Term Paper on "American Environmental History"

Term Paper 7 pages (2134 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Environmental History

In "The Trouble with Wilderness," William Cronon illustrates the cultural biases inherent in the very term "wilderness" and shows how those biases may be at the heart of the modern environmental movement. "The time has come to rethink wilderness," Cronon suggests (p. 379). Before the Industrial Revolution, the term wilderness referred to a barren wasteland, a place that was "deserted, savage, desolate," (p. 380). The wilderness evoked terror, not joy. By the end of the 19th century, due to shifts in cultural ideology as well as to the effects of industrialism, the American concept of wilderness changed dramatically. The wilderness began to represent the opposite of barren wasteland and became a sublime, sacred center. Early environmentalists like John Muir in fact did refer to wilderness areas in spiritual terms. Speaking out against the destruction of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, Muir claimed that the dam-builders were "temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism," (p. 358). Muir described Hetch Hetchy as "precious and sublime" and like other environmentalists of his time, used Biblical imagery to support his views. Cronon also shows how the use of Biblical imagery proves how deeply ingrained the concept of wilderness has become in the American psyche. The Bible presents two dualistically opposed views of wilderness: the Eden of the proverbial garden and the dangerous wasteland of the desert. It is precisely this dualistic worldview that is at the root of the conflicts within the environmental movement.

Wilderness was, according to Cronon, a product of two converging eighteenth and nineteenth century movements: Romanticism and the Frontier/Wild West/Manifest Destiny spirit. "The two converged to remake wilderness in their own image," according to Cronon, "freighting it with moral values and cultural symbols," (382). For example romanticism saw nature as sublime, as spiritually infused and permeated with divine energy. Wide open spaces away from city life were like churches and temples; in fact, for many they were more sacred than any church or temple. For John Muir, who screamed against the destruction of Hetch Hetchy Valley, that part of Yosemite was "precious and sublime," and "the sublime rocks of its walls seem to glow with life," (356). To destroy Hetch Hetchy and turn it into a dam was akin to destroying a temple. Muir's environmentalism solidly reflects the spirit of Romantisicm at the heart of the early American environmentalist movement.

Part of the reason for the Romantic vision of nature was the increased dichotomy between urban and natural life, between cities and forests. As Industrialism created bigger cities with fewer trees, people longed for an "older, simpler, truer world," (Cronon 384). Alic Hamilton shows the dark side of industrialism through her account of working with men afflicted with what she calls "industrial diseases" at Hull House (402). Industrial diseases were those that resulted directly from unclean, polluted factory environments. However, Hamilton also shows how "industrial diseases" were psychological and social as well as physical. The pull toward profit forced men to work long hours away from their families. Ironically, Hamilton notes that factory owners preferred family men because they were more stable. The Industrial Revolution caused the dualism inherent in the concept of wilderness because it created rifts in the American psyche. These rifts are visible in Hamilton's writing.

Similarly, George Perkins Marsh refers to the "hostile influence of man" in creating polluted urban environments (315). The pollution of the city forces people to pursue the wilderness experience, to seek solace in the silence of nature. According to Marsh, nature would have remained undisturbed and unchanged were it not for mankind's interference. In Marsh's imagination, the wilderness is the last bastion of pure, unsullied nature. The "wilderness" was created in response to the increasing encroachment of industrialized civilizations, "since the white man has laid bare a vast proportion of the earth's surface," (314). Having destryoed such a vast portion of the earth's surface, human beings need to re-create wilderness. Industrialization awakened human beings "to the necessity of preserving what is left, if not of restoring what has been wantonly wasted," (316). The dualism between human life and natural life in the American consciousness, which Cronon refers to in his essay, is clearly evident than in the writings of George Perkins Marsh. Marsh also writes through the lens of his own culture, saying that "purely untutored humanity...interferes comparatively little with the arrangement of nature...the destructive agency of man becomes more and more energetic and unsparing as he advances in civilization," (316). Given Marsh's use of the word "advances," his point-of-view is schizophrenic as well as dualistic. He states that "man alone is to be regarded as essentially a destructive power," yet at the same time Marsh claims that "he is not of her...he is of more exalted parentage," (316).

Cronon also connects the revival of wilderness at the beginning of the 20th century with the American frontier spirit. The frontier spirit and its concordant philosophy Manifest Destiny offered European settlers a sense of entitlement to the lands that they later deemed "wilderness." Exploring the frontier became, like the wilderness itself, a sublime experience and something with which human beings would connect with God. However, the frontier was anything but sublime, according to Cronon, who shows that "the actual frontier had often been a place of conflict," (p. 384). The wilderness was the white man's invention, according to Cronon, who would find his views supported in the writings of George Perkins Marsh. Marsh writes with awestruck respect for the frontier wilderness and claims that it is "the task of the pioneer settler" to preserve wilderness regions as best as possible. Marsh also claims that "man is everywhere a disturbing agent," something that Cronon would disagree with on the grounds that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were not disturbing agents in their environments. Therefore, Marsh's religious discourse, along with his dualistic view of the relationship between human beings and nature, prove Cronon's point.

Cronon also notes how the early environmentalists created the concept of wilderness were an elite group of people like President Teddy Roosevelt. Calling the search for wilderness "a peculiarly bourgeois form of antimodernism," Cronon points to the insidious ironies that are at the root of the environmental movement. Wealthy men and women conceived of the wilderness as a return to a simpler more primitive lifestyle in the midst of modernity. Americans had to create wilderness because of the situations that Alice Hamilton describes. In order to create wilderness, however, Americans displaced millions of indigenous people out of a feeling of cultural superiority.

The pet project of wilderness conservation was emblematic of a cultural bias inherent in the early environmental movement. In one of his public addresses, Roosevelt claimed that "conservation" was the "weightiest problem now before the Nation," (319). At the same time, Roosevelt lauds "the rise of peoples from savagery to civilization," revealing his own cultural biases and his disregard for the Native peoples of America (320). Roosevelt's speech echoes Marsh's feelings: both men honored the natural environment and understood the importance of preserving it, especially as urban and industrial centers continued to encroach upon it. Both men also understood that some cultures, like their own, were more responsible for destroying nature than others. Yet at the same time, Marsh and Roosevelt are culturally biased. Roosevelt writes, "Our position in the world has been attained by the extent and thoroughness of the control we have achieved over nature," (320). Just as Marsh referred to mankind's "exalted parentage," even as he criticizes mankind's footprint on the wilderness, so too does Roosevelt congratulate Americans for rising "from savagery to civilization," while at the same time criticizing the destructive powers of industrial development (320).

Preserving "wilderness" is for Roosevelt an ethical responsibility, the "right and duty of obeying moral law," and is also a "patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the Nation," (321). Roosevelt's words prove Cronon's point that by creating wilderness, Americans have ignored "the history from which it sprang," namely the destruction of indigenous civilizations (385). The moral and ethical laws that Roosevelt refer to have nothing to do with respect for other cultures.

According to Cronon, dividing nature into two, rendering it into distinct sections of "wilderness" and "not wilderness" is a destructive "dualistic vision," (385). Cronon doesn't disparage wilderness per se, he only criticizes the "habits of thinking that flow from this complex cultural construction called wilderness," (386). Partitioning parts of land that are deemed more sacred, holy, or more beautiful than others is one of the by-products of this tendency: "Wilderness tends to privilege some parts of nature at the expanse of others," Cronon states (p. 386). Muir echoes this sentiment in his fierce defense of Hetch Hetchy, which he calls "the greatest of all our natural resources for the uplifting joy and peace and health of the people," (p. 356). Muir's referring to Hetch Hetchy in religious terms, calling it "one of Nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples" further bolsters Cronon's argument that the concept of wilderness creates… READ MORE

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