Replenishing Earth and its People:

The RWN Factor

By: Michael J Cohen

In recent times idealism has become a dirty word. Perhaps it is because our runaway social and environmental deterioration tramples our ideals. We seem helpless to stop the juggernaut, so instead of ideals, we seek practical solutions, things that work. I suggest that a practical solution is to use proven nature-reconnecting activities to daily replenish our deficiency of love of, by and from nature. Then the deterioration will halt. Lest this sound idealistic, consider the following incident. It addresses the ingrained ways of a deeply rooted, theoretically unchangeable group of hard core killers:

"In the West Virginia mountains, an isolated, dedicated hunting club finds a month old male fawn whose mother has been killed by a car. For a week, these middle aged men, each with decades of devoted deer killing expertise, decide to feed the fawn formula from a bottle, which it suckles with half shut eyes of ecstasy. In return the fawn licks their hands, sucks their earlobes and sings them little whining sounds of delight from deep within. When the hunt breaks up, these men disperse leaving the fawn eating grass and craving its bottle. They make vague promises to return to this remote place, individually, as time permits, trek the mountain and feed the fawn. A few weeks later, one of the hunters phones the others to see if anybody knows if the fawn has been fed or has survived. He discovers that without each other knowing it, five of the hunters often visit the fawn and feed it, so it is actually getting fat. Although the fawn might be shot by someone who did not know who the deer was, it lifts his heart to think that the fawn has a chance at life because some case hardened deer hunters have gone out of their way to give it to him. He knows for sure that none of his hunt club members would shoot it.

It is worth noting in this true to life experience that neither a teacher nor preacher appeared to educate the hunters about the value of the fawn's life and supporting it. Although it said not a word, the fawn was that educator. Sensory factors within the integrity of its life touched these same factors in the lives of the hunters. The connection sparked into consciousness their inherent feelings of love in the form of nurturing, empathy, community, friendship, power, humility, reasoning and a score of others. Reconnecting moments with nature hooked a battery of different natural senses that led a group of deer hunters to support rather than deny the life of a deer and bring joy to their personal and collective lives."

Remember that all of this emanated from but one contact with one aspect of nature. What I have found is the means by which any person can choose to have many such moments daily with many aspects of nature in the environment, people and themselves. Each moment feels good, uplifting and responsible. These moments are like lollipops of life. In a relatively short time they create a habitual way of thinking and relating that reverses the deterioration all too common in ourselves and the environment. I suggest that such moments are a reconnecting-with-nature factor (RWN Factor) whose absence from our personal lives generates our unsolvable personal and global problems.

Although the daily insertion of an RWN factor into our nature separated lives sounds ideal, inserting it is within the grasp of any individual that knows of this factor's existence. It is now a tested and proven vehicle to mental and environmental health, a responsible way of thinking and acting that most people learn in less than six months. It is also the core of societies that do not suffer from or inflict our problems. I conservatively estimate that at least 600 million people in Western society alone can learn to integrate and enjoy the RWN factor at home, work and school. As people learn it, they can teach it formally. Even if they don't teach it, they inject it into their personal and professional relationships because it provides immediate rewards for them, their community and the environment. In that way, others learn RWN from them.

The following question is so important that I repeat it many times throughout my new book "Reconnecting With Nature: An integration of ecology and psychology that lets thoughtful sensory contacts with Earth catalyze wellness, spirit and responsibility." What would our world be like if 600 million people in it daily had RWN experiences with nature and their community, experiences that triggered senses, feelings and acts similar to those of the deer hunters and the fawn? That thought is the essence of the RWN factor and that thought is not ours alone. In some form that thought is shared by the nature of every member of the global life community, no matter their cultural differences or species. The sense in that thought is the love of life, an essence of the fawn, the hunter and life itself.