Why do urban cultures tend to idealize/romanticize nature?

Why do urban cultures tend to idealize/romanticize nature?

Rural cultures seem to hate and fear it

Romanticizing nature is a relatively modern phenomenon even among urban societies.

Modern people do it because they can experience all the fun and safe stuff nature has to offer (campfires, fishing, sleeping under the stars on a warm night) without having to worry about all the horrible things (winter, shelter from the elements, wild animals and supplies).


Its easy to romanticize something you spend a few weeks a year living before going back home to the wonders of the modern world.


Its also easy to confuse the upper class members of society sending their children out to the "country" to escape the toxic conditions of thousands of people living on top one another but the reality is they would live on a well guarded and supplied country estate with a manor and dozens of servants.

Because rual cultures are trying to live on top of ecological systems rather than withen them, even then they often have a great deal of respect for nature, John Muir grew up as a settler ffs.
That's why aboriginal cultures that belong to complex socio-ecological systems, have a greater admiration for nature, and the same for urbanites with higher ecological literacy.
Greater experiential/traditional/scientific ecological knowledge=greater understanding and appreciation of nature.
Look at picture related, who do you think cares about these creatures the barrons and labourers of the fishing industry and naive consumers, or subsistence fishermen and marine biologists?

>Rural cultures seem to hate and fear it

Hum... not really

Rurals are more about respecting it and understanding the dangers of it. Don't go near rivers as a child or monsters may take you, don't walk aloof in the middle of the night or you may never return, don't hunt to much or some spirit may punish you.

Because modern population densities expose people to ambient stress that is almost abolished as soon as one goes into "nature".

What rural cultures "hate" is crop spoilage, theft, and destruction which can come about as a natural calamity.

But they hate the city folk more. Lenders take advantage of unsophisticated farmers and lend money for farm equipment at higher interest rates.

>Modern people do it because they can experience all the fun and safe stuff nature has to offer (campfires, fishing, sleeping under the stars on a warm night) without having to worry about all the horrible things (winter, shelter from the elements, wild animals and supplies).

This. There's so much boner stroking over "muh native culture and way of life" and how awesome it must have been to live in nature in tribes.

I actually had this open debate in class with one of my Sociology professors who was talking up the benefits of primal, tribal society.

You wouldn't have any of our modern hygiene products, medicine, could die of a simple cold or infection, could have your entire family or tribe wiped out because nature decides there's going to be a flood/drought/fire where you're camping, have a neighboring tribe stop by to slaughter or enslave you, or have your children and possibly yourself eaten by wild animals as you slept.

You may experience some times of comfort but the hard times are very, very hard times and often mortally so and your future is very much uncertain. Not a good bargain.

Also in a non-tropical zone you would truly learn the meaning of winter's barren cold.

>talking up the benefits of primal, tribal society.

Jesus Christ, people that do this are so common, they think its like modern day camping. I have an aunt that truly believes humanity would be better if everyone lived in small isolated tribes. She refused to believe that tribal society was bloody awful.

>Tend to
I disagree
>seem to
I don't think so.

>incapable of understanding cognitive relativism
Don't worry I don't hold it against you, I understand cognitive relativism.
Cultures that are highly connected to ecological systems are highly appreciative of them, there is an entire field called ethnoecology dedicated to its study and the socio-ecological system model.
The fear and loving of ecology emerges in market societies, because the experience is very different

The other morning, as I was being taken home in a taxi after a while of punishing my body partying on various things and vast quantities of alcohol, I felt close to death. I could barely sit up, my insides and brain ached horribly.. I was hallucinating and so on. But when I looked out of the window at the lines of the roads and buildings, the lights and cars, and heard the noise of traffic and people, everything seemed to melt and blur until fading out and I felt like I experienced the same thing as the painter of the scream, and how he explained 'the great scream of nature'.

I wanted nothing more than to be in a forest, still with comforts like a pillow and something soft to lay on, but away from all the madness of modern life.

Even now I'd love to live in some woodland in a small cabin, growing food, reading my Heidegger, Foucault, Flaubert, Byron and all the rest. Going into town only when I had to. Bring on the cold, it's more inviting than the cesspool.

Lol, read security, territory, population and get back to me.
Diff user.

hey retard, even a pleb woul care about that, that's bad not just for the ecosystem, but to us, that's a living thing also u know,

...

The image of nature depicted in actual Romantic art was based on the concept of the sublime, the idea that inherent in the beauty of nature is its terrible, human destroying power.

What's it about

Much of our medicines come from nature though.

You're right that they're not scared of it but OP still makes a valid point

I've known hillbillies that lived in hunting shacks with no power or running water. People that are forced to forage for wild edibles and hunt for meat tend to look down on it. They think the forest is nasty, the water is nasty and wild game tastes like shit to them.

Even though I think home made wine is the best and wild pig tastes great, they just want to buy food at a grocery store like normal civilized people.

why don't they live in the city then?

It comes from nature, but it's synthesized in modern facilities using modern technology, and the availability of that medicine is a direct result of the scale it's produced at. In other words, your medicine is affordable, available, and effective because of modern industry, not nature.

Shit's expensive.

>medicine can exist independent of nature
>maximum production is a good thing
Wew lad, our life is completely dependent on ecological interaction to exist.
That kind of thinking is why we are going extinct, picture related

Oh

>we're going extinct
>world population is soaring

cool hypothesis, doomsayer

That's not what I said at. Fucking. All.

The dude I replied to said 'Medicine comes from nature', implying that natural remedies and cures would still be viable if everybody was living in a tribal, primitivist society. I explained that yes, while most pharmaceuticals do come from naturally occurring sources like plants, it takes modern industry and science to turn that into the effective and available medicines we enjoy today.

>biodiversty plummeting
>climate destablizing
>ecological connectivity destoryed
>more people, less resources
End is neigh
Oh yeah! Well, KEK nigger faggot numale

>to turn that into the effective and available medicines we enjoy today
Trust me, medication is underrated. Now sewers and vaccinations: that's where its at.

Healthy eating beats most medication. Too many meds focus on the suppression of symptoms. See for example "Why we get sick".

More such books.

I mean overrated.
As for the question in the OP, perspectives differ between people and the occupation they have. Farmers see nature in a different light as those with other occupations.

It's because modern living is depressing and soul crushing.

The thought of working 9-5 for the rest of my life kills me.

>Romanticizing nature is a relatively modern phenomenon even among urban societies.
It's actually a phenomenon that reaches to the Italian Renaissance. However, it is most definitely an urban thing.

Friendly reminder that he was right.

some of what he says is good, but you can't do anything with it except go innawoods or blow shit up. bookchin or naess other more constructive stuff much better imo.

Modern living isn't soul-crushing as a whole. If your job isn't bullshit, you've got ample free time and friends, the conveniences of modernity allow one to experience life like never before. (easy to learn, easy to expose oneself to new things, easy to meet people)

People always want what they don't have ususally. In the case of urbanites, it's being surrounded by natural settings. I think it's called "grass greener on the other side phenomenon."