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I'd argue that the entire concept of "pristine wilderness" derives, maybe not so much exactly from the loosely seen specter of colonialism, as from the construc

I'd argue that the entire concept of "pristine wilderness" derives, maybe not so much exactly from the loosely seen specter of colonialism, as from the constructed distinction between "man" and "nature". As the article touches on but fails to explore, the idea of a place where human feet have never trod only seems special from a perspective wherein human habitation is necessarily in some way unnatural. It fails to recognize the possibility of a way of human living that seeks to cohabit with what we think of as "nature", rather than to extirpate and replace it with sterile, static dioramas pretending to represent what was there before. Which, of course, brings us back around to colonialism, because that's also what colonization does. I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg; the false man/nature distinction could be as much or more a rationalization as a premise, and I don't know the relevant historiography as well as I'd like.

the8472 7y ago
Considering our energy needs it's not possible for large amounts of people to cohabitate with nature without altering nature. So yes, the mere (permanent) existence of humans in some area will inevitably alter nature and thus not be what we consider pristine nature anymore.
- throwanem 7y ago
  Sure. My point is that "pristine" is a meaningless concept here - any life that exists in a given environment will alter that environment to some degree; that's one of the things life does - and that I think the habit of valuing this specter of "pristineness" points to a failure to distinguish between the habit of any form of life to modify its environment, and the human habit of altering ours in ways we know are noxious and still do anyway. My other point is that "nature" is a meaningless concept, too, and actively harmful in that it gives us an excuse to conceive of ourselves as essentially apart from our environment, and much more able to control the extent of its effects on us than we demonstrably are. Sure, we can keep the rain and cold at bay. But if climate change isn't enough evidence that our power over our environment has hard limits, the current pandemic sure as hell should be - to say nothing of the next one, or the one after that. "Nature" is something that's supposed to be out there, away from us, on the other side of a wall or a window, except when we choose for it not to be. "Nature" is an enemy. The trouble is that, looked at that way, we inevitably find Horace was right, all those centuries ago: drive her out with a pitchfork all you like, she'll always come running back.
  - the8472 7y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say. There clearly exist areas that are more and those that are less impacted by human presence. When people talk about nature they often mean just the latter parts while perhaps considering engineered ecosystems part of "the environment" not necessarily part of "[pristine] nature". Having different words for these different things is useful. You can quibble about which words best fit them, but the distinction doesn't go away.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      "Nature" isn't a word that's useful for expressing position along the continuum you describe, though. Instead it describes a sharp discontinuity that doesn't actually exist. The resulting mental model can't help but be inaccurate - and accidentally so, which means the simplification can't be controlled to avoid impairing the utility of the model. I'd categorize the resulting conceptual error alongside the one that leads people to believe in creationism because camera eyes like ours seem too complicated to have arisen by chance. They aren't, but that's a thought you need the right conceptual tools to build. Without them, you might never get there. Ultimately, what I'm saying is that "nature" is likewise the wrong tool with which to build thoughts about how humans interact with our environment.
      - the8472 7y ago
        Where is the discontinuity implied? It seems like there is a continuum between entirely engineered environments and largely untouched ones. The latter is considered natural, hence "nature" as an expression of one part of the continuum. Of course there are other uses of the word, such as "nature finds a way" meaning that biological life will adapt to engineered environments too. But this the usual inadequacy of human language, the same word can have multiple, even conflicting meanings. Anyway, if you wish to convey some important concept better you should name it so it can be discussed instead of just pointing at other concepts and declaring them inadequate. This is what confuses me about this discussion, the lack of proposed improvements.
        7y ago
- black_puppydog 7y ago
  You're falling into the same trap there that GP was pointing out. Yes, any number of humans (starting at 1) will alter the state of their surroundings. But that doesn't make the surroundings "unnatural" in any way. It just happens that modern human societies tend to alter their environment in a way that it loses many of the properties that we long for, yet somehow we don't seem capable of changing the way we shape our environments in a different way. Instead we declare "that over there" to be "nature" which is to de desired and "this here" to be "the civilized world" and most people literally can't imagine any correspondence of the two.
- msla 7y ago
  > Considering our energy needs it's not possible for large amounts of people to cohabitate with nature without altering nature. And when you realize you can say the same thing about ants and termites, you will know what the person you're talking to is talking about. Making the distinction "Human vs Nature" implies Humans are special, set apart from any other species; even if you say that Humans are bad, being especially bad is still being special, and set apart.
jbay808 7y ago
Human habitation might well be natural, but fences aren't.
- throwanem 7y ago
  Then badger setts and beaver dams aren't, either.
  - jbay808 7y ago
    That's not what I mean. Wander in the countryside for a while - outside of one of these national parks - and your wandering is likely to be interrupted at every turn by kilometres of chain-link fence, impassable highway, or some other artificial obstacle that spans a vast distance and makes you feel enclosed, rather than free. A beaver dam is no such barrier. I think the urge to explore the landscape goes much farther back than the colonial period, which is a very recent blip in human history. The author should look back not to 200 years ago for the source of that instinct, but 20,000 years ago or more - and consider what wilderness might have looked like then.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      Ask a fish how much of an obstacle the artifice of beavers imposes. We're violently in agreement, I think, inasmuch as we both find much obnoxious in the effects of human artifice as directed to modifying our environment. Where we differ is in the use of a special category "unnatural" to describe those effects we do not like. I don't argue that only the equation of "natural" with "desirable" is without value; I argue that "natural" is meaningless, as is its converse, and if we want to talk about desirability, we're better served to do so directly instead of confusing the issue with less precise concepts.
      - jbay808 7y ago
        I'm sure the fish would see them as an unnatural barrier and an annoyance, but I don't speak for the fish or think so much of their perspectives. Speaking personally as a human, there are few other vertebrate animals on Earth that can remotely pose a serious threat to my freedom, provided I exercise common sense precautions. That's probably why I'm most concerned with the human modifications to the landscape. I am forced to heed them. I'm sure fish would see it differently, although they'd still encounter a lot fewer beaver dams than human obstructions. See my other comment about how I would feel differently if beavers built dams across highways and shot people crossing them. I might be less inclined to treat beavers as a harmless part of the natural landscape then. We can make the natural vs unnatural distinction because humans have at least a partial hegemony over all other species now. Not completely; clearly microbes and insects are still out of our control. If there were intelligent alien invaders that started building walls and bridges and cages, I'm sure we'd label those as "unnatural" and "artificial" too, whereas a beaver dam is a natural curiosity. If there were other rival intelligent species sharing the Earth and reshaping it to their own vision, they probably wouldn't fit into the nature category. It marks a power dynamic, and it's an important distinction. Artificial structures are backed by the power of laws and property rights and other enforcement rules. That gives them a power beyond their material strength. Ants and beavers reshape the earth too, but the only thing stopping you from paving them over are objections by other humans. The other ants would hardly even retaliate. Edit: I guess the core of my point is that if you want to include a pair of wire cutters in with your bug spray and bear whistle and other hiking gear, so that you can freely pass through chain-link fences, then maybe you will start to view those fences no differently than rocks and fallen logs, just another curious structure erected by another fascinating mammal. I, personally, would never feel so bold.
bufbupa 7y ago
Man vs Nature is an old dichotomy; I'm not sure many people still hold it in their world view. It was just one step along the path of defining "self" vs "other". That differentiation is significant because it helps individuals identify threats vs allies. Colonizers may have defined indigenous people as "other" because they didn't have any shared cultural substrate that they could reliably cooperate through. Of course, that differentiation was likely varried per individual, and I'm sure there were many colonial individuals who detestested taking advantage of indigenous people. The exploration described in the article might be better described as drawing more of the "other" into "self". Finding that which was previously uknown to your "self" (perhaps your cultural upbringing, national identity, or collective societal knowledge) and understanding it. In this circumstance the understanding is of nature and environment, but people find this same fire in more modern differentiations as well. For instance, globalization is rapidly developing universally agreeable culture, and there are many people passionate about sharing and adding parts of their culture to that global identity. Your wish for cohabitation seems to me to be a similar desire of drawing "other" into "self", and will ultimately demand a similar degree of understanding to pull off.
- throwanem 7y ago
  I think many more people incorporate it into their worldview than recognize that they're doing so.
- jerf 7y ago
  "Man vs Nature is an old dichotomy; I'm not sure many people still hold it in their world view." It remains alive and well in the view that anything Man does is unNatural and simply by virtue of being unNatural automatically inferior to Nature.
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  > Man vs Nature is an old dichotomy I can't think of any lone man vs. the wilderness stories from before Ibn Tufail's Autodidactus (12c.), but I'm happy to be corrected.
  - throwanem 7y ago

the8472 7y ago

Considering our energy needs it's not possible for large amounts of people to cohabitate with nature without altering nature. So yes, the mere (permanent) existence of humans in some area will inevitably alter nature and thus not be what we consider pristine nature anymore.

throwanem 7y ago
Sure. My point is that "pristine" is a meaningless concept here - any life that exists in a given environment will alter that environment to some degree; that's one of the things life does - and that I think the habit of valuing this specter of "pristineness" points to a failure to distinguish between the habit of any form of life to modify its environment, and the human habit of altering ours in ways we know are noxious and still do anyway. My other point is that "nature" is a meaningless concept, too, and actively harmful in that it gives us an excuse to conceive of ourselves as essentially apart from our environment, and much more able to control the extent of its effects on us than we demonstrably are. Sure, we can keep the rain and cold at bay. But if climate change isn't enough evidence that our power over our environment has hard limits, the current pandemic sure as hell should be - to say nothing of the next one, or the one after that. "Nature" is something that's supposed to be out there, away from us, on the other side of a wall or a window, except when we choose for it not to be. "Nature" is an enemy. The trouble is that, looked at that way, we inevitably find Horace was right, all those centuries ago: drive her out with a pitchfork all you like, she'll always come running back.
- the8472 7y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to say. There clearly exist areas that are more and those that are less impacted by human presence. When people talk about nature they often mean just the latter parts while perhaps considering engineered ecosystems part of "the environment" not necessarily part of "[pristine] nature". Having different words for these different things is useful. You can quibble about which words best fit them, but the distinction doesn't go away.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    "Nature" isn't a word that's useful for expressing position along the continuum you describe, though. Instead it describes a sharp discontinuity that doesn't actually exist. The resulting mental model can't help but be inaccurate - and accidentally so, which means the simplification can't be controlled to avoid impairing the utility of the model. I'd categorize the resulting conceptual error alongside the one that leads people to believe in creationism because camera eyes like ours seem too complicated to have arisen by chance. They aren't, but that's a thought you need the right conceptual tools to build. Without them, you might never get there. Ultimately, what I'm saying is that "nature" is likewise the wrong tool with which to build thoughts about how humans interact with our environment.
    - the8472 7y ago
      Where is the discontinuity implied? It seems like there is a continuum between entirely engineered environments and largely untouched ones. The latter is considered natural, hence "nature" as an expression of one part of the continuum. Of course there are other uses of the word, such as "nature finds a way" meaning that biological life will adapt to engineered environments too. But this the usual inadequacy of human language, the same word can have multiple, even conflicting meanings. Anyway, if you wish to convey some important concept better you should name it so it can be discussed instead of just pointing at other concepts and declaring them inadequate. This is what confuses me about this discussion, the lack of proposed improvements.
      - 7y ago
black_puppydog 7y ago
You're falling into the same trap there that GP was pointing out. Yes, any number of humans (starting at 1) will alter the state of their surroundings. But that doesn't make the surroundings "unnatural" in any way. It just happens that modern human societies tend to alter their environment in a way that it loses many of the properties that we long for, yet somehow we don't seem capable of changing the way we shape our environments in a different way. Instead we declare "that over there" to be "nature" which is to de desired and "this here" to be "the civilized world" and most people literally can't imagine any correspondence of the two.
msla 7y ago
> Considering our energy needs it's not possible for large amounts of people to cohabitate with nature without altering nature. And when you realize you can say the same thing about ants and termites, you will know what the person you're talking to is talking about. Making the distinction "Human vs Nature" implies Humans are special, set apart from any other species; even if you say that Humans are bad, being especially bad is still being special, and set apart.

jbay808 7y ago

Human habitation might well be natural, but fences aren't.

throwanem 7y ago
Then badger setts and beaver dams aren't, either.
- jbay808 7y ago
  That's not what I mean. Wander in the countryside for a while - outside of one of these national parks - and your wandering is likely to be interrupted at every turn by kilometres of chain-link fence, impassable highway, or some other artificial obstacle that spans a vast distance and makes you feel enclosed, rather than free. A beaver dam is no such barrier. I think the urge to explore the landscape goes much farther back than the colonial period, which is a very recent blip in human history. The author should look back not to 200 years ago for the source of that instinct, but 20,000 years ago or more - and consider what wilderness might have looked like then.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    Ask a fish how much of an obstacle the artifice of beavers imposes. We're violently in agreement, I think, inasmuch as we both find much obnoxious in the effects of human artifice as directed to modifying our environment. Where we differ is in the use of a special category "unnatural" to describe those effects we do not like. I don't argue that only the equation of "natural" with "desirable" is without value; I argue that "natural" is meaningless, as is its converse, and if we want to talk about desirability, we're better served to do so directly instead of confusing the issue with less precise concepts.
    - jbay808 7y ago
      I'm sure the fish would see them as an unnatural barrier and an annoyance, but I don't speak for the fish or think so much of their perspectives. Speaking personally as a human, there are few other vertebrate animals on Earth that can remotely pose a serious threat to my freedom, provided I exercise common sense precautions. That's probably why I'm most concerned with the human modifications to the landscape. I am forced to heed them. I'm sure fish would see it differently, although they'd still encounter a lot fewer beaver dams than human obstructions. See my other comment about how I would feel differently if beavers built dams across highways and shot people crossing them. I might be less inclined to treat beavers as a harmless part of the natural landscape then. We can make the natural vs unnatural distinction because humans have at least a partial hegemony over all other species now. Not completely; clearly microbes and insects are still out of our control. If there were intelligent alien invaders that started building walls and bridges and cages, I'm sure we'd label those as "unnatural" and "artificial" too, whereas a beaver dam is a natural curiosity. If there were other rival intelligent species sharing the Earth and reshaping it to their own vision, they probably wouldn't fit into the nature category. It marks a power dynamic, and it's an important distinction. Artificial structures are backed by the power of laws and property rights and other enforcement rules. That gives them a power beyond their material strength. Ants and beavers reshape the earth too, but the only thing stopping you from paving them over are objections by other humans. The other ants would hardly even retaliate. Edit: I guess the core of my point is that if you want to include a pair of wire cutters in with your bug spray and bear whistle and other hiking gear, so that you can freely pass through chain-link fences, then maybe you will start to view those fences no differently than rocks and fallen logs, just another curious structure erected by another fascinating mammal. I, personally, would never feel so bold.

bufbupa 7y ago

Man vs Nature is an old dichotomy; I'm not sure many people still hold it in their world view. It was just one step along the path of defining "self" vs "other". That differentiation is significant because it helps individuals identify threats vs allies. Colonizers may have defined indigenous people as "other" because they didn't have any shared cultural substrate that they could reliably cooperate through. Of course, that differentiation was likely varried per individual, and I'm sure there were many colonial individuals who detestested taking advantage of indigenous people. The exploration described in the article might be better described as drawing more of the "other" into "self". Finding that which was previously uknown to your "self" (perhaps your cultural upbringing, national identity, or collective societal knowledge) and understanding it. In this circumstance the understanding is of nature and environment, but people find this same fire in more modern differentiations as well. For instance, globalization is rapidly developing universally agreeable culture, and there are many people passionate about sharing and adding parts of their culture to that global identity. Your wish for cohabitation seems to me to be a similar desire of drawing "other" into "self", and will ultimately demand a similar degree of understanding to pull off.

throwanem 7y ago
I think many more people incorporate it into their worldview than recognize that they're doing so.
jerf 7y ago
"Man vs Nature is an old dichotomy; I'm not sure many people still hold it in their world view." It remains alive and well in the view that anything Man does is unNatural and simply by virtue of being unNatural automatically inferior to Nature.
earthboundkid 7y ago
> Man vs Nature is an old dichotomy I can't think of any lone man vs. the wilderness stories from before Ibn Tufail's Autodidactus (12c.), but I'm happy to be corrected.
- throwanem 7y ago