Weekly Digest

The Concord Elite (Jane Dubzinski)

            Jane mentions the fact that that she went to school near Walden Pond and has always loved reading Walden, due to the beauty of the connection between man and nature. Yet she finds Thoreau to be somewhat of an elitist in that he advocates a lifestyle (“unplugging” and living out in the woods) that most do not have the luxury to adopt. The everyday person has responsibilities, deadlines, obligations and, more often than not, mouths to feed other than their own. These people are implicitly looked down upon in Thoreau’s philosophy, possibly even characterized as cowards for their unwillingness to drop everything and become hermit-philosophers. She also finds the chapter “Reading” to be indicative of an elitist attitude.

Self-awareness and Self-criticism: Paths to Humility and Respect (Ms. Valdes)

            Valdes reflects on Cronon’s essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” pointing out the author’s observation that what we consider “nature” needs to be redefined, needs to be thought of as our everyday environments as opposed to something “out there.” Also she makes an interesting observation on how Western culture may have adopted a “lasses-fair” attitude towards the environment as a result of our Judeo-Christian belief in the Apocalypse, or end times. For example, we need not worry about the longevity or long-term health of the planet because it’s all going to end anyway.

Cronon and Nature (Rosanna Cacace)  

            Rosanna focused on Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” as well. She “appreciated Cronon’s article because it provided a more balanced approach to nature,” further stating that “if we only focus our attention to the wild, then we run the risk of losing ourselves in the process.”  Rosanna argues that “what we need to do is figure out how we can live with nature in a way that is environmentally responsible,” and that “no matter what we do, we will always have some kind of impact on the natural world … Regardless of how much we try to protect nature, it will always be affected by us … we can’t just stop progressing as a society for the sake of nature, instead we should take Cronon’s advice and ‘set responsible limits to human mastery.’”

Reflections on William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” (Ryan Briggs)

            Ryan appreciated the way Cronen’s essay destabilized the “meaning of the wilderness by offering an informative and revealing historical analysis of the word's changing denotation, (and) especially its varying connotations across cultures.” He felt that “Cronon's penetrating analysis of the various parties belonging to the environmentalist movement, specifically their peculiar and often contradictory definitions of ‘the wilderness,’ represents what seems to (him)to be just the kind of clear-minded thinking that the environmentalist movement requires to win the hearts—and perhaps more importantly the minds—of those like (himself) who are only beginning to familiarize themselves with the movement's ideologies.”

Reflecting on William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” (Jeff Anderson)

            Jeff feels that “Cronon is unduly harsh in arguing ‘[nature is] entirely a creation of the culture it holds dear, a product of the very history it seeks to deny.’” He argues that Cronen “takes a huge leap in suggesting that this desire to classify nature is a means to deny our history of modernization simply because the word deny implies an active and conscious refusal to believe or recognize.” This denial Jeff speaks of “might encompass a complete neglect and lack of concern for the wilderness” after one has taken a token visit to some wildlife preserve or a  “weekend jaunt to the woods.” He finds it absurd to “assume that enjoying the benefits of an undeveloped area is tantamount to an escape from all of humanity that we might never remember or return.”

Cronen’s Conundrum (Alfred Valrie)

            Alfred argues that our “concept of wilderness is not natural because it presumes a ‘virginity,’ an untouched quality that precludes Native Americans and which assumes that wherever man isn’t, nature is.” He goes on to state that “wilderness is a myth because we assume that what isn’t owned by the federal government, a state, or a private individual is untouched,”  and that “this fallacy allows us to pursue a course of unimpeded annexation, whereby lands that are already owned or falling into ownership are purposed, re-purposed, and plundered yet again beyond all possibility of sustainability.” Alfred rejects the notion that one must drive hundreds of miles out to some remote landscape in order to “wake up to (one’s) God-given, innate qualities of humility and start treating (one’s) fellow beings with more respect and compassion,” when this act should be possible in one’s own neighborhood.

Wilderness, Sacrality, Nationalism (Dimitrios Sotiriou)

            Dimitrios explores the historical connections between wilderness or nature and our sense of the sacred, along with our sense of nationalism. A few hundred years ago wilderness was seen as a scary place, or the home of the devil. Slowly but surely it started to become the area where one was closest to God and his authentic creation. This configuration is not without its problems, however, as he notes that “Within this complex of ‘religious’ belief and national identity, certain problems and contradictions emerge.  One of these involves class.  The wilderness as an artificial place of authenticity and Americianness can only be enjoyed and benefited from by the middle and upper classes who have the money and leisure to travel.  It is a place of recreation and of internal renewal separate from the urban centers where thesevisitors live and work.  The wilderness allows them to purify themselves of the corruption of a greedy, ugly, industrial-capitalist world, thus absolving them of any complicity in its injustices.

It’s the Economy, Stupid (William Cooper)

            Bill breaks down the meaning of economy for all those who are in “no danger of ever reading Walden.” According to him, “The purpose of an economy is to maximum the benefit of a society’s material resources by creating a system of exchange. Thus if A grows wheat and B owns a forest, A, after putting aside all the wheat he needs to make bread, exchanges his surplus wheat with B for the surplus wood that he has after he has built his cabin. This way they can each have a life, so to speak, which would not have been likely if A lived in the elements and B went hungry.” But in the case of Thoreau, he continues “But what if someone can provide shelter and food by his own industry, and still have time for a life, in fact only has to work six weeks out of the year? He then has a very successful economy of one. He is Henry David Thoreau.”

Rejecting Adam’s Curse: Thoreau’s Call to a Better Life (Scott)

            Scott points out that Thoreau wholeheartedly rejects the notion that “a man must work hard in order to earn (his) daily bread”; a belief also known as Adam’s Curse. He goes on to state that “Thoreau argues (against the notion that idle hands are the devil’s tools) that men should work less so that they can spend more leisure time contemplating the lessons to be found in nature, thereby improving their souls.” Scott argues that Thoreau is not against labor and hard work in general, but that what he is against is the misdirected toil of those working for material gain. These laborers waste their lives laboring in vain; in Thoreau’s words they "labor under a mistake."

Human Culture Can Be Destructive (Zully Henry)

            Zully comments on the differences between Native American culture and Anglo-American culture, how the former preserved their habitats and how the latter brought destruction and exploitation to the landscape. In her words, “The Native Americans have lived in the North American territories for a long time. Their culture lived in Nature and their treatment given to the environment was most advantageous for Nature than for them. They had a clear idea to what should be to live for ‘the preservation of the world’ (to use Thoreau’s quote in Cronon’s). So the culture they practiced worked to maintain Nature as pure as possible. However, European and world-wide immigrants brought with them cultures that when compared to the Natives could be quite destructive.”