Western culture today is eminently different than it was when the land was cultivated by native peoples. We have moved away from being in touch with the landscape, knowing what is available for out comsumption and what is not, and how strategically we can adapt our surroundings without forcefully manipulating them. The capitalist economy has become an engine of consumption and waste on an enormous scale with too many problems, too many people, and not enough intrinsic knowledge or understanding circulating to redeem itself. This is acutely apparent in the fields of restoration ecology, ecosystem management, and ecological risk assessment. In reading Hobbs' and others' (2004) paper, "Restoration ecology: the challenge of social values and expectation", one becomes highly aware of the anthropocentric bias that is introduced into decision-making regarding ecosystems. It is a conundrum because without scientific tests, we no longer know to what degree we have affected our surroundings; we simply can no longer tell. One might say that it has spun out of control. Our "world" and our "reality" has grown faster than we have been able to actually see and feel and understand what has been happening and to what degree we have actually altered our environment from the pre-Industrial Revolution era. It would suffice to say (in an abstract sense) that humans have succeeded in over-powering evolution.
We are all shaped by our past and our present.
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