"Man's perception of his relationship to nature is the central issue of our time. We live in an age obsessed by its own inventiveness. The dilemma of such an obsession derives from the predicament such invention creates...we lose our faith in our inventiveness. We are forced to question the conceptual premise that leads to such destructive creation. It would be useless to try to ignore the dilemma posed by the modern world by retreating into simpler, agrarian existences. But we can learn to revere again the basic premise that sustains the Pueblo farmer: that man is a part of nature, not separate from it. We can learn again to build with the land and not merely on it. What makes the architecture of the Pueblos "a true, indigenous, American architecture whose beginnings predate imported European concepts" so important is that it bridges the abyss that separates the two realities of human history: the one we used to organize perceptually and the one we now understand conceptually" (44).
While this article is primarily on architecture, I am going to focus more on man and nature. So much of our culture today is focused on "being green" and "doing what's good for the earth". What I think that some of us forget though, is that if we do good things for the earth, we are doing good things for ourselves (in the long run). We do not connect that nature and humans are not separate. This is our planet, after all. The time is now to protect our earth, protect ourselves, and protect the generations to come. Man is not separate from nature or more superior than nature. Man is part of nature - what happens to nature (either good or bad) will always affect us in some way. America has always been proud of its nature, and nature has always been a part of history. So much of our history stems from lands and landscape. Man and nature are not separate, in fact they are quite the opposite -- they are "one" and always have been, it's just a matter of people recognizing this fact.
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