Integrity 101:
The Remarkable Benefits of Thinking and Learning with Nature
(return
to start of course)
SECTION FIVE:
Destructive substitutes
After Charles brought his girl
friend home to meet his parents, he asked them what they thought
of her.
"How could you?"
said his Mother, "Her eye is in her ear, her chin sticks
out of her cheek, her nose is a square; what's the matter with
you?"
Charles replied "Hey,
either you like Picasso or you don't.
Although we
are naturally attracted to Nature, current cultural bias applauds
and bonds us to think and communicate through word and image
abstracts. Society seldom insists that empirical information
be gained from sensory contact with nature.
Our abstract
thinking usually overlooks that abstracts are never the same
as the things they abstract. Abstracts function solely as artificial mental
shortcuts for fully knowing the world around and within us (Bohm
1993; Jones,
2001
#10). Nature
on the other hand, being non-literate, rarely engages in our
abstract verbal way of reasoning and relating while producing
its perfection.
Because abstracts
are substitutes, they present us with a major problem. With respect to Nature
and the eons, there is no known substitute for the real thing
and its perfection. For
this reason, the substitutes we design too often have destructive
side effects.
For our thinking
to only abstract Nature is to lose conscious contact with vital
parts of Nature we need to relate reasonably. To resolve our
problems and addictions we must consciously incorporate Nature's
rewarding natural attraction process into our thinking. Through
NSTP, doing this is fun, possible and practical if we take care
to notice and offset the 'Watson Effect' and the 'Boss.'
Consider the intelligence test
question below regarding mathematical aptitude. It is a type
of question that helps the 'Boss" determine who is successful,
who normally gets the greatest economic and social rewards in
contemporary society:
QUESTION: "If you count a dog's
tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a dog have?"
"Five," of course,
is the answer. Normal, intelligent people say "five"
because it is valid in mathematical systems and thinking and
we are rewarded accordingly (1). However, our NADS sense of reason
only recognizes five as correct until we additionally validate
what we know from our, or other people's, contact with a real
dog, as exemplified in Cohen's class described in the Preface
(2). Then, many of our multitude of inborn natural attraction
senses come into play: senses of sight, touch, motion, color,
texture, language, sound, smell, consciousness, community, trust,
contrast, and love. Each of these senses helps our NADS sense
of reason make more sense. We are attracted to sensibly recognize
that a tail looks, feels and acts differently than a leg; a dog
has four legs, not five.
Over 99% of our normal thinking
is 5-leg and it presently manages (read mismanages) the world.
NSTP enables us to make a difference by combining 4-leg and 5-leg
thinking to produce 9-leg wisdom and help others do the same.
The difference between 4-leg
and 5-leg thinking has psychological and physiological roots
that in nature enhance human survival. Natural areas when approached
properly can beneficially bring their value into awareness (Cohen
2002t ).
To correct
NADS with 4-leg knowledge, Dr. Cohen and colleagues have introduced
NSTP into contemporary thinking as a reasonable nature reconnecting
mental and social skill. NSTP enables us to reattach our disconnected
psyche to its origins in Nature in exactly the same way that
a surgeon reattaches a dismembered arm to a person's body. The
surgeon brings the arm and body together. This allows Nature
to regenerate itself, to biologically heal the separation and
hurt as only its attraction energies can (Jones, 2001 #15). Cohen
demonstrates that, when people include the use of the Natural
Systems Thinking Process in their thinking, they perform better
and more successfully relate to the great questions that face
us (Cohen, 2002e; Jones,
2001
#12).
"The art of medicine consists
in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."
...........- Voltaire circa 1700
NADS makes
people refute that attraction energy knowledge may be found within
a dandelion as well as in the information imparted by unifying
sensory attraction experiences with a Dandelion (Cohen, 2002s;
Jones,
2001
#16). The latter is usually omitted by the bias of "objective"
science and we suffer from the omission (Wilson 1993). As one
father put it at a nature reconnecting workshop, "I don't
even listen to my children; why should I listen to this weed?"
"This earth which is spread
out like a map around is but the lining of my inmost soul exposed."
............- Henry David Thoreau circa 1850.
The regenerative
perfection of natural systems peacefully produces Nature's optimums
of life, cooperation and diversity without producing garbage,
pollution, abusiveness, war, mental illness, isolation, or most
of our other great troubles (Wald 1985; Cohen, 2002z). As part of Nature
we can learn to be truly civilized and increase our wellness
by making thoughtful sensory contact with these rewarding attraction
systems as they flow through and around us ( Cohen 2002g,
r; Irvine and Warber 2002).
NSTP empowers
any caring person to become more civilized by directly plugging
their thinking into Nature's fountainhead of authority. As Henry
David Thoreau noted in Walden: "What we call wildness is
a civilization other than our own."
The sensory
science of NSTP is currently easily available to responsible
schools, therapies and social systems (Cohen 1997, 2002 ). Any
organization or person has the ability to enjoy it by choosing
to learn and use the process. It empowers lay people or leaders
with a social technology that works as well in backyards and
local parks as it does back country, sometimes better. As practical
as it is effective, NSTP is available in five books written by
Cohen (Cohen, 2001). In addition, NSTP basics can be mastered
in less than six weeks via the Institute's interactive Project
NatureConnect classes on the internet. (Cohen, 2002)
"Never does nature say
one thing and wisdom another."
...........- Jovenel
The cornerstone
of NSTP is to reject the NADS lie of omission, that it it makes
perfect sense to no longer trust polluted sources of information
in making decisions or building relationships. Cohen states,
"The critical question is: Since our polluted mathematics,
language and perceptions are abstracts that distort empirical
evidence, what is the greatest truth in your life that you can
trust? (hint: it is neither God, love, honesty nor nature)"
"I would feel more optimistic
about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that
he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and
respecting her seniority."
...........- E.B. White