Schreiner’s Media Landscape

“What’s the purpose in going hiking? You just go up a mountain and then down.”

Logan resident Evelin Cornejo, 17

Utah is one of the best places for outdoor and Nature recreation. It’s the major reason I moved here. As a probable result, Utah is fifth among states with the thinnest Americans (it sure isn’t because people refuse funeral potatoes or In-and-Out Burgers). Still, it’’s difficult to get young people here interested in recreating outside- even getting them outside.  So in an attempt to pry kids away from their computers, video games, and TVs, the federal government held a meeting of a bunch of them the other day to talk about how to make Nature “cooler”.

I despise the word “cool” to describe anything. It’s a hackneyed 1950s cliche with socialist (gasp!) origins, implying that the people who use it are the only true judges of what it is. Young people have never been and never will be the true judges of what is “cool” because they don’t know much about anything at that age. “Coolness” is about status, being accepted, and rebellion. It’s one of the reasons obesity in this country continues to increase alarmingly among young people and all age groups. If “cool” means the popular and socially correct thing, most Americans, including young people, apparently think being fat, out of shape, and unhealthy is “cool”.

I applaud the feds’ efforts to stop the worsening obesity epidemic by encouraging kids to get outdoors, exercise, stop eating junk food, etc. But trying to make them believe Nature is “cool” is encouraging them to lie to themselves. Nature is not “cool”, fashionable, a commodity like a soft drink, nor an institution like work, school or church. Nature is essential. More essential than all of us and all our “cool” stuff. What schools, parents, the corporate media, and society need to teach kids is that Nature is the source of EVERYTHING, that we are a part of it, and that we distance and detach ourselves from Nature’s dominion at our peril. We deny or destroy Nature, we deny or destroy ourselves.

That includes being fat, out of shape, and really, really, RE-HEE-EALLY stupid (apologies to Dr. Perry Cox). This is how we get oil spills, human sprawl, gridlock, depression, obesity, air and water pollution, asthma, cancer, and every other societal ill we mindlessly and endlessly inflict upon ourselves. And if we continue to try and make Nature SEEM “cool”, we demean it and lower it to the status of clothes, TV shows, Emma’s new boyfriend, and Justin’s iPhone.

That’s not “cool.”