The Wilderness Condition: Essays On Environment And Civilization

This book aims to introduce to a larger audience issues that are too often limited to scholarly circles. A thought-provoking collection of essays by some of the environmental movement's preeminent thinkers, The Wilderness Condition explores the dynamic tension between wild nature and civilization, offering insights into why the relationship has become adversarial and suggesting creative means for reconciliation. Contributors include Paul Shepard, Curt Meine, Max Oelschlaeger, and George Sessions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559631902
• ISBN13: 9781559631907
• Release Date: June 1992
• Publisher: Island Press
• Length: 345 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

hunting gathering gardening and foraging- the not so new industry.

The Wilderness Condition: In this gorgeous book, writers with minds as sharp as knives cut through roads of crumbling western history to get to the heart of the matter that lie embedded in our pre-history, not via romance, science nor rhetoric of conservation. Imagine, for example, a life without agriculture; it was a small moment of luxury to which our population did not exceed over the millions by the nature of hunting and gathering. In wilderness there is no separation that orders distinction-- which pulls the nature of humans away from animals, or the natural world. no reductionism leading us right down to scripture when man and woman kicked themselves out of the highly sustainable garden. Writers like Gary Snyder introduce us to what wilderness is. He gives us a rich scope of examples that bind culture to wilderness. Paul Shepard emphasizes how we developed our so called human "greatness" this human ability to reason, speak a complex language, and create culture as born not from our modern environment but from ancient hunting. Hunting gave us a brain fit for socialization and demanded skill. Arguably, to really know wilderness is to know hunting. Other writers show us how environmentalism is always attacked by industry as full of emotive, mystic, romantic ideals and that only empirical knowledge based on data can really prove anything credible. In other words to care about environment is a 'passion' that imposes upon capitalism---if you care about preserving old tracts of forest for owls than you must hate loggers. We must work with what we have; we have a western philosophy that has molded us to believe in the use of nature for humankind, for matters of consumption or pleasures. I could hardly blame anyone who rejects work that awakens us to the scope of our relationship to nature. That nature might teach us to be humble and grateful, and to be more aware of our giving and taking, that echoes the acute sense of ancient hunters. But that in a sense is our true history.