Although an era of global communication now overwhelms the world there are still distinctive cultures, particularly between the hemispheres. A word like 'landscape' has interesting cultural ramifications, particularly in what some may come to call the 'environmental age'.
A beautiful 'white mountain' lies behind the city of Muscat, in Oman. This is a country with a Sultan educated in England, but there was not a murmur of dissent from anyone when a yellow bull dozer appeared on top of the mountain and began to scrape a donga across its face in order to make way for a motor way. What would have been considered outrageous in some societies was regarded with complete indifference in Oman.
In those few remaining parts of the globe where nature is still overpowering in the minds of human beings attitudes to nature are quite different from those where nature has long since been dominated, as in England. In his nineteenth century poem, 'Pied Beauty' G. M. Hopkins extolled the virtue of diversity melding it with his religious emotions so that words like 'wilderness' and landscape plotted and pieced' acquired an almost religious intensity. People who know English literature understand this, but people with different cultural values have different sensibilities.
As Hopkins perceived, both natural and built environments have their own aspects of interest, depending on what is in the mind of the viewer. To some, the only built feature in a perfect view may be a rustic cottage. To others, factories and smoke stacks are beautiful in their own way.
In orientating themselves people either look into the distance and see broad sweeps of reality or they focus on details and are either oblivious or indifferent to wider perspectives. Possibly this has something to do with cultural inheritance. Those who have entered emotionally into the concerns of English literature can hardly be indifferent to the significance of the surrounds.
Online searches for the word 'landscape' will yield about half a million potential results. This illustrates the contemporary currency of the word in our global community. Even in remote African environments some politicians are following cues from countries like China and attempting to revitalize the environment by planting trees. However, most people now live in cities and it is in city contexts that they will respond most significantly to a built environment. Read more about: Landscape
A beautiful 'white mountain' lies behind the city of Muscat, in Oman. This is a country with a Sultan educated in England, but there was not a murmur of dissent from anyone when a yellow bull dozer appeared on top of the mountain and began to scrape a donga across its face in order to make way for a motor way. What would have been considered outrageous in some societies was regarded with complete indifference in Oman.
In those few remaining parts of the globe where nature is still overpowering in the minds of human beings attitudes to nature are quite different from those where nature has long since been dominated, as in England. In his nineteenth century poem, 'Pied Beauty' G. M. Hopkins extolled the virtue of diversity melding it with his religious emotions so that words like 'wilderness' and landscape plotted and pieced' acquired an almost religious intensity. People who know English literature understand this, but people with different cultural values have different sensibilities.
As Hopkins perceived, both natural and built environments have their own aspects of interest, depending on what is in the mind of the viewer. To some, the only built feature in a perfect view may be a rustic cottage. To others, factories and smoke stacks are beautiful in their own way.
In orientating themselves people either look into the distance and see broad sweeps of reality or they focus on details and are either oblivious or indifferent to wider perspectives. Possibly this has something to do with cultural inheritance. Those who have entered emotionally into the concerns of English literature can hardly be indifferent to the significance of the surrounds.
Online searches for the word 'landscape' will yield about half a million potential results. This illustrates the contemporary currency of the word in our global community. Even in remote African environments some politicians are following cues from countries like China and attempting to revitalize the environment by planting trees. However, most people now live in cities and it is in city contexts that they will respond most significantly to a built environment. Read more about: Landscape
