Rewilding
In the past years, when many of us were housebound, the outdoors took on new meaning. Sitting at a desk for hours, communication via e-mail or digital messenger services. Time is pressing. Steady sales growth and the pursuit of profit are seen as the measure of all things.
Due to a decoupling between man and nature, societies in the last decades have emerged worldwide that consider strong economic growth alone as the maximum goal of a society. This decoupling has been accompanied by an alienation between man and nature and man and animal. This is why it is so easy for people to perceive nature as something that is worth less to them than, for example, a consumer good. With this devaluation, it is also easier to destroy natural habitats, such as the clearing of the huge areas in the rainforest, because everything is subordinated to the dogma of marketing products.
Marketing at any price, food as cheap and as fast as possible. Real knowledge, reading up in books and really listening to the other, as little as possible. Everything must run at top speed. At speeds for which the human brain is not designed.
In order to bring the relationship between man and nature back into harmony, a completely new learned and very conscious handling and a daily confrontation with the seasonal processes in nature and with all aspects of biodiversity has been seen in the last years two years of the pandemic in many societies.
Urban gardening is a trend we do know from the past. Consciously growing and making food oneself, sourcing food locally, and the big issue of sustainability have become more pronounced as clear trends in recent years, especially in food, travel, and overall consumption habits.
A garden with the cultivation of fruits and vegetables and various animals was an integral part of households in past generations. John Seymour describes in detail in "The Complete Book Of Self-Sufficiency" how even a small garden with plants and animals can be usefully planted for self-sufficiency, or, for example, how repairing appliances can be replicated, even by people with few manual skills. Helpful tips on local self-sufficiency instead of reaching for the next plastic-wrapped three-pack of red peppers at the supermarket. There are many community projects today where people have joined together with the goal of meaningful and sustainable ecological activity. In these collective cultivation areas you grow your own fruit and vegetables, you share a garden with others and are then also responsible for your harvest.
In the last two years, due to being at home all the time, there has been a trend back to nature, which is clearly shown by the increasing number of outdoor activities and the strong interest in ecological processes. Some activity groups are calling for a "rewilding" of the lands and our way of life. That means bringing our natural landscapes and ways of life back into harmony with nature. Rewilding is a form of ecological restoration in which humans withdraw and leave an area to nature, in contrast to actively intervening and changing the natural environment.
Basically, after being at home and sitting on the couch for so long, the interest in nature is all about our health as human beings. A healthy mind and a healthy body, being outside and living all outdoor activities in a healthy environment.
