Because language reflects perception, we are able to locate faint signs of this perceptual loss in our language. We find, for instance, that our culture often uses the term natural resources as if it were synonymous with nature and wildness. The prevailing educational system instructs our children in great depth how to observe nature, while it teaches almost nothing about nurturing a sense of communion with nature. The semantics of the distinction are telling. Observing suggests standing outside looking in.
Communion signifies a conscious linkage.
Language not only reflects perception, it reflects public policy as well. Such a connection may explain the origination of wilderness policies molded by men of power who get their information from data sheets often compiled by vested interests, and who debate the future of nature and animals inside cavernous artificially-lit halls within an urban environment. These are well-educated people who, just like the rest of us, have been taught that nature is an observable resource needing to be managed. Their education taught them well to regard the human relationship to nature as a body of quantifiable information. Echoes reverberate through the halls of congress assuring us in a self-assured language that, yes, certainly, those are precisely the measures our system of government uses to determine wilderness legislation.