Lucas Spelsberg (11/01): Reflection of Wilderness

Thoreau states that to go east would be to retrace our steps and that the west is a wild place while culture is of no use to us. He claims that we should reject Europe and move to the west and go wild Eisenberg shows this is fetishizing. There is no way we can go out into the wild and have this experience that Thoreau advocates without it becoming a culture. There is no use for us to try and live in harmony with nature or even separate nature and culture and make the opposites of one another. This preconception would only confuse the meaning of wilderness and wild with the word nature. No map could take us to "nature" even if it were a place. Wilderness can be found and rather than using nature to describe places we should use the word wild to describe places that are outside of our control. Everywhere we look is nature so it cannot help us when we say that we want to live in nature. Therefore it is problematic when we say we want to restore nature. Wilderness is a space that we leave alone. Nature is more of an idea that came from humans as opposed to the wild. Human construct just as the tower is. The Mountain is wild just like our creation while the Tower is constructed civilization just like our construction of "nature".

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