Tag Archives: wilderness

The Trouble with Wildness

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“Satan’s home had become God’s own temple” (Cronon 9). Cronon outlines the transition from wilderness being seen as a dangerous and unloveable place to becoming a cherished land for Americans to visit. I think it’s interesting how Cronon highlights the change from wilderness being a place that the poor were forced to be into a place that the wealthy sought out. In my experience with the wilderness, I have certainly sought it out as a haven from the urban world. This transition from most of the world being wilderness to most of the world we see being developed and covered in concrete has certainly contributed to this desire to travel into nature.

Thoreau’s book about a simple life in the natural world is one of the drivers for this craze to seek a simple life outside the confines of society. This lifestyle and the gifts of the wilderness are referred to as the “sacred sublime” by Cronon.

I like that he is challenging the arguments of deep ecologists that environmental destruction started as soon as agriculture began. Cronon claims that it is silly because we would essentially be reversing society back into becoming hunter-gatherers if we wanted to reverse environmental destruction and become one with nature again. I agree that this is unlikely because humans are constantly driven to progress in science and technology. On the other hand, there is a major connection between the early agricultural areas in the Middle East / Mesopotamia and the disconnect from nature. I would say that Cronon’s arguments are a little far-fetched because the anthropological standpoint is that the agricultural societies consumed way more than the hunter-gatherers. I think that it is impossible to achieve this, but in hunter-gatherer societies, there was no wealth and no belongings. Without trade and merchandising, a separation between classes was impossible. Communities were based on sharing and helping each other. The disconnect we have from transactions we make every day is what drives the continuous environmental degradation. If I cannot directly see the consequences of my consumption, or feel them right away, then I will not change my behavior.

Week 8: The Trouble with Wilderness

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This week’s reading was interesting because of all the new context it gave me about what our perception of the wilderness is, and how it came to be. What I found most interesting was the part talking about Native Americans, dubbed ‘Indians’ in the text–which also reveals the environment in which this was written. What the people saw as wilderness, was also the homes of the Native Americans, and was their land first. Once the Native Americans were driven out of their land, the land was seen as safe and peaceful, and not dangerous and savage. This goes to show what they viewed as civilized–people don’t make it civilized; rather one’s own perception of what society should be is what makes something civilized. How we view the wilderness and its safety can be connected to the changing views on the ocean as we discover more and more about it. In some older tales we’ve reviewed in this class, the sea creatures were seen as dangerous (Sirens), but more current literature shows a more productive/romance based relationship between the humans and sea creatures (the Little Mermaid). Through artistic depictions in the Victorian age and current depictions of the sea, we can see the difference in mankind’s thoughts of the sea. 

I also found it interesting how Cronon talked about how we lose sight of the importance of protecting where we live since we are so focused on environmental preservation in the ‘wilderness’. This isn’t something I have thought about much, but I see how it applies. In my hometown, there’s a lot of push for urban development (as there is in many towns and cities nowadays), but with that urban development comes the loss of nature and beauty. Perhaps this partially stems from our curiosity in things that are not like us, or not something that is part of our day to day, but there is value in what seems so ordinary to us.