finale

						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; Doritos are 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.
					Proximity and Intimacy
	But perhaps the most endangering behavior of man is that of their distance from nature. Because of the same material desires brought on by our economic system, those same objects are distancing us from nature. The houses, cars, money and so on have flatted the natural landscape in order to fit more of them.
The behaviors of man that have changed man’s way with nature include that of our interactions with food, our economic system and our societal ideals. Throughout history, the development of the human race has gone further than ever imagined possible. Our development in terms of constructing communities as well as sustaining them reaches far beyond that of animals.
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. 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, have also disregarded their relationship to food. By pumping cows, chickens and pigs full of hormones, allowing 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. 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. We say man is different from that of the savage animals, but is our blood lust any less im







						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
					Food