New Study Shows Regular Contact with Nature Reduces Crime, Increases Social Cohesion

By Christina Lavers
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

“We need the tonic of wildness… At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

The last few hundred years have seen a major shift in man’s relationship with nature. The trend has been a move away from the wild, organic, natural world towards artificial, digital, synthetic, controlled urban environments. With the advent of science during the Age of Enlightenment, man began to grasp that nature operated according to laws that through scientific investigation could be understood, and ultimately controlled and used for the benefit of humanity. The more we were able to explain, the less we perceived nature as a magical, awe-inspiring force that we were an inextricable part of. Humanity began to see itself as superior to nature, and thus a slow disconnection was set in motion — a disconnection that we are gradually beginning to understand has done us a lot more harm than good.