Rebuilding the Universe

Here's a deep thought that I never realized until I started building my house...

Modern houses do whatever they can to shut out nature. Most of a house's external surface area is sold wall, floor, or roof. Only occasionally are relatively small windows and doors cut into the walls. These are mostly left closed with the blinds pulled over them. If you were to push aside the curtains and peer outside, you'd only see the shrubbery that was specifically planted in front of the window in order to hide the neighbor's house beyond. Our house is a barrier between us (spending most of our time indoors) and nature and other people. Rain, temperature, wild animals, and insects are kept securely outside. That we don't mind. The singing of birds, dulled through our insulated windows, a bit of sun, and breezes are missed though. We supplement these with stereos, air conditioners, fans, and ceiling lights.

Let me replace the term "nature" with "the universe," because nature and the universe are fairly similar terms for those of us that live on Earth.

On a more abstract level, houses do whatever they can to shut the universe out. Well, you can't really do that because the universe is, by definition, everything. Rather, the walls of a house separate the man-made universe of air conditioning, plush carpeting, and halogen lights from the non-human universe we call nature. The same with cities.

I am concerned about this because people spend most of their time in the man-made universe, distorting their sense of reality. If someone spends all their time in front of a television we chide them for the garbage they mentally ingest, but if they never leave the city and experience the non-human universe they are seen as perfectly normal. (Did you know that the more a person watches television the more pervasive they think crime is?)

Our immersion in the universe of our own making deludes us into faulty assumptions. Here are some examples:

• Our personal problems are relatively large when we try to squeeze them into the walls of our house. Climb the nearest mountain and you'll realize how insignificant they are. Look up at the Milky Way and your problems don't even register. You can't see the Milky Way from urban centers because of all the man-made light, nor can you see the mountains due to layers of smog.
  
• We have a homocentric view of the universe. If all you see and deal with every day are humans and the creations of humans you start to think that people are at the center of the universe. Well, they're not. This leads to all sorts of bad assumptions. For example: People without pets or exposure to wildlife assume at animals are automatons and stupid. Hence, Humans, even though stupid at times, are infinitely more intelligent than any creatures on this plant. (Which is not really true.) A more dangerous conclusion naturally follows... Therefore, humans are infinitely more intelligent than any creatures in the universe. Just look at our science fiction to see the consequences; aliens are almost always the bad guys, or at the very least, less civilized that humans. I doubt this is true.
  
• Nature is constantly working to impinge upon our man-made universe but rotting away our houses, sneaking inside in the guise of creepy crawly insects, or growing weeds in our manicured lawns. In order to stop this decay we vigilantly paint our houses, call the pest exterminator, and spray out our herbicides. The universe must be kept at bay and controlled. That which is not of human origin must be eradicated, or at the very least, kept in nature reserves. I always marvel when people buy a rural property, knock down all the native trees, and plant palm trees and grass.

Maybe we shouldn't try to build the universe out, but incorporate it.