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Meeting basic physical needs is just a beginning for human well-being. Beyond these we have yet another - one that is just as vital to our long-term health and happiness. It is a need that encompasses all the rest, an aspect of human life that is so mysterious it is often disregarded or denied. Though we sometimes call it love, it is in fact more than that. Like air and water, fire and earth, we need spiritual connection; we need to understand where we belong. David Suzuki begins his search for answers in the high Arctic, along the northern tip of Baffin Island, eleven hours by snowmobile from the tiny community of Pond Inlet. Here, travelling on their annual Spring hunt, the Inuit community must band together to survive. These people are intuitively connected to their surroundings, sharing knowledge, food and love. We need love - it’s a physical fact. Without love, children wither, even die. David discovers the legacy of Romanian dictator Nicholai Ceaucescu who forced families to have more children than they were able to support. Tens of thousands of these children grew up with no loving attention in overcrowded orphanages. They became severely affected physically, mentally and emotionally. This tragedy inadvertently became a terrible experiment allowing researchers to study the role of attachment and love in a child’s development. David meets a Canadian couple who have adopted Maria, a Romanian orphan. Can the love of Maria’s new parents repair the damage the lack of love caused? The power of love holds families together and it also ties friends and communities together and connects us to a much wider world that includes nature. It's essential for our happiness. Renowned Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson takes David to Thoreau's famous Walden Pond, where he explains the deep human need to have a relationship with the natural world. Wilson calls this need ‘biophilia' - the innate, hereditary need of human beings to affiliate with nature. Living in our cities of steel and concrete, it’s too easy to forget that we are biological beings, dependent on the Earth for our survival. David goes to Boston to meet Harvard psychologist, Sarah Conn. From her, he learns first-hand how the new techniques of ecopsychology are helping people reconnect with nature. Since human beings first appeared on Earth, they have lived in a sacred relationship with the place they inhabit, the land they depend on. High in the Andes, David travels with his friend, ethnobotanist Wade Davis, to the village of Chinchero. Here people still believe that the Earth is alive, that they live among the gods. This understanding informs their day-to-day actions. As David has discovered throughout the series, we are not alone. Nothing can exist alone. We all know where home is - it's with our family, with memory and hope, but our family is far larger than we realize. We're at home in the human community, and in the biosphere, close relatives of every living thing. We're all creatures of the living Earth.
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