<\/p>\n
Writing about a Pagan take on Las Vegas and the Colorado After leaving my traveling companions at Las Vegas’s <\/p>\n In a few earlier posts I have described how people can learn We evolved in nature, deeply immersed in complex networks of I imagine no city in the country is more artificial than Las It turns out there is scientific evidence that
\nPlateau has turned into a vastly bigger undertaking than I initially
\nimagined. <\/span>Bigger than a single blog
\npost – but really clarifying in helping me get a better grasp on what is good
\nand not so good about the modern world, and why.
\n<\/span>So I’ll hit one point at a time in my posts on it.<\/p>\n
\nairport, I turned and drove home to California. <\/span>As soon as I entered open country I experienced a
\nwonderful release of <\/span>pressure and
\na sense of clear, clean energy. A ‘stickiness’ that I had almost ceased to notice disappeared. <\/span>The contrast with the feel of the city was very powerful. <\/span>The lower Nevada desert is far from my
\nfavorite landscape, and I believe what I experienced was much more than simply
\nan aesthetic shift. <\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nto see<\/a> and to feel<\/a> the energy fields that pervade everything. <\/span>Building on that post, I think Gary Snyder’s insight is on
\ntarget: the spirit of place is the total of all the energy fields that comprise
\nan area. <\/span>This holds from a human
\nbeing or a garden to a city or a landscape. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nrelationships not just in the ways Western science has already discovered, such
\nas ecologies, but also in subtle energy networks that science has not yet
\ndiscovered. <\/span>By contrast, while a
\ncity can have very complex human fields, it’s natural fields are far
\nweaker. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nVegas, where the business that makes the city tick takes place in huge
\nwindowless casinos designed to remove people as far as possible from their
\nnormal lives. <\/span>It is very long on
\nvisual distractions, constant activity, and endless stimulation. In this sense
\nVegas is an extreme case of an impoverished subtle environment of simplified or
\ndisrupted energy fields. I think this reality characterizes at least all
\nrelatively new cities, although older ones eventually become integrated into the larger context which surrounds them.<\/p>\n
\nsupports my hunch, although it does not prove it because alternative
\nexplanations might also be possible.
\n<\/span>Access to nature turns out to be quite important<\/a> for human health. Still another study<\/a> <\/span>shows, as Peter Stanford wrote<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n