Inspiration and Comfort Drawn from the Old Falls

Inspiration and Comfort Drawn from the Old Falls

There is constantly a dilemma between humans and nature. I was in Multnomah Falls on the last day of the Portland trip. Around the falls, a lot of mossy old trees and recondite atmosphere still remained for a long time. The fog from the basin makes our vision blurry and dampens the air. It was like the other world divided from a road which the bus waits. The scenery reminded me of a movie, Princess of Mononoke, made by Hayao Miyazaki, and I had a chance to watch this movie in my house at night after I came back from the trip. I went over the situation of human and nature through the movie and the falls.

This movie has kicked around typical topic about people and nature.The story is set in an ancient era of Japan in which natives hadn't yet been ruled by an emperor of Japan. The ancient people lived with nature and the world spirit, as it is called animism. At that time, there are also enlightened people who have specific skills such as to make weapons, to compete with each other with the work of ironsmith, to work as a soldier in a war, to achieve a feat to progress their own position, and so on. They were governed by a ruler of ancient Japan, who looked down and watched the creatures and natives as strangers. They didn't believe in a god but their king. The people identified nature as an enemy and started to destroy it and command the forests.

The conflict that had happened between developed people and creatures in the forests bring on other problems from far distance places that are the native's habitat. The ancient people who have respected nature and a god were of course angry at the attitude of volunteerism the sacred dignity of nature by another people, and they tried to solve the problem caused by another people, but the savage people didn't follow them and bothered them in a deadly way. This civilized people found their grave mistake after they lost almost everything, but it was too late to take it back, so they finally changed their pretentious behavior. It is important that the serious conflict between animals and people was caused by human's ego trip.
The Princess of Mononoke has kept appealing the frightfulness of human's selfish arrogance toward nature and other creatures to end. Humans have no right to do what they want in any case. I was so moved by the fact that now there is a climate that it is the best to take one thing as a base and make that better for human's convenience and maybe someday nature will die off, not only animals and plants, if the tendency continues. Even in the ancient era, it is possible that any kinds of things might happen. The proclivity that human accord themselves priority over any other things and disrespect other living nature has still remained.

　　　 Because of this movie, I realized that the desire to long for something greater is great and horrible, and it's easy for me and everyone to abandon oneself to the tendency. For example, I learned about genetic engineering in reading class, and the text said that someday people can shop for their childrens' features, appearance, the personalities by genetic engineering. Is that a dream and a hope of mankind? Does it enrich the lives of humans? I feel a little odiousness from the topic now. I believe there is a taboo in the natural world. This is one of the examples that I think too much of the evolution of human beings. There is no evolution that has only an advantage, of course it must carry a risk. I learned we people should choose the way of existence of our desire for the future carefully.