Who are we? We are our stories.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Natural Happiness

From Paul Bloom, NY Times:
"Our species has spent almost all of its existence on the African savanna. While there is debate over the details, we know for sure that our minds were not adapted to cope with a world of billions of people.
"This history has left its mark on our minds. Children are irrepressible taxonomizers, placing the world of distinct individuals into categories based on their appearance, their patterns of movement and their presumed deeper natures, and some psychologists have argued that the hard-wired capacity to organize and structure the world is specially adapted to nature: we are natural-born zoologists and botanists. We may also have evolved to get pleasure from certain aspects of the natural world. About 25 years ago, the Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson popularized the “biophilia” hypothesis: the idea that our evolutionary history has blessed us with an innate affinity for living things. We thrive in the presence of nature and suffer in its absence."

The images are of Thailand's Khao Yai National Park where my daughter is presently working.

1 comment:

reverend dick said...

Well those lelephants sure seem to dig one another. The world need grabassers.