The Trouble with Wilderness - Assignment Example

The Trouble with Wilderness For over decades, the concept of wilderness has been a central tenet for a number of environmentalists across the entire globe. Indeed, it has served as the basis upon which every environmental movement relies- especially within the United States. Many Americans believe that wilderness stands to be the surviving and final place, where civilization, alongside other human environmental manipulations or diseases have never occurred or infected the earth fully. Wilderness thereby presents itself as the best remedy to human selves; a refuge that the human race must “somehow” work to recover if they wish to save their environmentally deteriorating planet. The Trouble with Wilderness- by William Cronon is thereby one of the most discerning works concerning environmental philosophy ever fashioned. This paper will thereby analyze Cronon’s work “the Trouble with Wilderness” through creating understanding of the concepts of wilderness and how it matters to the human society or environment. Henry David, as mentioned or quoted by a number of environmentalists, has been on the lead on declaring that the preservation of the world is in the wilderness, but this may not hold the exact truth. As suggested by David, the more one discovers the unique and peculiar history of the wilderness then their mentality about wilderness changes (643). The wilderness stands out to be a profound human creation as opposed to early mentality of wilderness being part of the earth that isolates people from humanity. Cronon insists that wilderness is an end product of civilization that is hardly tainted by the very stuff that it is made of (413).This is in contrast to the earlier presentation of wilderness as a pristine sanctuary where the endangered but still transcendent and last remnant of an untouched nature can no longer be found or encountered without the contaminating taint of American civilization. According to Buell, the hostile human life encountered in the wilderness is far from being our invention (253). The power and beauty of the wilderness call for any American to celebrate it. Take for example the lone raven calling sound in the distance when looking across Nevada desert, a torrent of mists emanating from the base of waterfall and falling on your skin and the tiny water droplets cooling your face as you listen to the roar of the water and gauze towards the sky through a rainbow that hovers just out of reach (Jim 182). All this defines wilderness beauty and power as not only a place of isolation from humanity, but as a source for happiness for human civilizations who enjoy nature. English reveals the term “wilderness” to mean a deserted, desolate, barren and savaged landscape but that’s not really true as wilderness is capable of providing a unique and indifferent feeling to human civilization. The declaration of wilderness as a preservation of the world by Henry David in 1862 may have been motivated by sea changes that were going on during that time. The wastelands that initially seemed worthless for some human population has come to seem almost beyond price. This new mentality of the wilderness transformed various corners of American map to designation of sites whose wild beauty are spectacular, and American citizens can visit for themselves. These developments made Niagara Falls, Yellowstone and Yosemite to undergo a transformation. For instance, in 1864 Yosemite was the nation’s first wild-land park, followed by Yellowstone becoming the first true national park in 1872 (Jim 191). A close analysis of Cronon works exposes us to how we separate ourselves from wilderness, through idealization and thoughts that the wilderness is something that is remote and distant, resulting to us not considering ourselves to be living as members of the natural world. Therefore, if we approach wilderness in this way, at some time it will lead to the ultimate separation of human civilization as members of a world that we can consider as our true natural home. Cronon work advocates for focusing on wilderness and nature in our backyards to the expense of not viewing it as remote, massive, and avoiding cultural conception of these places (Cronon 442). In America, the current knowledge and clue about the wilderness teaches most civilians to be contemptuous or even dismissive of such humble places and experiences. In his work, he mentions an example of no difference between a tree atop a remote mountaintop and the tree in the flower, except for the difference in our perception. The wilderness has power to help us to perceive and respect the nature that we ignore and forgot to recognize as natural (Jim 187). This will directly form a solution to our environmental dilemmas as opposed to being part of the problem. All this will be achievable only if we abandon dualism that normally sets what is human in opposition to what people perceive as natural. For the human race to live well, there is a need to acknowledge the synthesis of nature as well as humanity, and avoid setting nature apart. There is a need to welcome nature in our lives and tolerate the effects we have on our landscape, thereby establishing positive human relations to their landscape. Therefore, it is our mandate and responsibility to facilitate this union between humanity and nature that will assist in creating synergy in our built environment and achieving things beyond the capability of isolated structures. Wilderness is worth protecting and it has to be under protection; however, at the same time we must not false lives into wild but instead create a way of living that we are comfortable within the framework that we are reliant upon. The notion of wilderness was filled with various core values of the cultures that idealized and created it, thereby becoming sacred. The possibility had been existing in wilderness even during the ancient days when it served as a place of spiritual jeopardy and moral enticement. The boundaries between human and non-human, between natural and supernatural in the wilderness are slim. That is why in order for Christian’s saints and mystics to seek for experience themselves- the visions and spiritual testing that Jesus endured, they always emulate Christ’s desert retreat (Buell 249). Consequently, there is a possibility that an individual might encounter devils and escape the risk of losing their rsoul in the wilderness such as the desert; however, an individual might as well meet God. The perception of wilderness as a setting where the supernatural lay underneath the surface was articulated in the doctrine of the sublime in the eighteenth century. In the theories of Buell, sublimes are sporadic regions on the earth where people had high chances of seeing God face to face. Although God had power to show himself on any place, chances were that He is likely to be seen on those influential landscapes where an individual could not resist feeling insignificant, and being reminded of his/her own morality. Several questions have been raised concerning the exact location of the sublimes. At some point people believed that there was a supernatural being on the top of mountains, in the rainbow, in the thundercloud, in the waterfall, in the sunset and one only has to think of the locations, which Americans selected as their primary national parks. The emotion that evoked someone was regarded as the finest attestation that one had set foot in a sublime. According to Jim, combining the sacred splendor of beauty with the primitive plainness of the frontier, it’s the area where we are capable of perceiving the actual orientation of the world, and know to ourselves in the actual way we are, or the way we ought to be (193).The wilderness is so unique in that it unobtrusively reproduces and expresses the very values its enthusiasts seek to discard. According to Jim, this flight from antiquity that is almost the core of wilderness falsely represents hope of escaping from accountability, an illusion that sometimes we can cleanly wipe version of our history. Only the society whose relations with land has undergone alienation could uphold wilderness as a human life’s model by nature and the passionate philosophy of the wilderness. Wilderness has been highlighted as the creation of civilization as if that makes it unnecessary. Without civilization, few people would have perceived a need for wild lands protection. In order to counter the spread of industrialization and agriculture, there was a creation of the wilderness movement. Cronon acknowledges this notion by noting that about 250 years ago it was hard seeing people wandering for wild land since every part of globe had wilderness and present in everyone’s backyards (Cronon 403). The idea of wilderness has been very much a product of its opposition, but also a movement of humility. This draws its basis upon respect for all life and not only human life and empowerment of other life forms. The only problem of Cronon’s notions and ideas is that they portray a profound arrogance of humanism. Even if Cronon was correct in his claim that the wilderness is skewed by the capacity to encounter it in relative comfort, it does not mean that people don’t support the concepts of wild lands’ preservation (Jim 188). Cronon also talks about the frontier and suggests that conservatives view wilderness as a place to maintain the frontier ethic (448). However, wilderness is all about exploring one’s mind and body and seeking to control it. Protection is not all about preserving America’s sacred myth but instead an opposition to it. The Americas myth that has been exemplified by Virginian is control of nature and is about humans shaping nature to their desires. The frontier ethic is about imperialism and Cronon has mixed the two ideologies inappropriately. Finally, through The Trouble with Wilderness, an environmental philosopher- William Cronon presents his ideas concerning the wilderness and the entire human environment or society. He talks about how should and how should not, humans perceive and interact with their surroundings, as well as the wilderness. Humans must thereby view or perceive their homes as important and not divorce themselves from their immediate surroundings. We should realize that the environmentalists are never responsible for causing problems nor working against solving this issue, but it is an obligation to everyone within the human society. Therefore, people must get on with the endless endeavors to live appropriately within the world; simply not within the garden or the wilderness but in the environment, that incorporates both. Works cited Buell, Lawrence. The environmental imagination: Thoreau, nature writing, and the formation of American culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Print Cronon, William. Changes in the land: Indians’ colonists and the ecology of New England. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1983. Print David, Thoreau. The Maine Woods (1864), in Henry David Thoreau.New York, NY: Library of America, 1985. Print Jim, Harrison. Passacaglia on getting lost-in on nature: Nature, landscape, and natural history. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987. Print Read More