In William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness” he argues that humans have constructed the idea of ‘wilderness’ and that this construction continues the harm to the ecosystems that this term was constructed to protect as well as humanity. Cronon argues that by creating a polarisation between the human and the natural, we distance ourselves from our responsibility and connection to it. The consequences of this are that “If we allow ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall. […] We thereby leave ourselves little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorable human place in nature might actually look like” (11). Cronon’s solution to this duality is to recombine the wild with the human in our minds, to see the whole of the world as our home, because “[h]ome, after all, is the place where finally we make our living. It is the place for which we take responsibility, the place we try to sustain so we can pass on what is best in it […] to our children” (19). It seems key not to forget that much as we create many unnatural things, humans are as much a part of nature as anything else. Or are we not animals evolved from the primordial soup like all others?
This reading reminded me of the inner conflict I felt when doing the readings on utilitarianism earlier in the course, I am fairly depressed now as I was then, but reading Cronon was at least a little more uplifting in comparison. I remember thinking that in utilitarian terms I really should be dead. If we want to promote the good of the highest number of conscious beings (referencing Peter Singer here) then humanity should not necessarily be top of the list. In fact, there are more chickens than humans, and they certainly do not need us to thrive. There are many areas one can extrapolate this type of thinking out to, especially because it often feels like no matter what choice you make as a consumer you are contributing in one way or another to the death of our planet. Take clothes shopping for instance: if you want to shop ethically and not contribute to the enormous waste and bad ethics of the fast fashion industry there are plenty of pricey brand options at your disposal, with biodegradable fabrics and fair working conditions for their employees. However, suppose you do not have the money, or you do not have the (thin) body type that these sustainable brands tend to cater towards, then you could always thrift! But many thrift shops do not pay their workers well, the majority of the clothing donated to them ends up in a landfill in the end, and most times you still will not find what you are looking for. I find this cycle crops up in many of the choices I have to make on a day to day basis and Cronon addresses this sort of climate-depression (not using that exact language) in his essay. Cronon argues that “if wild nature is the only thing worth saving, and if our mere presence destroys it, then the sole solution to our own unnaturalness, the only way to protect sacred wilderness from profane humanity, would seem to be suicide” (13). By constructing this duality between the human and the natural, we humans have left ourselves in a murky spot since It does seem a difficult task to save the environment while also punishing ourselves.
Buying from sustainable fashion brands and thrift shops has a similar effect in my opinion to what Cronon describes as the effect of visiting nature preserves and national parks. “We work our nine-to-five jobs in its [society’s/the non-wild’s] institutions, we eat its food, we drive its cars (not least to reach the wilderness), we benefit from the intricate and all too invisible networks with which it shelters us, all the while pretending that these things are not an essential part of who we are. By imagining that our true home is in the wilderness, we forgive ourselves the homes we actually inhabit” (11-12). Whether you are ‘escaping to the wilderness’ or buying from thrift stores, both have the effect of displacing our guilt over the choices we don’t really have. Cronon’s solution, while imperfect in my opinion, at least lends us some forgiveness and assists in our ability to fight for the planet as a whole. Humans are not the devil, we all live here, we simply have to do our best to treat our planet as a home and to fight for change at an institutional level.
(disclaimer: I am not arguing that attempting to shop ethically is not a good thing to do in our fight to do our best, instead I am saying that it can in some instances act as a way to make ourselves feel better when the problem goes much deeper than individualized decisions.)
- Renée
Sources:
Cronon, William. (1995) “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (pp. 69-90). New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Available at: https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html
I really like the way you brought Cronon and his ‘guilt displacement’. I question however if the modern human really can be called a part of the natural environment anymore. The massive ‘non-wild’ populations of cities are an example. Consider New York City. The demands of such a gargantuan machine with millions of people to feed, traversing the cityscape, and the demands for water. What I am trying to say that such a massive concentration of organisms (that in nature lived in small tribes) in such a small area is as unnatural as humanity can be in terms of resource demand. Even if every single citizen began to think with a ‘natural’ perspective the resource demands are still incredibly focused on such a relatively small area for its population. A single human in nature may take whatever resources were required with little environmental destabilization but tens of millions of mouths to feed can strip any environment its fruits very quickly. The very way we organize ourselves requires an ‘unnatural’ demand relative to space. Perhaps humanity must really look to itself and think about how the modern human can re-organize into nature (or if it can), as the manner we lived in ages ago was done with billions of less people. Rather than trying to relate the modern human to its past, the modern human must adapt (maybe through technology: hydroponics) into co-existence with nature.
Much how the modern canine is leagues apart from its natural ancestor in its way of life, humanity cannot just place itself into its natural past. Humanity must figure out how to co-exist with nature with its demands of today. Hydroponics and clean energies may be very ‘unnatural’ but answer how to co-exist with nature, as we are beyond returning to its ranks (save cataclysms).
Hello!
I like how you ended your post with an argument that we must fight at an institutional level. The guilt you talk about feeling I think is really relevant at an individual level where we make decisions but like you said over the choices we do not really have.
I think that nature and wilderness have been thought of as separate creating issues of distance from human responsibility just as the article states however, I think this also may be the solution. Humans are so far removed from natural and apart of wilderness that it would be nearly impossible to revert. I do not quite agree with you when you state… “It seems key not to forget that much as we create many unnatural things, humans are as much a part of nature as anything else. Or are we not animals evolved from the primordial soup like all others?” I think that while you are completely right that we are animals that evolved like many other living entities, however, while i cannot give a full explanation I think that it is clear that there is a difference. The way humans have altered and built lives is much different from “others”. Cronon’s solution in theory sounds like a great one, but I believe is not practical and in order to save the natural being of the world we must not fix the divide we’ve created between human and wilderness but instead feel responsible and find ways to be responsible for that divide- enough responsibility that we start to look out for the magnificent wilderness that we all enjoy.
alison