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The message of
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such as this is
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natural systems are complex, unpredictable:understanding them
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patient observation and
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analysis. The lack of these conditions explains why, in the early modern era, grass snakes were killed as venomous, and gardeners
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worms because they
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gnaw plant roots.
The assumption that people "ought" to know about such things is based on an urban-rural divide that opened up in the 18th century. For a
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of centuries, city and country people did
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separate realms. But the car, the phone, the media and the Internet have contributed to the
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tendency of what we call modern lifestyle; and the vast population
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from cities into rural areas blurred the difference
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urban and rural. Thus, a new word "rurban" -has been coined to
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this condition. Most of us now work
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or in an office, and
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we are involved in our primary industries, we are
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more likely to be staring
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a computer than
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with the landscape. Human life has turned generally into a
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by work, sleep, shopping and TV-all
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identical
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performed in town or country.