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The physical provides a certain sense of satisfaction that is not obtainable with the intellectual - and, frankly, vice versa. The OP makes a hard claim for monism, which tends to be a very difficult sell to people who think very hard about the notion of perceptions. Or, curiously enough, working psychologists - they tend to be intensely dualistic, whether they profess it or no. We exist within bodies, will we or nil we, however. And those bodies tend to feel good after running, or working out, or showering - or a wide variety of other things, such as a glass of a fine Scotch.

I'm with you so far, in fact I'm fond of Plato's theory that humans are a tripartite reason, λογιστικόν, spirit, θυμοειδές, and appetite ἐπιθυμητικόν. Mental, physical, and spiritual, all need to be tended to. The first two are self explanatory, but I like to think of spirit as having philosophy, some might classify that under mental but I feel it stands on it's own.

I have... great doubts about face to face for many things. It's a hotter medium in the McLuhan schema than, say, an email. You can forget what is said. People get angry at each other. People can read emotions that are there - and aren't! It's a slippery medium, and it's not a repeatable one. It's the best medium for a date with your partner, however. And in a sense, what we're really discussing here is media - and its effect upon a society.

As an aside, how many times has someone taken something wrong because it was in text? They couldn't tell the intention behind it. They didn't have the benefit of body language, facial expressions and tone, so while I agree with you to a certain extent and having worked remotely and enjoyed it a great deal it's certainly not necessary for business most of the time, but there is something lost, and it's something important.

If, as McLuhan said, the medium is the message - what is the medium that tablets teach? What is the medium that a laptop teaches? A book? Face to face instruction? And, finally, a farm?

I'm not sure. Off the cuff I would say, tablets teach you to consume instead of truly create. The tools for creation are more like lego in that medium than a welder and hammer. A laptop to me is teaching you don't have to be married to a place in meat space, you can also use it for minimalism. A book, for me it teaches attention to a single thing and immersion, the opposite of the tablet in many ways. Face to face instruction, can teach you fulfillment and the age old bond between student and mentor. A farm will teach you so many things that have nothing to do with farming, I can't even begin to describe them all. Self reliance, thinking outside the box, mental toughness, dealing with loss, how hope can carry you through dark times, how honestly sitting around tapping on some keys in air conditioned buildings in a comfortable chair isn't that hard. I suspect your oerarching point was leading me to a point, rather than a case by case discussion, but honestly it was fun thinking about what each of those mediums teach.

If we break this down to a media-message-instruction approach, I think that is the educational question. It is no use to say, "well, a bookish person is drawn to books" - you might as well say "people who read books become bookish", and still tell the truth - it's a circular cause and effect. What is the nature of the tabletish? That's an interesting question we haven't answered. My opinion is that the Tablet as constituted today, for children, teaches constant interaction, constant focus, and destroys the body via bad posture & physical inactivity. Now, the Tablet can also be used for other things. Note taking. Drawing. Reading. And as adults, we find these less gamified things more powerful to our desires often.

Tablets to me are the worst of all worlds, I have them, enjoy using them, and recognize a skinner box when I see one. Deep creation, and control is nigh impossible on that platform. I'm sure someone has managed it but it's a walled garden another with yet another layer between you and your ability to exert mastery over something you own.

I want to very carefully interrogate the concept of nature.

Nature is what we evolved in up until we began farming. At that point we tamed nature and turned it into something else.

I grew up approximately 1 mile from B.L.M. land, near towering mountains and inscrutable high mountain desert, and in my teens I hunted. Once I even shot a deer, gutted it, and hauled it out with my dad. My mom loved her gardens, and I was expected - and did - help out. I reference this to note that I literally had my hands deep in, "nature". Is it more natural (better?) to shoot an animal in the forest or to buy your meat from the grocery store?

Absolutely it's more natural and yes in my opinion better to hunt your own food and butcher it yourself. Being divorced from the cycle of death and life doesn't change the cycle, it just lets us ignore the spiritual aspect of it. I'm a hunter myself (bow, black powder, and on occasion rifle season as well). I feel gratitude and a connection with the land when I hunt. From a purely utilitarian stand point game meat is some of the healthiest for human consumption, and after you've eaten back strap it's hard to go back to factory farmed beef.

Or is it more natural to raise your cow, butcher, then eat? What qualifies as the natural? Lettuce from the forest? The garden? The roadside stand? the grocery store? Where do we draw this line? Historically, we learn that "nature" itself is a somewhat newer concept - it's not something standing outside of culture and time. The idea of wilderness itself is conceptualized differently between 2018, 1950, 1900, 1850, and, say, 1700.

Cows are in my opinion not natural to begin with, if it can't survive long without the hand of man then it's something we not only created, but propped up. To answer the larger question, we are not in nature as long as we can exert control. When the world is in control and we can do nothing but bend before the wind or break, we are outside the demesne of men.

Let's interrogate further. Are you in nature in your front yard? A small park down the street with a few trees, groomed grass, and a playground? What about a large park with a stream and many trees? What if we stop grooming grass? Take out the playground? What's going on here - when do we feel that we are in nature - and when are we not in nature? But - at some point we can say that "we are in nature", and people who "spend time in nature" to some degree actually generally report being healthier and happier, apparently. Well, okay, sure.

So this idea of "nature is beneficial" is really saying - this experiential concept that relates to embodiment is beneficial, but we haven't nailed down what that concept is - only that we agree that this undescribed concept is useful. Is this porn? Is this art? Do we know when we see it? Or can we actually define what is going on here.

I propose a mildly contrarian concept: humans are natural; ergo, what we create is natural, and thus we need to really tighten down what we're trying to say here.

I have to strongly disagree with your last statement. Humans are natural in some respects, but the things we create are not. We are driven to change the natural to the domesticated. We are driven to change our natural social interactions, which I define as innate, into things that facilitate our removal from nature. With that said that's not necessarily a bad thing. We went from natural to something else the moment we became self aware enough to modify our own behaviors outside of the feedback loop provided by our environment.

Perhaps what we are saying is that an experience oriented around sense experience & focused embodiment in a setting without buildings is pleasurable and generally beneficial.

And now back to debugging a misbehaving system..

Yes, I agree, but it's also humbling, and something that grants you perspective when it almost kills you, or makes you miserable for days at a time. After the third day of rain just being dry is amazing. It's so easy to lose perspective and yet, it's also simple to gain it if you are willing to.

Thanks for the conversation.