Zeppelin stoner laser show has nothing on this. I felt an emotion not
dissimilar to what I experienced in the canyons of Bluff, Utah. I felt
the stirrings of awe.
This was nature in the Future City, a mix of metaphor, technology
and evolutionary impulse. It embodies what the writer and digital
pioneer Sue Thomas calls “technobiophilia.” Who’s to say what real
nature is anymore anyway? The human hand underlies all of the
world’s ecosystems now. Singapore just represents the extreme end of
constructed nature. It still pushes many of our neurological buttons
for grass, green, blue, safety, beauty, play, visual interest, wonder.
Could I find it truly satisfying? Could any of us who have spent time
in wilderness? In a word, no. It wasn’t unpredictable and therefore
couldn’t be interesting for long; it didn’t stay novel or fulfill the
Kaplans’ quotient of being mysterious or escapist enough. But I
looked at these children, and their young parents, and I realized that
most of them had probably never seen a much wilder nature, and they
didn’t miss what they didn’t know. If this isn’t an argument for
conserving wilderness and making sure people experience it, I don’t
know what is.
Heading out of the park, a fragile sliver of hazy moon hung in the
southern sky.
I hadn’t noticed it at all.I TOOK AWAY two big lessons from Singapore. For greenery to truly
seep into all neighborhoods, there needs to be a strong governing
vision. Second, urban nature will serve us best when it’s allowed to be
a little bit wild, at least in spots. I couldn’t help but wonder if cities
had something better to offer in the awe department. Real nature, the
kind we evolved in, incorporates entropy, blood, high winds, a
beating, pulsing geophony. In Singapore, nature more or less looked
like nature, but it didn’t sound like nature. It didn’t act like nature.
Where was the possibility of all that Darwinian tooth and claw?