STRANGERS IN EDEN: RECONNECTING WITH NATURE TO FIND MEANING IN LIFE with Professor Michael Steger

[Applause] good morning everyone I could spend my entire allotted time reflecting on the teachings we just heard I'm sure you wish you could too but I'm gonna keep talking one of the ideas I have also is going back to a period in our existence when our relationship with nature wasn't so complicated this is the story of the Garden of Eden does anyone know this okay a couple of you let me ask the first question does anyone here hate nature okay so I'm speaking to an audience who already appreciates the message so we have to go a little deeper maybe right so in the garden of Eden's story this story that appears in the the Jewish Torah in the Christian Old Testament in various forms in the Quran in the abrahamic religions there's an explanation of creation where two people appear in a glorious Paradise they have everything they want they can eat anything they want they can pet any animals they want nothing's biting them they've got no scratches as far as I know they just have to follow one rule it's so good they don't even care if they have clothes like imagine being in a place so amazing you literally didn't care if I was wearing pants right now that's how good Eden was and it had one rule don't eat this one thing what did the humans do they wanted everything every last bit and then out of Eden they go now Beth told me that I have to be very positive today and uplifting which is not my normal speed I usually start off with this and the lesson here is we're very very very very tiny a small small part of everything around us why do we think we're so important and that the miracle of our spirit is that as Tiny as we are it is still important our existence and sometimes I'm drawn to how important it is because of the damage we do intentionally or not but mostly the miracle of being alive is incredible even on a tiny scale and we aren't the only possessors of that Miracle as we learned this morning we are a tiny part so we're a tiny part in space right you can't see us from a satellite any of us you can't see our planet from the edge of the solar system you can't see our solar system from almost anywhere in our galaxy you can't see our galaxy anywhere right we are tiny in size but I want you to take a walk with me into the past that shows how tiny we are in a sort of incredible way in time as well okay this is the existence of the planet as far as scientists have dated it about 4.55 billion years and you can see on this far end is basically lava we get lava for about three billion years hello is anyone there no they melted in the lava and then you get one billion years of slime you can still see the same slime if you want to in Western Australia Shark Bay the same slime but that was all there was one billion years and we've got you know that's a lot of slime then we've got plants and animals and now here it's reversed over here we've got us Humanity and almost exactly in the same pixel you have us right now today this is the plan that we live on that's us so let's take a step back right each step I'm going to take is 100 years a nice even Century okay so I'll start like this and I lift my heel boom bitcoin's gone Amazon internet shopping vanish the Twin Towers in New York are resurrected look I've barely gotten anywhere Kathy Freeman gives back her 2000 gold medal the internet is now gone because we're in the 80s ah Fashion's coming back oh wait I've already ahead of myself I just don't have to balance here right America is at War this is a theme you'll see a lot you I don't know what decade where anybody I just say America's at War that's all of them right but apartheid is back in South Africa cell phones vanished thank God Soviet Union is back Berlin Wall rises again Soviet tanks leave Eastern Europe the atomic bomb never dropped World War II was over the Great Depression never happened the Ottoman Empire just reborn one step I do that in one second okay we're gonna do a step a second now next step you're upset where Americans were already Western northern southern Southern Australia are unnamed colonies van demons land is only informal name on Western maps no airplanes no cars and electricity three-step gear upset War America's at War well thank God now there's no more Europe I didn't think I'd have this many balance problems anyway uh four steps five steps ten steps one thousand years ago the printing press is long gone 20 steps Jesus Christ is on the planet 30 steps 3 000 years ago 30 seconds have passed on our clock 40 steps everything humans have ever sculpted is gone of course paper's gone as well we keep going 50 steps and then 16 and 60 steps everything humans have ever written clay tablets all of our human religious Traditions begin to fade in one minute of walking nine more minutes of walking there's no traces of human language 10 minutes of walking every Homo sapiens artwork is going to have a asterisk here I didn't know maybe we're on a sharing line because maybe you have to walk 20 minutes before when Gina is gone that may be an incredibly incredibly ancient handprint of human existence on our planet but every Homo neanderthalensis artwork is gone as well the cave paintings half an hour automobile sapiens begin to return to Africa 50 minutes of walking there are no more of us are species of humans in less than an hour gone we're gonna keep walking though one hour 15 minutes our closest cousin cousin the Neanderthals they're gone as well two hours five minutes anything you might call a homo sapien ancestor has vanished two hours and we made it to here on the Arrow is anyone feeling small and inspired yet Let's Get Serious we've got some serious walking to do for a week in 14 hours we've walked and we've gotten to that moment of Extinction for the dinosaurs but we have to walk for 23 more days and three hours before the age of the dinosaurs is over T-Rex live closer to our time than to stegosaurus this time by 150 million years and we've made it to here now we're making progress right so let's pause the earliest human monkey squirrel thing that wriggle around the planet looking for seeds disappears about an hour and 30 minutes if we count really really strange looking creatures the dinosaurs lasted on the plant for 15 days worth of walking 13 hours three minutes but even they go extinct we walk for another 23 days three hours four minutes and the world is populated by giant bipedal crocodiles but they're extinct now thank goodness dimetrodons trilobites and other things go extinct after about a month 13 more days giant armored ocean monsters like Dunkleosteus their entire heads are made of bone and they have Guillotines for teeth they're gone too if you walk for one month 22 days 18 hours three minutes very precise the huge cone to nautiloids and toothy polyps are gone from the Seas which means we're back to slime one month three weeks six days 22 hours and is nothing but slime now we're walking about 80 kilometers a day that's almost to Wollongong I think as the bird flies every day for two months just to get to the Slime and then for the slimes we walk for four months of slime and then it's eight months of lava and poisonous fumes before we're dust again right so to recap oops I didn't change that 49 miles about 80 kilometers eight months with no life at all from the beginning of our planet 3.7 months of slime 1.9 months of plants and animals one minute human civilization and written history yeah you are here but barely right in terms of time we're very important don't get me wrong but we are barely a thing and yet look what's been waiting for us this whole time look what took all these millions and billions of years to develop in this world around us just for us to appear in the last 60 seconds of walking and that's why we have such a strong connection to Nature we are of nature we're of Eden aren't we but we're taking ourselves out of it now I chose this this uh topic back in I can't remember when uh when I was invited by Beth to come here but I then picked up a book for my summer reading it's called desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey he was a bit of a curmudgeon uh but he was a lover of wilderness and this is what he says about nature and I want us to have nature as Wilderness not as a recreational park in our minds right the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is beyond reach it is also an expression of loyalty to the Earth the Earth which bore us and sustain us the only home we shall ever know sorry Elon Musk in your Mars dreams the only Paradise we ever need if only we had eyes to see were ears to Dream original sin the true original sin is the blind Destruction for the sake of greed of this natural Paradise which lies all around us if only we are worthy of it 1969 is when this was written and if we go a little bit further into the book we find him saying again Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit and as vital to our lives as water and good bread a civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild despair the original is cutting itself off from its Origins and betraying the principles of civilization itself civilization was not The Giving To Us of everything for plunder and destruction to giving to us of nourishing and caretaking we Thrive through connecting with nature I don't think anyone this room is likely to disagree with that right especially in a city that has such beautiful nature almost anywhere you want to get to it you can see something that hasn't been paved over in the city which is a blessing but we see a lot of benefits and there's two themes of research here I'm going to present to you one is being in nature you take a walk in nature for a significant amount of time 30 minutes 60 minutes your body shows less signs of stress the amygdala that little almond-shaped morsel of neurons in our heads that fires and it warns us of strong emotional experiences soothes itself for a period of time afterwards like it resets the amygdala is the thing that makes it so hard to think straight when we're angry or we're scared or we're sad because it's saying you need to save yourself you need to do irrational things to get out of here take a walk in nature better heart health Better Health overall something I know a lot of people in this room care about better child mental health that they have access to Nature and then if they feel connected to it this is where our transition to Nature connectedness or feeling related to Nature begins people connected to Nature are less lonely I mean that makes perfect sense from the lessons from earlier this morning from auntie they aren't alone they're surrounded by life they have more love not just for the animals but also for us wretched little humans always getting their way in traffic and leaving our cops on the counter instead of putting them in the dishwasher and finally greater well-being more meaning in life meaning in life is a complicated topic it's not about being happy and perky and smiling your way through life and knowing how to dance and all these wonderful things meaning is why we're here meaning goes to that question you are here in this giant universe and this sliver of time and says yeah that's awesome I'm going to do something with that and it's going to be good not just for me but for other people so my question is do we really collectively know how to connect with nature we want to right like let's see it who like loves connecting with nature let's even get one person say I don't know okay this is something greatly appealing about this we're feeling called back to it even as we're watching ourselves light it on fire we are still loving it but are we loving it to death here are images of people I believe saying that they are connecting to Nature in fact I know in many of these cases the reason that people engage in some of these behaviors is because they love being in nature they enjoy being in nature they feel connected or called To Nature I'm going to suggest that they mean it right hunting as a traditional way of life fishing as a recreation that can provide food driving giant Vehicles over delicate ecosystems as a way to feel powerful all those things are like really important to somebody right keeping animals in captivity so that you can feel like they need you carving your name on things that will Outlast you because you're frantically trying to make it seem like your existence matters whatever it is right okay I'm starting to read into these people a little bit I promised I wasn't going to be gripey about this but I can't right because if we look at this one at the bottom this is Joshua Tree National Park during covid they didn't staff national parks because it wasn't safe so nature lovers went and drove the recreational vehicles or four-wheelers all over the desert landscape and this picture is a nature lover sawing down a threatened Joshua Tree in Joshua Tree National Park so they could go to restricted areas to drive their four-wheelers if we asked them they would say I love being out in nature I bet so rather than looking at enjoyment of nature what we can do for fun in nature let's look at meaning in nature meaning brings us a sense of responsibility right we're not just in it for ourselves we're not just into like love up nature until it's all gone be the last person to lick a glacier whatever it might be it's not extracting overusing exploiting trampling uprooting capturing or acting if the world exists just to amuse or distract our sad empty selves I know that sounds a little judgy but uh I think I am maybe a little dodgy on some topics so I apologize for that but that's what I see is the Dynamics sometimes it's there it was made for me to do whatever I want with it's easier to deny that we're all living on a planet in a murder-suicide pact than to change our relationship with with nature sometimes right but it's not that hard because if we just make one simple switch and equate nature to people certainly we would never exploit people hmm I think we might okay so let's go one step further babies nature is babies we love babies other than like you know maybe parents of child Beauty Pages we don't really exploit babies too much not too much we don't trample them we hardly ever dig them up what if nature was our baby and connecting to it meant we connect to Nature the same way we want to connect to a baby we don't do this to babies go fishing for them and stick our fingers in their noses I mean sometimes maybe you have to but nature is our baby isn't it not because we made it not because it's smaller than us but because we have exerted so much dominance over it that it now needs us maybe more than we need it which is a scary thought because without it we die why would you do that baby asks why does anyone want to destroy the world around us no but we do anyways but we don't have to right so when I go out in nature usually I'm going for a walk I look at a rock I look at a tree and I can't go through it I extract some healing from it I extract some happiness from it I feel like a good person because I picked up someone else's dog poo in a bag which I can't believe even happens but I can do better I know I can because we're still in trouble right so meaning as an Avenue to Nature is different it brings a different kind of connection you connect people differently when there's meaning there as opposed to fun you're not trying to pick up people at a bar because of meaning you're not trying to drive your four-wheel or impress people with how loud your engine is because of meaning you don't exploit you don't extract it's not selfish and most importantly meaning is not mean to babies meaning invites us to share in to nurture to protect to love to nourish to heal to celebrate and to make better every time we go into nature or have an opportunity to be in nature this should be our connection Maybe yeah if we can we should draw spiritual strength and replenishment from nature and have our amygdalas calm down and our hearts get healthier we're maybe running out of time to only do that though right and that doesn't seem fair from a meaning standpoint to just get and get and get and get from nature and then scold other people for driving four-wheelers from a stage right we can cherish and love nature and I would suggest that meaning makes whatever sacrifices we need to make a joy I don't think I slept for the first 18 months when I had my kids there's a weird joy in that it wasn't fun when I connected to my babies it wasn't only to tell them to shut up for a moment please so I don't pass out from exhaustion it was a whole bundle of things some which required sacrifice some which were very difficult some which were just incredibly easy to grow in love nature is our baby we must find Joy because we must make changes and we have to sustain those changes and a lot of them are not going to be very fun so let's try to find meaning in that we talk a lot about the healing we get from nature let's go out and heal it ourselves so this is the not scoldy part of my my talk I'm going to try to bring a little nature to you and so relax you're about to see your baby and maybe this'll even work I don't know foreign so that's all I ask let's just love that nature a little bit thank you [Applause]

Channel: Happiness & Its Causes

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Id: ImLoQIHB9ew

Length: 21min 55sec (1315 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 17 2022