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In the past, the relation one had with Nature was totally different from the one of the present time. We actually cannot speak of a real relationship between humans and Nature today, since few persons truly realize that Nature is a little more than the mere summation of the mineral, vegetal and animal kingdoms on planet Earth. 

Why pollution, why complete ecological carelessness? "Ecology" comes from the Greek word "oikos" which means "house". But no one today considers Nature as the "house" in which we are living: they keep throwing their wastes anywhere, spoiling the environment, destroying its fragile natural equilibrium, without ever feeling guilty about it. Why? Well, if someone does not know that he is living inside a house, how can we expect him to understand that he should take care of it?

In past civilizations as I was saying, the concepts regarding Nature were totally different: there was a strong relationship between man and his universe, children were taught from very early age stories, legends of special fairies, gnomes, elementals that were the souls of the trees, the rivers, the lands, etc. which progressively resulted in a natural respect towards the environment. Perhaps there is a lesson to learn there, in the education of our children: proper dealing with Nature starts when we are very young and man has somehow to conquer back his place within the myriads of other beings surrounding him.

Now, when we are speaking of pollution, we should not forget that it is only on the visible level and that we may not be aware of other types of pollution which could be just as dangerous (if not more) as the physical ones. Nowadays ecological movements stress very much the importance of taking care of our common "house", namely Earth, but yet they fail in fighting against for instance what can be called "mental and psychological pollution", for the simple reason that they either do not recognize that such a thing exists or also because they are actually part of it.

As "mental" pollution I mean all the ideas that are thrown or sustained everyday by way of medias or within universities, among the students, and that cause extremely negative and damageable effects on people. As an example, although it does not affect us (yet?) very much in Egypt, the unfortunately famous "anarchist" movements, which are, from all points of view, terrible vectors of psychological pollution, especially among youth, who are totally brain-washed with ideas such as "disrespect for laws", "a world without morals", etc, etc. Religious fanaticism is another type of pollution, contaminating the minds with fixed and obssesive thoughts which make the individual unable to think by himself and surrender to ready made slogans of hatred.

All types of pollutions should be condemned and we should realize that (be them physical or mental) they have as a common root the disease of materialism, which led both to exhausting our natural resources and spoiling our environment, and to the spreading among the population of a huge quantity of harmful ideas. A complete ecological movement has to integrate within itself defenses against all types of pollution and a firm philosophical sense in order to keep away any form of materialist thinking.