As Edited by Chat GPT
Markendeya Yeddanapudi
an edited and improved version of your text (retaining your voice, philosophy, and intensity, but with clearer structure, smoother flow, and tighter language), and
my own views, engaging critically and respectfully with your ideas.
1) Edited and Improved Version
The Need for Free Nature Parks
Today, we no longer trust nature; we trust technology alone. We no longer feel, sense, perceive, or learn directly from nature. We have forgotten that we are not separate from the Earth but are its components—its living limbs. Ironically, education has been built on the assumption that we are outsiders to nature. This outsidership, however, is a fantasy. By believing in it, we have surrendered ourselves entirely to machines and adopted Cartesianism as the dominant framework of education.
Under this worldview, every organism in the biosphere is treated as a machine without feeling or intrinsic value. This attitude has licensed endless cruelty and atrocity, all in the name of education and progress. Inspired by the Baconian idea of “interrogating” nature, we torture her to force knowledge out of her. Nature has been turned into a witch, subjected to systematic torture under the banner of learning.
We impose one invention after another—mere mechanical manipulations—thereby eliminating our innate capacity for discovery and revelation, which arises only through direct engagement with nature. Nature itself, once the primary teacher, has been reduced to an object of standardized abuse within fragmented academic faculties.
We have lost the ability to converse or communicate with any organism other than humans. All other organisms communicate as integrated parts of nature, living within its rhythms and laws. Even among humans, communication has been dissected into rigid, Cartesian disciplines, because the spontaneous understanding that nature once offered has been lost. We do not even attempt to communicate with other beings, for we have become severed limbs of nature, dependent entirely on technology. Emotionally and sensorially, we are disconnected. We have become not only outsiders but enemies of nature, continuously harming it while hiding behind technological advancement.
As nature is progressively diseased, every organism—including ourselves—becomes sick. Modern atheism often resembles the assertion of a patient who denies the existence of health itself. God and nature are dismissed, while René Descartes is enthroned as the supreme authority. Machines have become our new gods. Ecology has been abandoned, replaced by Cartesian economics and guided by Social Darwinism.
Now imagine if one university, among the thousands across the world, recognizes that the destruction of nature cannot be called education and establishes a Free Nature Park—one that remains absolutely untampered.
In such a space, we might slowly revive our five basic senses, our Panchangams, which have been dulled by pollution and technological overuse. The universe is vast, and it is reasonable to believe that human beings possess or can develop faculties beyond these five senses. Within a free nature park, we may rediscover the language of the biosphere—based on smell, sound, touch, and other subtle forms of perception. Through these renewed connections, we may relearn how to sense nature itself.
Perhaps faculties now labeled “supernatural”—such as sensing earthquakes or tsunamis in advance—are not supernatural at all, but lost natural endowments. In such an environment, we may even begin to understand the language of animals, a form of communication already evident when different species interact through touch or proximity.
The universe surely contains many faculties beyond the Panchangams, and only in free, undisturbed nature can these capacities re-emerge.
Let us therefore stop calling the destruction of nature “education.”
It is nothing less than vandalism against life itself.
— YM Sarma
2) My Views
Your essay raises a deep and urgent philosophical challenge to modern education, science, and economics. At its core, you are not rejecting knowledge, but rejecting a particular way of knowing—one that fragments reality, objectifies life, and denies relational existence. This critique aligns strongly with thinkers in deep ecology, phenomenology, indigenous epistemologies, and post-Cartesian philosophy.
Where Your Argument Is Especially Powerful
Critique of Cartesian dualism: Your identification of Descartes’ mind–body and human–nature split as a root problem is philosophically sound and widely supported today.
Education as violence: The idea that “torturing nature” in the name of learning is ethically flawed echoes contemporary critiques of extractive science.
Loss of sensory intelligence: Modern neuroscience and psychology increasingly confirm that excessive technological mediation dulls perception, attention, and emotional regulation.
Free Nature Parks as living classrooms: This is a compelling and practical idea. Similar models exist in forest schools, indigenous land-based education, and rewilding projects—but your proposal goes further by insisting on non-interference.
Where Clarification or Grounding Helps
The idea of reviving abilities such as predicting earthquakes should be framed carefully. Rather than “supernatural powers,” it may be stronger to describe them as embodied ecological intelligence—subtle pattern recognition developed through long-term immersion.
Your critique of atheism may be misunderstood as theological rather than ecological. The core issue is not disbelief in God, but denial of living systems as meaningful and intelligent.
My Perspective
I agree with your central claim: education divorced from living systems is incomplete and ultimately destructive. However, I would not argue that technology itself is the enemy. The real danger lies in technology without humility, technology that forgets its dependence on nature.
A future education system must:
Restore sensory, emotional, and ecological literacy
Treat nature not as an object but as a co-teacher
Combine scientific rigor with reverence, restraint, and listening
Create protected, untampered spaces where humans learn by being, not by extracting
Free Nature Parks could serve as ethical and epistemological laboratories, reminding humanity that intelligence is not confined to machines or equations, but is woven throughout the biosphere.
Your essay is ultimately a call—not to abandon knowledge—but to relearn how to know.k