For More Wonder, Rewild The World
END Photography
“Ecological boredom”. A term used by George Monbiot to describe his feelings on his day to day dealings with nature. “Where is the adventure? Where is the wilderness?” he asks. So often in our human lives, we go about our routines with little to no acknowledgement of the natural world, seasonal shifts, wind and rain patterns, and changes in the land. Our current society and culture enables this, and places emphasis on man-made objectives as end goals, and our travel time to and from these activities, whether it be work, school, etc, are spent preoccupied with other material things to distract us from the natural elements of the world.
What Monbiot was really getting at with his explanation of “ecological boredom” was that we are only exposed to the tiniest amounts of ecological factors, and without searching outside of ourselves and our daily routines, we will completely disregard the physical environment in which we live. The earth is not just a place to exist, it is the place; our place, to live and thrive.
Human nature is curiosity and the quest for knowledge and understanding of the unknown. The shift that needs to be made is not in the desire for knowledge, but in the way we go about obtaining that knowledge, and sating our curiosity. Exploration and discovery is not just for conquistadors of old and the Ivy League educated scientists of today, it is for the common men and women of the world to share in and learn from as well. In this way, we can do away with ecological boredom, and embrace the ecological phenomena that exist all around us.
Eve Drum