NATURE BROWSE
a) To evaluate how important nature may be in our individual passage from cognition ( thinking ) to recognition ( learning) .
b) To realize how our own personal mental scenarios / attitudes towards the world and life may then be changed. Each member of the group was suggested to spend one hour walking around Dartington grounds. The group was specifically instructed not to talk, read or do any writing during this time. The need to use the senses, to let feelings come out and to concentrate on "grounding to earth" was also emphasised. When time run out the group gathered again and the session's assessment was made through filling in a personal questionaire and sharing some of the most important moments.
These conclusions are summed up as follows:
- during the walk, the presence of technology is everywhere (i.e. human devices - the made ) and is a inescabable reality; - personal links to nature / memories related to childhood were mentioned and comparisons were then made ( for instance, memories of someone's childhood in Israel where one hardly finds more than rocks and a sense of empty landscape ), there was also a strong wish to walk far away, get lost in nature; the sensation of having felt the space around as huge as a mind can be, but limited in the sense that one had to follow pathways / trails that have been made by humankind. - in regard to any new perceptions of nature that had occured, people referred to various levels: aesthetics ( the large variety of greens, the possibility of learning through touch, the contrast of silence and sounds existing in nature ): cultural evaluations ( nature is always busy doing things to survive, it can make you slow down and help your reflectiviness ), moral / ethics ( it can make you discover the beauty of people around you ); emotional ( feeling scared by watching dead animals or by being isolated in a remote location, feeling unsafe to be on ones own ).
- the root of these new perceptions, which have led to personal learning and growth, can be located in our common experience and past history as the human species: within the processes of learning that pass across generations, the human descendence, and this opended the door for a discussion around human genetic heritage and how far this subject could be known and changed ( i.e. the HUMAN GENOME PROJECT).
