I just finished reading a book called Drunk Tank Pink, a catchy title referring to a color discovered by scientists in the 1970's that has a calming effect. Quote from the book, "Even if a person tried to be angry or aggressive in the presence of pink, he can't. The heart muscles can't race fast enough. It's a tranquilizing color that saps your energy. Even the colorblind are tranquilized by a pink room." The book analyzes a wide range of elements in our environment that impact us, some obvious and some totally sub-conscious. Some are not really surprising, for instance: living in noisy, crowded conditions retards learning and having litter around makes it more likely that people will litter whereas when in a pristine environment they are very unlikely to litter. (I feel so validated for teaching my children to pick up after themselves and never, ever litter!) Some are quite surprising, even bordering on questionable despite the "scientific evidence" backing it up. If you can catch a tv show called "Brain Games" ( I know it's on Netflix.) it includes several of the same observations.
The one I particularly want to share concerns the urban/rural issue. Russ and I make no secret of the fact that we are NOT city people. In this book there is evidence to back us up for this preference.
What is it that sets natural environment apart from others? Why shouldn't a quiet streetscape have the same effect as a quiet natural landscape, for example? Architecture has its own beauty, and some people prefer urban environments to natural environments, so why does nature seem to have such powerful restorative effects? The answer is that natural environments have a unique constellation of features that set them apart from man-made locations. Just before the dawn of the twentieth century, William James, one of the early giants of modern psychology, explained that human attention comes in two forms. The first is directed attention, which enables us to focus on demanding tasks like driving and writing..... The second form is involuntary attention, which comes easily and doesn't require any mental effort at all..... Nature restores your mental functioning in the same way that food and water restore your body. The business of everyday life......is depleting, and what man-made environments take away from us, nature gives back. There's something mystical and, you might say, unscientific about this claim, but its heart actually rests in what psychologists call attention restoration theory, or ART. According to ART, urban environments are draining because they force us to direct our attention to specific tasks (e.g. avoiding the onslaught of traffic) and grab our attention dynamically, compelling us to "look her" before telling us instead to "look over there!" These demands are draining - and they're also absent in natural environments.
I don't think it's "mystical" at all. I think God is perfect and He made a perfect environment for us. As children, we don't yet know all He knows. In our efforts to "improve" things, we kind of make a mess: pollution, drought, weather change, the extinction of living things, etc. I realize that tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes are not our fault and they also make a mess of things. But I am really grateful for the beauty of mountains, rivers, lakes, flowers, trees, animals, etc. Some day the Lord has promised us that "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah 11:6) So even the currently more scary elements of nature will one day be totally peaceful and lovely. I certainly look forward to it!
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