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| Yosemite Traffic Jam |
My hope is that this week's readings will not only lead to similar conversations, but that they might be particularly useful as you begin to formulate your seminar paper topics, too.
To that end, as promised, I've photocopied the Nelson, Guha, Cronon, and Plumwood essays and placed them in the box outside my office door. I have also posted a .pdf of them on the course website, if that is more convenient.
I look forward to hearing what you think about the essays.
In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns.
Kevin
Which one out of Nelson’s Wilderness Preservation Arguments would convince the most people? Or, how could I convince someone to care for Wilderness how doesn’t care at all about its existence?
ReplyDeleteMany of the arguments Nelson brings up in his essay seem to be either attractive but paradoxical or having value only for a (elite?) minority. However, I believe that in order to preserve (or maybe better, to protect) wilderness, the ordinary „mass“ of people has to be convinced – so that wilderness would „win“ if people could vote for it.
It seems to me that in the past, the intrinsic value argument has been brought up and utilized the most. But it is kind of a sound and „weak“ argument – all of the „philosophical“ arguments seem not to work for what I would call ordinary people who would care to get water out of the dam to be able to water their fields rather than see the moral obligation we might have towards wilderness.
The same is true for spiritual arguments.
The future generation argument takes a similar turn – by pointing out the moral obligation we have towards future humans – are we really going to consider them if resources get scarce, for example?
Rest only the arguments that include wilderness as a potential source: for medecine, to remove dioxides, for storing (genetic) information, finally to ensure human existence and its survival. I guess that it is only if the worst comes to the worst and when their survival is threatened is when people really start to care about things. But it could be really hard to point out the complex relationship between the destruction of wilderness and its consequences on human well-being in a simple way – a lot of times we can only assume what happens if we destroy some part of wilderness and make predictions but nothing is sure – unlike the case of Michelangelo’s Sixtine Chapel, that one would simply be gone if we destroyed it.
I still cannot figure out what sort of arguments I would most likely use for the preservation of wilderness.
Is the National Character Argument a bit of a paradox?
DeleteNelson addresses this question quite well. I was hoping to expand a little. Certainly our migration West as American's experienced vast wilderness. However, that wilderness we encountered was equally associated with the destruction of the area. American culture's more congruent identification with nature comes as the rearrangement of wilderness rather than the coexistence with it. The Salvation of Freedom on the other hand is a solid argument. It is of grave importance that we have somewhere to hide.
Does having so many different arguments for the preservation of wilderness make solid point?
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how many different arguments Nelson presented for wilderness in this essay. While I was familiar with some of the arguments others seemed kind of out there. I do not think that some of these arguments are very strong for the preservation of wilderness. I think that the arguments about wilderness providing natural resources clean air and water and healthy ecosystems are strong arguments. these arguments seemed more beneficial and understandable on a global scale. I have never been to a South American rain forest and may never get the chance to visit one but i care about the destruction of wildlife and deforestation there because it may effect the air I breathe and some species of animals could be totally wiped out. I think this argument and the others like it in Nelson's essay are likely to convince people who don't care about or like wilderness to be concerned about it. However the arguments about mental health seem pointless to me. While anyone who appreciates wilderness would know the psychological benefits from being exposed to it I doubt this would be a convincing argument for someone who could care less about the wilderness. If someone doesn't care for the wilderness or other plants and animals being able to live in natural ecosystems i doubt they would care about how good it makes people feel.
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ReplyDeleteAre we mentally, spiritually, and physically better off when we interact closely with wilderness?
ReplyDeleteFor me, this question was almost a definite yes but I think it goes beyond just what we believe our personal connections with wilderness are. In order to fully understand what makes us mentally, spiritually, and physically better off we also have to examine our societal rolls. In Plumwood’s Gender And The “Virgin” concept she touched similarly on our discussion last week about female gender roles in wilderness. She wrote “…many otherwise ‘liberated’ Western women still have to allow themselves, as well as be allowed by others, the full freedom of their bodies and the freedom of the wild.”
So, we have to allow ourselves to be allowed by others to mentally, spiritually, and physically interact closely with wilderness. How do we achieve this sort of okay-ness with society and gender roles to make this even possible? Is there more to this process than just being comfortable enough with yourself and the society that surrounds us to “allow” ourselves the freedom to connect with nature? Are we solely responsible for making this happen at a personal level or should we be co-dependent on our fellow humans to aide us in practice?
The critique from Guha is spot on, from my perspective. Forgive me for a being a bit of a broken record, but my question in reading that article was essentially a dialogue between Guha and Dombroski, who we read earlier in the term. “Where do Alaska Natives, especially in the context of ANCSA, fall into this spectrum and history?”
ReplyDeleteSome of the obvious parallels begin with Guha’s noting that “the designation of tiger reserves was made possible only by the physical displacement of poor peasants living in and around the reserves; their management requires the continuing exclusion of peasants and livestock,” (Guha 235). As we’ve already discussed, the same thing happened in the creation of many national parks, including the ones here in Alaska.
Another parallel is in the “Otherness” of the American Indian/Alaska Native perspective, and the appropriation that occurs in both instances. Iron Eyes Cody, the Italian-American actor who became famous as the crying Indian in a commercial, comes to mind.
The last, and most contentious, is where Dombroski would jump in. Guha points out, “the roots of global ecological problems lie in the disproportionate share of resources consumed by the industrialized countries as a whole and the urban elite within the Third World… industrial development has benefited only a tiny elite while extracting tremendous social and environmental costs. The ecological battles presently being fought in India have as their epicenter there conflict over nature between the subsistence and largely rural sector, and the vastly more powerful commercial-industrial sector,” (Guha 240-241). Dombroski’s book Against Culture argues that ANCSA further divided a stratification already present in SE AK—the urban, elite, often non-subsistence and the rural, lower class, subsistence. To what extent I think Dombroski is right, I haven’t fully decided. Ultimately my initial question is unanswerable, as Alaska Natives fall along the full spectrum, just as they would in India as Guha notes. The continuous line of question upon which this draws is complex and very nuanced, which I suppose is why I keep coming back to it.
Another river to keep an eye on, by the way, is the Unuk River, to the northeast of Ketchikan. It falls within the Misty Fjords National Monument. A good friend of mine is very active in trying to raise awareness about the push for mining in Canada on this river. I was talking with her about it, and she cited the damage it would cause to human and non-human communities as a driving concern.
How much does the essentialization of wilderness (ie. either victimizing it or viewing it as a foe of humanity) have to do with our Western tendency to be anthropomorphic?
ReplyDeleteOf course we are going to look at things from our own human perspectives. That’s a given. When thinking about wilderness, we will tend to relate wilderness back to ourselves and how it affects us and our lives. However, this makes wilderness the “other”. An anthropomorphic perspective says that wilderness is not part of us or equal to us; humans are number one, and wilderness is only worth the trouble if it benefits us somehow. And so, we either try to take pity on the weaker, helpless “race” that is wilderness and we victimize it and try to “save” it. Or we evaluate how much we can use it and whether it is worth the effort to save. What if a wilderness area is not of any ‘use’ to us (ie. Not conventionally sublime, not hiding any iron/oil/copper etc.)? The idea of this essay kind of reminded me of the part in Moore’s “Utopia” where he talks about the so-called law of nature. He says that in Utopia, if someone is not using their land in the way that is decided that they should, war is a perfectly justifiable punishment to surrender them to. I think this is a prime early example of our tendency to be anthropomorphic affecting our view on the other of wilderness. Another question is, in the world of us (man- yes, man) vs. the other (wilderness), where do women fit in? I think women would definitely fit in more as an other than an us. In the early Frontier days, you could basically plug in “women” for “wilderness” in my topic question and the question would still make sense. What other things do we have this attitude towards? I don’t think that wilderness is the only thing that we do this to. Maybe when we as a society are able to see wilderness as an equal player we will be able to rethink wilderness like Cronon suggests. However, I think it is our anthropomorphic tendencies that make us see things as a competition. At this rate however, no one is going to win this competition.
Would the arguments and statements in these articles come naturally for the general public if they were not told about them?
ReplyDeleteI feel like quite alot of Wilderness arguments fall very heavily into somewhat abstract arguments for conservation that may or may not be present (Medicinal, Spiritual, Etc.), and because of it alot of these arguments could, theoretically, be countered with "But do you actually have proof that it has this 'insert argument here"? Perhaps this is why most people do not think about wilderness or nature issues off hand simply because the arguments for Wilderness do not apply to a number of people. If this is the case, than can we find a reason/argument that will catch the attention of a vast majority of people,
"Further, all of the following arguments for wilderness preservation are significantly biased in two major ways. First they assume a terrestrial and not an oceanic or even extraterrestrial sense of wilderness. One might argue that they really ought also to apply to "marine wildernesses" and to the other, so far "untrammeled, planets" (Nelson 155).
ReplyDeleteOf the 30 arguments for the preservation of wilderness presented by Michael P. Nelson, which one do you think is the most biased? Which argument brings forth the most beneficial reasons for the preservation of wilderness?
I found this packet of readings to be particularly interesting because there were concrete arguments laid out from many different perspectives. It is easy to bring forth our own biases and beliefs on religion but by trying to figure out every different argument that justifies the preservation of wilderness, we can definitely understand more about "wilderness" than we have previously.
Is it fair to criminalize the deep ecology philosophy?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Guha's deconstruction of the deep ecology philosophy. The arguments that he put forward were grounded in fact. The idea that wilderness is something that should be preserved behind glass walls just isn't practical. The human need is great and has to be addressed. I was particularly fond of the except from J.K. Galbraith that talked about the hunger for consumption. With growing populations it just doesn't make sense to cut off entire sections of the world, force people, indigenous and otherwise, out of their homes and forcefully preserve nature because it's "the morally cool" thing to do.
According to Guha the biggest ecological issues stem from over consumption and militarization. Neither of these issues can be solved by deep ecology. The human mind set must be altered in order to bring about any change. It isn't the preservation of land we should focus on, it is the preservation of humanity.
William Cronon makes the argument that we’ve been taught to “fetishize sublime places” which makes our standard for wilderness too high and consequently dismissive of more humble nature. He also makes it clear that this cultural construct of the sublime is a large part the foundation of our American environmental ethic. But how do we move past this romantic illusion of untrammeled wilderness and form a new ethic, as Cronon says, “that will tell us as much about using nature as not using it.” (p. 490).
ReplyDeleteIt seems we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage to not acknowledging our place in the natural world. We shouldn’t separate ourselves from nature but become more realistic about our impacts on our surrounding environment, and that we will always have impacts no matter what we do. I think by becoming aware of our idealization of wilderness we can become more mindful of our relationship to it and how our perception of wilderness may need to change.
The articles this week were particularly interesting because it addressed not only the wilderness ethic but it adds to the discussions that we have been having about what wilderness is/means to us. This seems to come up every class period and when we answer we have been doing so in a pretty traditional not out of the box fashion. What is this fetishized wilderness and how has it been absorbed into the American psyche? I have been doing research for my paper topic for this course and I am very interested in how to argue for a new mindset about how to appreciate the wilderness. Seems like it should go beyond just using our resources from the wild...as some of the readings suggest. William Cronon will make interesting conversation in class. Im lookin forward to it. My computer has crashed 3 times while typing this so this is it.
ReplyDelete