The Historical Foundations of American Environmental Attitudes (Blog #2)

After finishing Koyaanisqatsi and watching the interview, I am starting to understand more of what this class will be about. I just finished reading the first chapter of our textbook, and it was definitely not what I expected. Actually, I am not really sure what I expected in the first place. It was interesting and eye opening. However, because I am not very familiar with a lot of the concepts discussed in Hargrove's paper, I found it a little confusing and I am looking forward to discussing it in class in the morning. I really liked how Hargrove went through the history of American attitudes toward nature and how it relates to so many different disciplines. I never realized that our attitude toward nature was shaped by not only botany, biology, and geology, but also poetry and landscape painting. That explains why Koyaanisqatsi used so many scenes that were similar to landscape paintings. It showed us almost a 19th century picture of what Americans thought about nature: "picturesque, sublime, and beautiful."