I suspect you do. After all, our species evolved in nature and for tens of thousands of years we humans lived in nature-created environments. We humans, knew those environments intimately. Had we not, we wouldn’t have survived. It’s not unlikely, therefore, that you have within you an instinct, a deep-seated disposition, an emotional inclination that some scholars have called “biophilia.”
The Greek word “philia” names a form of love, a deep emotional tie between two people; “bio” refers to the living, so “biophilia” means an abiding and intense love of life. Someone who exhibits biophilia is someone who desires to be, as a common phrase has it, “at one with nature.”
The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm coined the term “biophilia,” and then the biologist Edward O. Wilson used it as the title of a book he published in 1984. Their hypothesis about humans being drawn to natural environments is certainly plausible. It’s undeniable that, in cities, people seek out parks; in residential areas, they plant trees and flowers around their homes; houseplants are ubiquitous, and millions of people spend summer vacations at state and national parks, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas. People also adore their pets. All of which suggests that the general public is drawn to their ancestral ties to natural environments.
How do you know whether or not you have biophilia? The mental and behavioral expressions of biophilia are varied and change over time. Children exhibit biophilia strongly. They are fascinated by the natural world and its creatures. They are intensely curious about the extraordinary variety of living things. They are not only fascinated by animals; they pretend to be animals. I recall that, in my youthful years, the Dr. Doolittle books were published. I read
them all and, like a great many other readers, I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than being able to talk to animals.
Children, research shows, regard animals as having great moral worth, which is to say that they think animals’ inherent value is unquestionable and their deaths tragic. I certainly felt that way, and that attitude persisted beyond childhood. When, in my early teens, I asked for, and was given, a BB gun, I immediately took it into the backyard and did what you were supposed to do: I shot at something. My target was a sparrow perched on a trellis. I killed it. The thought that I might do that hadn’t entered my mind. I was so remorseful that I never fired the gun again.
But children, as they grow older, are taught to suppress their instinctive valuation of non-human creatures. They are told that their own species is of superior value and humans are therefore entitled to kill “lesser” creatures.
In many other ways, growing up in our country’s current cultural and environmental circumstances deactivates our biophilia. We are taught to focus on ourselves, to have goals, to compete with other humans and value winning. Our earthy outdoor lives become indoor lives in schoolrooms, then in offices. We still go to the local park, but not so much to contemplate nature as to interact with our peers. In any case, the average city park is not intended to offer a full-fledged encounter with nature; it’s simply an outdoor gathering-place for humans: token trees, a few shrubs, a few flowers, and lots of level grass.
National parks and wilderness areas do attempt to preserve and sustain nature in its full complexity, and their employees are prepared to inform visitors of what life-forms live there and how they interact with one another.
But is that what the average nature-park visitor seeks? I’d guess that for most park visitors the natural setting is little more than a stage-set for human activities, for human interactions, not interactions connecting humans with their environment. These days, park environments often function like outdoor gyms, providing opportunities for physical exercise, for hiking and climbing. When hiking for exercise, one doesn’t stop to look closely at that ancient twisted tree, or listen to that birdsong, or notice that animal path in the undergrowth; one keeps up the pace. And you’re likely to be climbing up a mountain, anticipating reaching that viewpoint from which the panorama of the surrounding wilderness can be viewed. That’s nature as scenery.
I don’t deny that biophilia plays some role in making such park visits enjoyable. But what biophilia seeks is the engagement of all one’s senses, an absorption in natural surroundings, a temporary loss of selfhood and a joining with the environment.
In my own case, activating my biophilia involved repeated solitary walks in a particular forested nature preserve east of San Diego, California. I experienced sensory immersion on those walks, stopping often to look at and touch this and that plant or tree. I wasn’t studying them or identifying them; it was more like just getting acquainted. I didn’t know their names. I knew nothing about ecology. I was a birder, and acquainted with common forest animals, but, on the whole, my knowledge was minimal. That didn’t seem to inhibit my immersion. I’d often take a sleeping bag and spend the night at the edge of a small clearing in the woods. When I woke up, deer would be grazing in that clearing, and I’d say “good morning” to them. After a few such walks, I began to recognize this and that tree or bush, like they were old
acquaintances. I gained a sense of belonging, of being at home, and I experienced withal an odd happiness that I now think was my biophilia at work.
Environmentalists like myself are almost certainly prone to biophilia. If more people experienced it, our world would be different. My advice is this: next time you’re hiking along that nature trail, let yourself be captured by what your surroundings have to offer. Those plants and animals are coping with just the sort of trials and tribulations that you are. They share with you that extraordinary property: life. Let that be your bond.