The story Stone Soup is written by Jon J Muth. It talks about three monks in the beginning who come to a village. The villagers do not do what the monks expected them to do. Because the village is on a high place the villagers can’t tell what is happening down the hill. Floods, famine or wars happen since that no one can tell what is down hill. Now the villagers are suspicious of everyone, even their neighbors. Instead of stopping what they are doing and start coming to greet the monks, the villagers run in their houses like a thunderstorm is coming. Then the villagers close their windows like the wind is going to blow soon when the monk comes into the village. And when the monks reach one house to knock on the door, the lights inside go off. This happens in every house. The lights all go off. The three monks all agree that the village doesn't have happiness.
People build the environment to what we see today as cities or villages. A long time ago, the earth was just animals, plants and humans. Slowly house after house people made villages. People ate berries and fruits to survive. That was when civilization started. What we may be living in right now was being built slowly by people. Many people worked hard and they helped each other. Some people started to use things like shells as currency or maybe what we all know today as cash. Some people got their own lands to upgrade their houses. Some places started to have leaders and lots of people’s houses were starting to get boring. People wanted more land but there was only a limited space of land so people started to grain their own lands. Many people didn’t have land so they did not think that it wasn’t fair that others had land while themselves didn’t.
People started wars which would destroy or pollute nature. People were not happy about others having land so they started to fight which turned into a war which also polluted land. People argued and fighted, some became groups to defend themselves. Slowly people formed groups and had their own leaders such as kings. Some traveled far together and got their own lands. Some people thought each other was not worthy to have the land while the other side thought the same. Some people got weapons and armor. Slowly there were armies of soldiers working together and there was alway a backup leader. The winning side would take a piece of land from the losing side. World War II was one famous war with about 15 million deaths and at least 5 hundred thousand wounded soldiers making the war having a 70% of surviving the war as a soldier. Tech was advancing and in war pollution was a common thing to happen. Tanks and planes dropping nukes could pollute the environment a lot. Wars could also destroy houses and nature, some people might sneak into their enemies places to burn it down causing smoke and fire. Wars could cause lots of big destruction and would pollute nature. Plants would be destroyed and forests would light on fire.
Because of the wars and the pollution, heavy weather such as storms came and slowly changed people. Nature getting polluted could cause forest fires which could also cause houses to burn. There would be acid rain if acid escapes. These were all natural disasters. People may blame each other for starting a war, some would have a secure underground home to stay safe from the disasters, but then they would not have time with each other. Slowly after centuries people would become selfish and work only for themselves. All because people didn’t have contact with each other, they started to lose the memory of the old days where everyone worked together so they started their own way of being selfish. If they just unite and communicate with each other, they would feel a special happiness they don't have yet.
People could always control the environment, but the environment itself could have had different influences for different actions people took. People were first kind and caring; they worked together and had a happy, good life. Then one day, people started to fight, and the fight became big and turned into wars. Wars caused destruction. We could have had wars to change the environment by destroying and polluting nature. But we would have paid the price. There would have been natural disasters we might have had to face. Because of the natural disasters, we would have been less united, and slowly we would have become selfish. This was how nature could influence people. Changing nature was simple, but it would have changed us greatly too, slowly and without realization.
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