, making the relationship between the two more balanced. This would also prevent a great amount of animal abuse, as people wouldn’t stand by to see a living creature be treated with such little respect; it isn’t until the animal is cut up and put into an unrecognizable form that humans cannot have the sense of biophilia which guides us. Transparency could be reached primarily by a push for legislation or by consumers changing their buying habits to support businesses that already support greater transparency.
	The amount of food waste can be reduced at three levels: the production, the people and the society as a whole. By having suppliers be less focused on only having the “cream of the crop” we can cut down on great amounts of waste. Food that is not considered perfect will be thrown out whether or not it is nutritionally or functionally viable. If the consumers cannot move beyond this food vanity, the imperfect food doesn’t need to be thrown out. Instead, we could adopt the system that France currently has, where the lower quality food is sold at a more affordable price in hopes of feeding those who struggle to afford food. As people, we can reduce food waste by limiting our purchasing habits as well as our wasting habits. Instead of purchasing expensive food and letting it rot, we could buy less, compost the leftover food and save more money. As a society, we also need to understand that more isn’t always better when it comes to food. Stuffing ourselves is not the only alternative to hunger. A greater understanding of this could be spread by educating children about nutritional requirements and the importance of servings in having a balanced diet. This would lower obesity as well as decrease the prevalence of many diseases that are caused by malnutrition. This could also go hand and hand with teachings about more sustainable agriculture, which would include greater understanding of the effects of pesticides and better waste management in the community.
	When I was about 8 years old the national obesity epidemic started to get a lot of notice on television, most notable to me would be on cartoon channels. Basketball players would play with kids outside, telling us that one hour a day was all we needed. Cartoon characters would do little raps about how we ‘got to realize the serving size’ and so on. There was Get Active Day, where someone obviously bought up a time slot so kids like me wouldn’t sit watching television all day. Well, it was out of this same event that I started to feel a great sense of guilt. I was the target audience of these commercials. I was the kid would didn’t get out during the summer. I was the one who sat inside and ate ice cream bars all day. I didn’t have many friends or phone numbers of the few I did have, so by my logic I was forced to stay inside. When the Get Active Day forced me to watch another channel, because my usually was out of the question, I started watching the news. Temple Grandin was the focus for some odd reason. The only reason this still lingers in my head was because of the 2010 movie on her reminding me of this interview. When she was asked what helped her most growing up, she said
	“People are always looking for the single magic bullet that will totally change everything. There is no single magic bullet.” TEMPLE GRANDIN QUOTE PARAGRAPH
	I really agreed with this peculiar seeming woman in my young age. Going outside wasn’t the magic bullet, neither was to stop eating. But I knew there was something that I needed to do to get myself together. I couldn’t take much more guilt from my favorite cartoon characters. So it was that day that I decided I’d sit outside for an hour, still bringing the chips along for comfort. It was a start. I started to see that summer was more than bee stings and sun burns and more about being less attached to the endless eating and programing that television had led me to do. It was always changing, always beautiful, and continued to keep my interest. After my hour outside, as I decided to walk inside, I thought to myself that I could do this tomorrow too. And maybe even look up my friend’s number.
Capitalism
	While it would be nice to have an answer as easy as removing capitalism, that is not going to happen any time in the near future. However, our economic and cultural system can be changed for the better, albeit difficult. The society at large needs to see that food and medicine shouldn’t be treated like a commodity, but rather as a need for sustaining our lives. Hiking up prices, limiting access and only being provided for a lucky few are things that cannot go on in our economy. Also, the creation of unnecessary waste and the unethical or irresponsible removal of that waste must be regulated or completely banned in order to stop the super giants of the economy. Requiring transparency should be required for all of the economy, not just the food system, and would lead to the same benefits that were previously stated. It is through the exercise of our power as consumers that we can stop these things from causing more environmental degradation and the degradation of the lives of the unfortunate.
	It was when I traveled to Mexico at the age of 13 that I saw the effects of corporate power ruling the environment and the people. As my parents sat on the beach being treated to French fries and Pina Coladas by underpaid and impoverished women, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a gift for my uncle. I had about 100 pesos with me. As I approached the gift shop, a poor, sickly, elderly man shouted to me to look at his gifts. All of them were made by hand out of boating rope, sea shells, sea glass and clay. He sat with his arms out showing me the most humble display of crafts I had ever seen, with all of the love of a child’s Christmas ornament and the quality of a very familiar artist. Then, he was told to leave the premises by a very large man with a resort worker T-shirt. The old man quickly gathered his things and ran before I could even offer to buy something. The security guard said that if I want good quality, I should go to the resort’s gift shop. I expected to see the same humble display that I got earlier, but I was surprised to find the equivalent of a Walmart for cheap toys with Puerto Vallarta printed on each thing; all plastic, visible hot glue, discolorations and prices that far exceeded the quality. I left disappointed that I hadn’t helped that thin man and told him about his talent.

Proximity
	The final behavior that must be changed is our connection to nature. In the last 10 weeks, I have learned more about getting close to nature than I ever have before. I won’t try to summarize all of the things that this class has taught me about the relationship between humans and nature. Instead, I’ll state the most important: we need to become indigenous to the places we call already call home. Robin Wall Kimmerer made the basis of this idea that we would flesh out throughout the entire trimester. We found that a strong sense of community was always part of a healthy ecosystem. To become indigenous again, we need to stop living on our environments and live in them – live as a part of them. Instead of the land being the place to put our homes, the land can be the place of our homes. We do not need to carve out the land to fit us; we need to fit to the land. It is because of this fluidity that man has survived and succeeded so much. If we continue to solidify, we will begin to find ourselves as the misfits of the earth.
Find the sense of biophila that we all hold somewhere deep inside ourselves. Find the sense of adventure that we all have misplaced in our childhood. Breathe in the air and find that the best things in life are free, including you. Drink in all of your surroundings and you will find that the most refreshing is that of the forests and lakes and mountains you have forgotten. When we all finally taste what our world offers, we will never fully understand our need for nature.

Conclusion
We begin resolving issues when we start to understand our impacts and our power in changing those impacts. Understanding is the strongest method of change. As concerned citizens and consumers we can prevent unethical practices made by suppliers, lower the amount of waste produced and make that waste less harmful to the environment. However, the strongest impact we have is as living beings. Our connection to nature is still strong and alive, we just need to listen. Hearing nature can only start by having an open mind and an open ear. When we finally learn what the world has to tell us, we can truly speak for the trees.




http://www.autism.com/advocacy_grandin_interview
temple grandin citation