Richard Louv's The Last Child In The Woods

In his book, The Nature Principle, Richard Louv talks about how nature is a natural resource to many of the problems we as humans are facing today, if we would just go outside and take advantage of it. Louv talks about how we (as American’s) have increased our use of technology vastly in the last ten years. While this is not comply bad, it does have negative effects on our physical, emotional and spiritual being if not kept in check. Louv goes on to share that, “the more high tech we become, the more nature we need” (Louv, 2011). Think about a time you have sat in your office for hours on end, working on your computer, at last lunch time came and you went outside for just five minutes because you forgot something in your car. In just those few minutes of going outside, you might have noticed a slight increase in your happiness level. Can you then venture to understand how this could be applied to children, or even increased with taking more time to enjoy nature? Richard Louv challenges his readers to not only be in nature, but to live with nature (Louv, 2011) .

As a child, I unraveled nature’s beauty and existence. Each new experience brought me feelings of excitement and joy, sparkling my imagination and igniting my curiosity. It all seemed so large back then. Oceans appeared endless as they reached towards the horizon. Treetops seemed to make friends with the puffy-looking clouds as they soared to the sky. Over the years however, as I have grown older and life has become more complex, I am beginning to think less and less about the natural world around me. I glimpse sunset stuck in rush-hour traffic trying to return school after debate practices and only listen to the pitter-patter of the rain when there’s a storm outside. Forests and oceans seemed less appealing as they became intertwined with the urban development. In a way, I was becoming more and more distanced from the so-called nature. So, with an overwhelming desire for adventure and to escape the masses, my family and I drove to Big Bend National Park in Southwest Texas last summer.

Colin Turnbull an anthropologist, rise in a wealthy English family which discover his fulfilment in life; which were the Pygmies. Turnbull then wrote a book called “The Forest People”, which Turnbull spent three years studying about the Mbuti Pygmies; who lives in the Ituri rainforest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In “The forest people”, Turnbull display the world of the Pygmy tribe, its environment, and how pygmies adopt to its surrounding in order to survive its everyday life.

Through removal and technology, humans have started to become isolated from the wilderness and the nature around them. This view distinctly contrasts with Thoreau’s perspective. “Though he [Thoreau] never put humans on the same moral level as animals or trees, for example, he does see them all linked as the expression of Spirit, which may only be described in terms of natural laws and unified fluid processes. The self is both humbled and empowered in its cosmic perspective,” states Ann Woodlief. The technologies that distract and consume us, and separate us from the natural world are apparent. Many people and children ins cities have seen little to no natural-grown things such as grass and trees. Even these things are often domesticated and tamed. Many people who have never been to a National Park or gone hiking through the wilderness do not understand its unruly, unforgiving, wild nature. These aspects, thought terrifying to many, are much of why the wilderness is so beautiful and striking to the human heart. “Thoreau builds a critique of American culture upon his conviction that ‘the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality,’” pronounces Rick Furtak, quoting Thoreau’s Life

‘The sheer popularity’ of stimulating nature or using nature as ad space ‘demands that we acknowledge, even respect, their cultural importance,’ suggests Richtel. Culturally important, yes. But the logical extension of synthetic nature is the irrelevance of ‘true’ nature— the certainty that it’s not even worth looking at. (Louv lines 9-19)

Throughout history, humans have had a strong reliance on nature and their environment. As far back as historians can look, people have depended on elements of nature for their survival. In the past few decades, the increased advancement of technology has led to an unfortunate division between humans and nature, and this lack of respect is becoming a flaw in current day society. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv criticizes modern culture by arguing that humans increasing reliance on technology has led to their decreasing connection with nature through the use of relevant anecdotes, rhetorical questions and powerful imagery to appeal to ethos.

In his 2008 novel, Last Child in the Woods, journalist and natural idealist Richard Louv demonstrates the effect that separation from nature has on children. Using a variety of rhetorical strategies, Louv reminds the different parents, as agree cohort which adapted alongside new technology, of the benefits they received from nature prior to the technological revolution. Louv persuades them to instill an appreciation of the natural world in their children, even if such appreciation deviates from societal norms.

Nowadays, children have become very dependent on technology, rather than observing the world around them. Richard Louv's, "Last Child in the Woods" excerpt portrays to readers that children, nowadays, aren't being given the opportunities nor choosing to embrace nature for themselves. Instead, they're using technology to sort of "mask" reality. Louv provides logical reasoning, real examples, and emotional and relative connections with the reader to strengthen his opinion on this topic. The title, "Last Child in the Woods", also assists with the emphasis that children aren't embracing nature. Author Richard Louv effectively uses rhetorical strategies in this excerpt from "Last Child in the Woods" to emphasize the importance of embracing "true" nature.

In today’s world, it is often deemed that the younger generation “cannot seem to get off their phone,” that we cannot hold an attention span for longer than thirty seconds without wanting to check our social media or the fact that all of us simply care about technology. In Ursula LeGuin’s short story “Direction of the Road,” LeGuin depicts the life of an oak tree and treats it as if it were a human, giving it thoughts and feelings, and telling an overall story of how it feels ignored; the story progresses to show that the tree then kills a driver when the they collide with the tree. After reading this short passage, one might believe the stigma that the human race of today ignores the importance of nature and pays more attention to technology; however, this is not true for various reasons. Although technology is rapidly advancing in today’s society, we still find the effort to take care and appreciate our environment; this can be seen through the environmental justice movement, the way we strive to make

History has presented hunting as a job and pastime for men for thousands of years. Ancient civilization’s livelihoods rested on the hunting and gathering that men performed for a tribe while the women stayed back to care for the young and cook. It truly is a tale as old as time; however, over time, a very long time, women have found their way into this historically male dominated arena. Women have begun partaking in the “sport” of pursuing animals more frequently than ever before. Despite this, though, females can still find themselves receiving criticism and wayward glances for stepping outside the traditional views of gender roles. In H. William Rice’s collection of short stories, The Lost Woods, the tale “Gobble, Gobble” offers a firsthand account from a young lady who seems to have decided to turn her back on society’s view of femininity to take on her own idea of what her role should be in her family.

Human desire for affluence over the course of modern history has proven to be a driving force in the detriment of the natural world, demonstrating the apathetic outlook humans have towards our . Richard Louv’s Last Child argument describes the loosening of interest in our current generation; it has built a wall that one day may cut our ropes from earthly surroundings. Although this passage was written with incontrovertible accuracy about humans in the present, the author’s bias outlook, which reflects in the tone of his writing,makes this piece undeniably one sided, which not only takes credibility away from the author’s argument, but also creates this controversial idea of modern technology serving as an unhealthy focus in today’s society that only distracts humans away from the environment.

Coming from an uncultivated society, such as the one that brought farming and ranching to the settlement of North America, humans have retained some sensitivity to environmental issues as they derived their livelihood directly from the land. But with the advance to an urban or metropolitan society, there has been a major disconnect between humanity and nature. Today’s urban society is provided with mowed parks, paved playgrounds, plush automobiles to move the public around on asphalt roads, housing with automatically regulated heat and cooling, and supermarkets with shopping carts and baskets, in which people can gather their food supplies from orderly shelves and freezers. Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” term suggests that humans stop treating the land as a mere object or a resource, like how the world does today. For Leopold, land is not merely soil, like the public would think of today; land is a fountain of energy, flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals.

I read the book A Child called “It”. I loved this book it really spoke to me in a manner of taking my family life for granted and taking everything I have for the best because in all reality it could be worse. This book takes place in Dale City, California during the 1970’s.

The beautiful blossoms that bloom in Californian spring, the summer daisies alongside the cooling lake, long after the summer the trees have lost their leaves entering autumn to fresh white snow out in the mountains. Nature is able to show us its true beauty without any falseness and modifications. After all, is it not ironic how people go to museums to look at paintings of colorful flowers, green hills, and clear water streams; those are beauties that can easily be observed in real life outside of the urban environment which are surrounded by them, or how people buy recordings of the calming sounds of nature, similar to what you would listen to at night in the woods or smell nature aromas of the candles. What we are doing is trying to mislead our minds and pretend to think that we are in the woods but are instead cornered inside our small, well-furnished, and full -with-technology apartment.

Within the last two decades, technology has evolved and advanced tremendously and altered the way our society functions. A prominent difference between life for younger generations and older generations is how the latter survived despite the absence of modern forms of technology and have developed an apparently deeper connection with the world around them. In the passage from Richard Louv’s 2008 novel, Last Child in the Woods, Louv emphasizes how technology is further disconnecting people from nature through his use of anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and descriptive imagery.