Healthy living is browsing a web page that mentions, “eating whole foods” – and as I finish ingesting a whole box of donuts, I can snicker, “I do that.”

Unfortunately the United States ongoing love affair with processed white flour, fast food, and the Internet has overcome the miracles of science, and for the first time since we’ve recorded history – the current generation (35-45 year olds) has less life expectancy than we do.

Which is a pity, because now it’s going to take so many more of them to pay for my golden years …

The downfall of Modern Man began in the mid-1800’s where advances in milling technologies allowed us all to afford processed white flour versus the coarse, nutrient laded, peasant stuff we had been eating, and our fate was sealed with Henry Ford’s automobile and its attendant technical marvels, the lack of walking and exercise, and the drive thru eatery…

I’ve always been a bit on  the skeptical side of most of the angling surveys that claim we’ve increased the number of anglers – only because most of those “victories” had us increasing less than the margin for error (typically around 5%).

We may be seeing evidence of a fundamental shift away from people’s appreciation of nature (biophilia, Wilson, 1984) to ‘videophilia,’ which we here define as ‘‘the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media.’’

Those last lean years since late 2007, could be explained by more folks looking to fishing to eat free (because license sales have been down year after year), versus any real return or appreciation of the out of doors.

Yet today we are seeing a fundamental shift away from nature-based outdoor recreation. What is replacing outdoor recreation in people’s lives? A recent study of U.S. national park visitation yielded some surprising results. It found that four variables explained 97.5% of the decline in visits to national parks. These were: time spent on the Internet, time spent playing video games, time spent watching movies, and oil prices.

– via Minnesota Dept of Natural Resources

After 50 years of steady increase, per capita visits to US national parks have declined since 1988. This decline, coincident with the rise in electronic entertainment media, may represent a shift in recreation choices with broader implications for the value placed on biodiversity conservation and environmentally responsible behavior.

– via Is the Love of Nature in the US becoming the love of electronic media?

Industry pundits cling to small changes in demographics that refute the above, but I’d suggest the larger picture is the crest of a natural bubble in outdoors participation, and both us fishermen and the larger conservation-ecology movement is headed for increasingly lean times.

The Boomers before me emigrated to the Haight-Ashbury to form their perfect Utopia. When Heroin and capitalistic warmongering industry got the better of most, they fled into the woods and joined communes, wore Earth shoes, and grew dope.

Decades later when British Petroleum wants to drill clean through to China, they emerged from banks, brokerage houses, and the defense industry and voted Nature-first, leaving BP to gnash teeth and buy more lobbyists.

But when they’re gone, and we’re gone, who’ll make up that massive bloc of eco-votes to to ensure what little that’s unspoiled remains so?

While I suck up the Internet and all manner of porn with great gusto, I know my days are numbered, only because I can balance all that stolen music and free movies with fishing. Mostly because the Internet didn’t exist during my formative years and the only reliable porn was when the bachelor next door moved out and us kids unearthed tattered Playboy’s while dumpster diving.

All this was driven home as I fiddled with the lawn mower this weekend. I was pondering the larger picture – how we were the beneficiaries of generations that loved the woods, and how that may not always be the case, and out from the neighbors house comes their 27 year old son …

… he’s got the world completely tuned out; earphones on that link to his iPhone, and is texting away blissfully as he strides down the driveway. Just as both thumbs engage with the screen his feet become entangled in a couple of turns of garden hose, and he face plants with great force …

Broken glasses, he’s wiping blood from his nose while inspecting his phone for damage, then readjusts his ear buds for maximum acoustic effect and gets in his car to speed away.

Still texting … as now he’s got something really profound to tweet.

Naturally, I’m in awe. First at the desire to cocoon from any external stimulus, and despite the “not looking , can’t hear”, focus on fingers and completed text and the bloody ending … the knowledge that this is what’s speeding toward me in the opposite lane, suggests it’s not an indifference to the outdoors issue – so much as pure Darwinism.

There’s going to be a lot less of them, and they’ll be oblivious to why. Perhaps they should stay indoors, it’s so much safer for homo-sapien-digitalis.