A vital component of the curriculum at Integration Centers is Nature Sensitivity Training, cheekishly named to point out how disconnected humans have become from nature.
The training starts out with a bunch of explanation of context and processes, but wraps up with Nature Observation, the most important part of the program. The basic program for this nature sensitivity training is:
Anthropological Context
Key points in the timeline of human evolution:
- 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago (the Pliocene Epoch) was a warm time globally. Hominins, who had recently “split” in their evolution away from apes, began proliferating around eastern central Africa.
- ~3.3 million years ago or earlier: Hominins (Australopithecus or Kenyanthropus) became the first known animals to use tools to make other tools, marking the beginning of the Stone Age.
- ~2.8 million years ago: The genus Homo emerged: an animal that was adapted to toolmaking.
- ~780,000 years ago: Having become more sophisticated in their toolmaking, some Homo Erectus began to cook their food and to control fire.
- ~300,000 years ago: As Homo Erectus continued to evolve as a species that can cook its food (requiring far less effort to obtain calories), Homo sapiens emerged as a species that eats cooked food.
- ~115,000 years ago: the last glacial maximum (colloquially called the Ice Age) began, making conditions much harsher on everyone.
- ~50,000–70,000 years ago: Under these harsh conditions, humans had to learn to be more adaptable and to collaborate for survival. They developed “behavioral modernity,” a suite of cognitive and cultural traits like abstract thinking, symbolic expression, and complex planning.
- ~12,000 years ago: as the Ice Age was ending, humans in warmer, more stable areas began to settle down, and some started cultivating crops.
- ~11,700 years ago: End of the last Ice Age. Humans started flowing out into more regions of the world, often settling down into agricultural communities.
- ~12,000 to 7,000 years ago: Some cultures in Afro-Eurasia underwent a Neolithic Revolution, settling into agriculture focused on a limited number of crops that were mass-produced, leading to agricultural practices out of balance with their local biome. (Due to less favorable geography, later in the Americas, between 5,500 and 3,100 years ago.)
- ~5,100 years ago: Some Afro-Eurasian neolithic agricultural societies, already supporting specialists such as artisans, priests, and administrators, now started to develop a warrior specialization. The earliest examples were in Egypt and Sumer (now Iraq). They also started making weapons out of bronze (Bronze Age).
- ~3,200 years ago: fueled by conquest and metal-enabled resource extraction, the bronze-wielding cultures began creating Iron (Iron Age). This lead to more frequent and larger-scale warfare, and the rise of centralized states and empires.
From that point forward, it’s a story of centralization and conquest, as these technologically-empowered warlike states expand out around the world. Each time they encounter societies that had not advanced their technology as quickly, they conquered, colonized, assimilated, enslaved, and/or annihilated the people in those societies.
Note: The major philosophers in history do not emerge until around 2,500 years ago, when Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Lao Tzu, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and other early great thinkers walked the Earth (the Axial Age). Today when we look back in history, we rarely look before this time. And when we only look at the past 2,500 years and talk about “human nature,” we are ignoring the previous three million years of human ancestry.
Humans Compared to Other Animals
- All animals destroy things while eating, walking, playing, etc. But that damage is always accounted for within the system that animal is in (if it is not a human-introduced invasive species).
- Humans destroy disproportionately.
- Technology allows us to destroy far beyond what a system can balance (e.g. a logging or mining operation).
- We as individuals and as a culture have little respect for balance, since our break from nature.
- Our direct outputs (trash and sewage) are heavily contaminated.
- Upstream in our economy, before we ever touch a product, there are massive levels of destruction and contamination.
Product Breakdown
- Assess components of a random modern product (like a toaster or coatrack or lamp).
- Discuss progeny of each component (and the final product) and how large chunks of land and biome are destroyed for:
- mining (etc) of component elements
- refining/processing of elements
- compositing of elements (manufacturing)
- packaging
- marketing
- distribution
- repackaging
- sale
- in addition, each step involves
- energy
- transport & fuel
- wastage
- human exploitation
- As a potential resource for this instruction, a process chart for Aluminum is provided here.
Introduction to Holism
- Provide perspective on how organisms form into systems, from cells to animals to forests to major ecosystems.
Nature Observation
This step is a vital component of the curriculum!
- Sit as a group in a natural area (a small clearing in the woods would be ideal) for at least an hour.
- Be relatively still and quiet, and just observe.
- Quiet conversation is allowed, but topics of conversation must be limited to only what one is perceiving in that moment. (For example, one can talk about what a particular ant is doing, but not about the biology of ants.)
- Afterward, reference the product breakdown above, and discuss what would happen to that observed natural area if a mining operation set up in that place, or if a house was built there.
Food Cycle Introduction
Provide an overview of the full food cycle, which is then delved to in detail in the Food Cycle part of the Curriculum.
Return to: Integration Center Curriculum