There has been an understanding of a disconnected relation between humans and nature in modern liberalism. The disengaged relation is closely tied to dichotomous perceptions of realities with a widening gap between humans and nature, subject and object and culture and nature. This article considers the disconnected understanding as a sense-making crisis of modernity and qualifies this as a metacrisis. Instead of the disengaged views and the dichotomous relation between humans and nature, this article claims that the relations between the human self and nature is culturally, socially and politically mediated. To elaborate on these phenomena, this paper examines the writings of two thinkers with diverse concerns: Charles Taylor and Antonio Gramsci. For Taylor, the self is mediated with nature through social imaginaries, language and reconciliation in labour. For Gramsci, the self is mediated with the natural world via common sense, socio-historical elements and work. This article argues that cultural and socio-political elements that mediate human-nature relationships are essential in environmental education.
