
Why We Wish for Wilderness - prostoalex
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/11/06/why-we-wish-for-wilderness/
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intrepidhero
This attitude of going into the wilderness to test yourself against nature,
conquer it, and stand where no human has ever stood, I can understand it, but
I think it tragically misses out on the greater gift of wilderness.

The truth is, there is hardly a place on the earth that hasn't been seen my
humans at one or another time. Nature itself is an unconquerable force of
which we are a part, not apart. We are connected to the earth, the plants and
animals, the mountains and seas.

It is humbling to go outside the walls of civilization, and face the world
without all the defenses of technology. Like standing before the ocean or
looking up at the stars, it is a reminder of the smallness of my place in it
all. A reminder of the limits of power. The wilderness is a place of violent
"otherness".

It is also a place of familiar "oneness". The stars, the ocean, mountains,
deserts, forests, and plains are places of wonder. I like to stand in a place
I have never been, see no works of man anywhere in my view and wonder, who has
seen this vista before? Who will see it again after I am gone? Am I standing
in a place where ancient men worshiped their gods and loved their children? We
are made of the same stuff and we are actors in the same story.

I was counting tree rings on a log the other day. It was 140 years old when it
was cut. Not too far away was a living tree of similar diameter. It sprouted
before my great-grandfather was born. All around me were saplings that may
well outlive my grandchildren. I was standing on a mountain that has stood for
millennia and will continue for millennia more. We are part of the earth and
it is part of us.

Humility and wonder: these are the gifts of the wilderness. We'd do well to
carry those gifts back into civilization.

~~~
GreeniFi
Beautifully written.

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AndrewKemendo
I used to be an "Adventure Traveler" when I was younger, trapsing through
forests and jungles - basically doing nothing of value. I had a lot of reasons
I could come up with for doing all this stuff, but at the end of the day it
was just a personal desire to experience these places and be able to tell the
story.

I wish more people would just cop to that, wanting to "Be an Explorer" to tell
stories and experience the edge.

The majority of people doing this stuff now aren't doing it for what the
author quotes as: "[finding] new geographical information that adds to
humanity’s stock of collective knowledge"

That's what botanists and archeologists and GIS experts do with LIDAR and
robots and the like. At a certain point once you realize that you, the human
are the limiting factor when it comes to improving knowledge about the world,
you start creating tools to learn, probes and planes and radars and things.

I think "nature" people just need to be real with it, that they are trying to
live out a naturalistic fantasy or just enjoy the solitude and stop pretending
there is something more philosophical about it.

~~~
floren
It's philosophical for a lot of us... it's just rarely _scientific_.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
What branch of philosophy?

My guess is that in actuality it's just emotional/chemical for you.

~~~
floren
Whatever branch teaches me not to be a joyless pedant, I guess. You should
give it a try.

Edit: to be less flip, I find it an excellent place to think about ethics,
what things are worth doing, the future, etc. I feel more prone to be
"philosophical" when I'm in a wild place. I do not put on a backpack and
think, "Ah, today I'm really going to sink my teeth into some epistemology".

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Of course, and you've made exactly my point. Everyone wants to make the
process of being outside away from people and engineered objects out to be
something more serious than it is. It's not.

Just say you enjoy how you feel in that state and it makes you feel possibly
more creative and open (though I assume most people haven't measured whether
they actually are more creative or thoughtful over other places while alone
and occupied eg. Shower, running, yoga etc..).

~~~
tjr225
What exactly.... are you trying to say here? Jeeze.

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pjdorrell
The desire to explore untouched wilderness is something that has been strongly
selected for. The world has been colonized by those who had the greatest
inclination to explore the unknown.

Non-human animals also, eventually, colonize areas beyond their point of
origin, and this is no doubt driven partly by a desire to "explore". But
humans, perhaps more than any other animal, are capable of having the idea of
"exploring" as something that they can be obsessed by. And humans are less
constrained by the need to constantly satisfy the basic necessities of life,
which makes it possible for the dedicated explorer to go on extended exploring
trips, exploring the world for its own sake.

Also, it is part of human nature that different people in a social group
develop different interests, which benefits the tribe via division of labour.
So not everyone needs to be a committed explorer - it is enough for one mad
explorer to go out exploring, and then come back to the tribe to report if
they found something worth reporting.

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lkrych
For anyone who wishes to explore some of the ideas presented in this article
about wilderness, I would recommend Michael Pollan's essay "The Idea of a
Garden".

I read Pollan's essay as part of a discussion about wilderness ethics and it
has stuck with me for years. It can be found in his book, Second Nature.

If you are still reading this comment, I would also recommend Desert Solitaire
by Edward Abbey. It takes a more irascible approach to some of the ideas of
wilderness ethics, but is is a damn-good, swashbuckling time.

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throwanem
I'd argue that the entire concept of "pristine wilderness" derives, maybe not
so much exactly from the loosely seen specter of colonialism, as from the
constructed distinction between "man" and "nature". As the article touches on
but fails to explore, the idea of a place where human feet have never trod
only seems special from a perspective wherein human habitation is necessarily
in some way unnatural. It fails to recognize the possibility of a way of human
living that seeks to cohabit with what we think of as "nature", rather than to
extirpate and replace it with sterile, static dioramas pretending to represent
what was there before.

Which, of course, brings us back around to colonialism, because that's also
what colonization does. I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the
egg; the false man/nature distinction could be as much or more a
rationalization as a premise, and I don't know the relevant historiography as
well as I'd like.

~~~
bufbupa
Man vs Nature is an old dichotomy; I'm not sure many people still hold it in
their world view. It was just one step along the path of defining "self" vs
"other". That differentiation is significant because it helps individuals
identify threats vs allies. Colonizers may have defined indigenous people as
"other" because they didn't have any shared cultural substrate that they could
reliably cooperate through. Of course, that differentiation was likely varried
per individual, and I'm sure there were many colonial individuals who
detestested taking advantage of indigenous people.

The exploration described in the article might be better described as drawing
more of the "other" into "self". Finding that which was previously uknown to
your "self" (perhaps your cultural upbringing, national identity, or
collective societal knowledge) and understanding it. In this circumstance the
understanding is of nature and environment, but people find this same fire in
more modern differentiations as well. For instance, globalization is rapidly
developing universally agreeable culture, and there are many people passionate
about sharing and adding parts of their culture to that global identity.

Your wish for cohabitation seems to me to be a similar desire of drawing
"other" into "self", and will ultimately demand a similar degree of
understanding to pull off.

~~~
earthboundkid
> Man vs Nature is an old dichotomy

I can't think of any lone man vs. the wilderness stories from before Ibn
Tufail's Autodidactus (12c.), but I'm happy to be corrected.

~~~
throwanem
Eight hundred years still counts as "old". Horace, whose "Drive out nature
with a pitchfork..." only makes sense in context of the same dichotomy,
predates ibn Tufail by about a millennium in any case. And I'd argue for a
likely origin alongside that of agriculture, which was much earlier still.

~~~
earthboundkid
Ibn Tufail is one of the fathers of modernity. His book was translated by one
of John Locke’s friends. In the context of history, this is early modern
Spain. 800 years is a long time for an individual, but if the question is "did
people always do this or is this a modern thing?" then finding a text at the
dawn of modernity which was specifically influential on later moderns doesn't
count as evidence that people always did a thing.

I’d need to read Horace to get a sense of the context there.

EDIT: Looked up Horace:

> We, who love the country, salute Fuscus that loves the town… If we must live
> suitably to nature, and a plot of ground is to be first sought to raise a
> house upon, do you know any place preferable to the blissful country? … You
> may drive out nature with a fork, yet still she will return, and, insensibly
> victorious, will break through [men's] improper disgusts.

I believe in context, this is about how country living is better than city
living, so it's not really about "man vs. nature" at all. I think the metaphor
is that like a farm where you're ploughing the soil, still little plants will
do their thing, so too you may like the city, but little bursts of rural
enthusiasm will burst through.

Ibn Tufail came up with a thought experiment of "What if a person were born on
a desert island? How far could they build a civilization?" The English
translated this in the early modern period, and it gave birth to Robinson
Crusoe, which in turn gave birth to a million derivates which pit lone
individuals against the wilderness. (Robinson Crusoe → Survivor → The
Apprentice → Coronavirus disaster!) AFAICT, this is a purely modern
phenomenon, but again, I'd be interested in seeing what predecessors there are
historically that I'm missing.

~~~
throwanem
I mean, I'm not knocking, but I do wonder if you're taking "man vs. nature" to
mean something more specific than the way it's being intended, is all. Not so
much Bear Grylls, as just the idea that the two categories exist in a way
that's distinct from one another. Although I am glad to know that Bear Grylls
is drawing on so historically rich a tradition!

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MiguelVieira
Wilderness areas, at least in the United States, are best thought of as vast
gardens where natural processes of predator-prey relationships, flooding,
fire, etc are left to play out without much human intervention. If anything,
we're re-creating a landscape from before Paleo-Indian settlement.

~~~
vwcx
I'm not sure I agree. Most of the US public lands are actively managed, and
even the lesser-touched 'Wilderness Areas' are still highly influenced by the
surrounding human communities.

The continuing 100+ year old debate around the Forest Service's wildfire
policy is one example of how these relationships aren't as natural as we
believe on first look.

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agumonkey
What I like in nature:

\- it's a subtle force, the scales are somehow in the human range (organic
material,... leaving out tsunamis, volcanos, storms and lightning which,
probably very few find pleasant)

\- it's probably wired in us: the green hues, the tree nest shielding above,
the strip of blue. The light dynamics, it's all gentle plays on contrast but
it makes leaves shine like gold.

\- the pace of wild life, it's a tiny melody at a tiny tempo. The flow of
rivers, the wind..

\- the freeness.. I go where I want if I can, I stop where I want, I take what
I want. Feels like a useless mall and I have a yes-card. Also with a bit of
basic engineering knowledge, you can see how to rise your level of comfort
from wood, stone, fibers and fire, but that's a sidenote.

