A landscape may be defined as an extent of land which is visually distinct. It is often associated with beauty or pleasure when not limited by an adjective such as 'polluted' or 'devastated'. However, there are almost certainly different connotations of the word produced by cultural values.
The city of Muscat, in Oman lies between the sea and a beautiful mountain landscape that seems to embrace the city. Early in the twenty-first century a tractor appeared as if by magic on the top of one beautiful mountain known as the 'white mountain'. Systematically it began to destroy the beauty of the mountain by gouging a motor way across the face of the mountain. In some western societies this would have been an environmental outrage.
In those few remaining parts of the globe where nature is still overpowering in the minds of human beings attitudes to nature are quite different from those where nature has long since been dominated, as in England. In his nineteenth century poem, 'Pied Beauty' G. M. Hopkins extolled the virtue of diversity melding it with his religious emotions so that words like 'wilderness' and landscape plotted and pieced' acquired an almost religious intensity. People who know English literature understand this, but people with different cultural values have different sensibilities.
It is quite widely accepted that beauty resides in the eye of the beholder, and such is the case when it comes to scenery. Some people will view a pipe line running across pristine snow with great satisfaction since it symbolizes economic advancement for them.
In orientating themselves people either look into the distance and see broad sweeps of reality or they focus on details and are either oblivious or indifferent to wider perspectives. Possibly this has something to do with cultural inheritance. Those who have entered emotionally into the concerns of English literature can hardly be indifferent to the significance of the surrounds.
Online searches for the word 'landscape' will yield about half a million potential results. This illustrates the contemporary currency of the word in our global community. Even in remote African environments some politicians are following cues from countries like China and attempting to revitalize the environment by planting trees. However, most people now live in cities and it is in city contexts that they will respond most significantly to a built environment. Read more about: Landscape
The city of Muscat, in Oman lies between the sea and a beautiful mountain landscape that seems to embrace the city. Early in the twenty-first century a tractor appeared as if by magic on the top of one beautiful mountain known as the 'white mountain'. Systematically it began to destroy the beauty of the mountain by gouging a motor way across the face of the mountain. In some western societies this would have been an environmental outrage.
In those few remaining parts of the globe where nature is still overpowering in the minds of human beings attitudes to nature are quite different from those where nature has long since been dominated, as in England. In his nineteenth century poem, 'Pied Beauty' G. M. Hopkins extolled the virtue of diversity melding it with his religious emotions so that words like 'wilderness' and landscape plotted and pieced' acquired an almost religious intensity. People who know English literature understand this, but people with different cultural values have different sensibilities.
It is quite widely accepted that beauty resides in the eye of the beholder, and such is the case when it comes to scenery. Some people will view a pipe line running across pristine snow with great satisfaction since it symbolizes economic advancement for them.
In orientating themselves people either look into the distance and see broad sweeps of reality or they focus on details and are either oblivious or indifferent to wider perspectives. Possibly this has something to do with cultural inheritance. Those who have entered emotionally into the concerns of English literature can hardly be indifferent to the significance of the surrounds.
Online searches for the word 'landscape' will yield about half a million potential results. This illustrates the contemporary currency of the word in our global community. Even in remote African environments some politicians are following cues from countries like China and attempting to revitalize the environment by planting trees. However, most people now live in cities and it is in city contexts that they will respond most significantly to a built environment. Read more about: Landscape
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