Whilst walking today, I felt like the fog that had been hanging over my head for the last few days had lifted. It gave me time to actually order my thoughts. Had I stayed inside the whole day, I likely would have been less productive; there are distractions inside that are not found in nature. Perhaps this has some relevance to the issue of the decline in the quality of thought over time. Great thinkers of the past were often fond of long walks: Kant went for a daily walk; Nietzsche would routinely walk several hours a day; Darwin greatly enjoyed walking with his wife. People today, if they walk at all, view walking as a means to an end. Walking is purely an inconvenience to be suffered to get from point A to point B. I very frequently see people walking in the opposite direction, out in very pleasant countryside, who do not even look up from their phones as they pass me. I wish that they would not do so. They do not gain from this approach at all. As a consequence of acting in this way, they lose any ability to appreciate what they have around them, and they become antisocial by focusing only on their technology rather than the actual people in their vicinity. It is not surprising that people are alienated and depressed: they are living their lives in an unnatural way, that they are not adapted for. If they do not connect with nature, they will surely suffer as a result.