MEDITATIONS ON WILDERNESS
The Wilderness Experience as Intrinsically
Valuable.
Ernest Partridge
Quite frankly, I
have no clear recollection of when I wrote this
unpublished and unsubmitted paper. Best guess: early 1970s.
Abstract: Wilderness can be defended
in terms of the intrinsic value of the experience that is
gained through encountering it. This paper presents an
account of the immediate phenomenological qualities of the
wilderness experience and the judgmental insights and
personal commitments derived therefrom.
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Wilderness has been defended as both something useful and
instrumental and something to be loved, cherished, and preserved for
its own sake. The list of benefits resulting from "wise use" of the
wilderness is long, well articulated, and, by now, quite familiar.
However, many preservationists suggest that it is as rude and
unworthy to ask of the wilderness: "what is it good for? What can I
get from it?" as it is to entertain such questions about one's
spouse or one's children. They prefer the response of Thoreau: "This
curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is
convenient: more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be
admired and enjoyed than used."
While it is one thing to affirm the intrinsic goodness of
wilderness, it is quite another to justify it. Indeed,
justification may be misapplied and pointless, since intrinsic value
might not be arguable by an appeal to other values. To offer
normative support of a value is to presume that the value is
derivative; that is, not intrinsic. While an intrinsic value can be
examined and recognized, it is not likely to be found as the
conclusion of an argument It is, in this sense, in the nature more
of a datum (like pain or yellow) than of an assertion
-- something one has, rather than something that one
derives.
A PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WILDERNESS
EXPERIENCE
And so, perhaps the best approach to a
justification of the intrinsic worth of wilderness may be through an
account of the experience of wilderness. It should be an account
detached, as much as possible, from second-hand reports of
the experience, and based, as much as possible, upon the
recollection of feelings evoked directly by that experience.
To do this, I will call upon the nearest and most vivid source at my
disposal: my own experience. I will attempt, at the outset at least,
to relate this experience with the least possible amount of
preconception or post-analysis. In other words, my approach will be
phenomenological. Following this exercise, I will then remove
the phenomenological "brackets" and attempt to account for and
qualify this experience. This is, of course, a thought- experiment
that you might wish to try yourselves. I heartily recommend it.
As I reflect back upon my experience of
wilderness, I seem to recall these features:
b) There is a feeling that the context about
me is indifferent to me -- and yet that I belong here.
Not that the wilderness is either friendly or hostile to me, but
that it can well accommodate my simple needs and suffer my
undemanding presence within it. With this feeling, as with the
previous (a), I gain a sense of humility without
humiliation.
c) A sense of permanence better of
timelessness, even in the presence of processes (e.g. rain
and wind, cloud movement, river currents and rapids, etc.).
Natural processes are thus felt to be part of a timeless pattern
-- a permanence of changes2. There is a feeling that
the wilderness exhibits the primeval conditions of my being --
conditions that preceded my race, and which will survive
whatever brief desecrations that my race may put upon it. (Of
course, I am describing here a response that is discursive
and not phenomenological. I would defend its inclusion here by
suggesting that there is a feeling tone evoked by the wilderness
experience that constantly generates this reflection).
d) There is a feeling of being in and
of the natural context, rather than being a spectator apart
from it. I am in dynamic interaction with my
environment, and I feel "at one" with it. The terms
"detachment," "abstraction," "isolation," and "completeness"
which aestheticians are apt to use to describe the experience of
art objects -- these terms seem not to apply to the wilderness
experience. Rather, as Ronald Hepburn observes, in nature one is
"both actor and spectator, ingredient in the landscape and
lingering upon the sensation of being thus ingredient, playing
actively with nature and letting nature as it were play with him
and his awareness of himself."3
e) There is a feeling of distinction between
necessities, conveniences and encumbrances.4 While
this too might seem to be a judgmental response, the affective
core is the feeling of indifference, or even of distaste, toward
things and habits that I am used to, or which are important to
me, in "artificial" contexts back at my civilized home. For
example hearing an airplane engine or seeing a contrail while in
a desert canyon, or hearing a transistor radio or trail-bike
while in the forest.
f) The wilderness experience seems to share
qualities described by the mystics: a harmony and unity among the elements of the natural context, and of
oneself with the context; a feeling of infinity, of ongoingness, of ever-still-more; a feeling of
un-threatening ego-loss, of desireless serenity,
of nirvana.
g) As a consequence of these feeling, and yet
correlative to them, there is a feeling of affirmation
toward these experiences, and toward the environment that evokes
them. There is a feeling that wilderness, and the experience
thereof, is worthwhile and good. It would seem
quite correct here to describe this feeling as a love of
the wilderness environment. Missing from this response is the
feeling of instrumentality. If, while feeling this
affirmation toward nature, one's companion were to ask, "but
what is it all good for?" -- one would think the remark a
joke at best, and outlandishly philistine and insensitive at
worst (albeit I must suspect that the remark is likely heard
quite often in the company of surveyors of the Army Corps of
Engineers).
It would appear that we have succeeded in
identifying "the intrinsic worth of nature" as a component of the
experience of nature -- at least to this observer. Unfortunately, it
is not at all that simple, for while the feeling of intrinsic worth
might be a datum of the experience of nature, we might still be
called upon to determine whether this "feeling of intrinsic worth,"
is in fact worth having. We will return to this question at
the close of this paper. Let it suffice here to note that while the
feeling of the intrinsic worth of nature might indeed be a component
of the experience of nature, the question of what we are to make
of this feeling is an additional problem -- and a vitally important
one at that. To this problem, we now turn.
ASSESSING THE WILDERNESS EXPERIENCE
As we allow discursive judgment back into our
contemplations, what then are we to make of this account of the
experience of the wilderness? In reviewing this list, I find the
following noteworthy characteristics of the experience:
i) We often find a "unity in diversity" -- a
contrasting pair of responses that are somehow consistent. And so we
encounter (in item a) personal finitude and diminution
without dread; or (b) an indifference of nature, yet
with a belonging to it; or (c) a sense of timelessness
in the midst of process; or (f) serenity in the
presence of vastness. (Students of the Philosophy of Art will
recognize "unity in diversity" as a familiar criterion of aesthetic
judgment).
ii) The experience is intensely personal,
but not in the sense of being "ego-involved" -- that is to say, an
encounter with wilderness may involve a large compass of a person's
attention and behavior. A wide spectrum of feelings and attitudes
may be affected by the experience. One's evaluation of himself, his
possessions and his acquaintances may be materially altered by the
perspective afforded by wilderness. Because the wilderness
experience has powerful influences upon, and large implications for,
one's behavior and outlook, the natural environment is commonly
looked upon by some with enthusiasm and love, and by others with
dread and revulsion.
iii) The wilderness experience is
"knowledge-contingent." Our perception of the natural environment is
influenced by our past experience with, and our understanding of,
nature, With increased technical competence, a mountain slope looks different to a skier, a rapid
looks different to a
kayaker, a cliff face looks different to a rock climber.
Further, a knowledge of the processes at work in nature will affect
one's perceptual assessment of nature. Hepburn illustrates the point
well:
Suppose I am walking over a wide expanse
of sand and mud. The quality of the scene is perhaps that of
wild, glad emptiness. But suppose that I bring to bear upon
the scene my knowledge that this is a tidal basin, the tide
being out. I see myself now as virtually walking on what is
for half the day sea-bed. The wild glad emptiness may be
tempered by a disturbing weirdness.5
iv) It would appear that an encounter with nature
does indeed add unique and valuable dimensions to human experience,
understanding and judgment. If this be questioned, then look again
at our list of encounter experiences. We note there the feelings of:
-
Personal finitude and limit before
vastness.
-
Belongingness to a context that is
nonetheless indifferent to us.
-
Humility without humiliation.
-
Permanence and timelessness.
-
Encounter with the primitive conditions
of one's being, and a feeling of harmony and unity with them.
-
Distinction between necessities,
conveniences, and encumbrances.
-
Serenity and desireless contemplation.
-
And finally, a feeling that something
independent of ourselves -- something that precedes and survives
us -- is worthwhile and deserving of our admiration and love.
With this inventory of experiences in mind, I
would then ask once more: (1) Can these experiences, in their full
breadth and depth, be had in any way other than by an encounter with
wilderness? (2) Are these experiences worth having? Are they enough
worth having that we should forever preserve the possibility of
ourselves and our posterity having them -- worth enough that we
should save and protect a significant remnant of our wilderness?
I leave these questions to your own
contemplation, as perhaps I must. But I leave them with these
further considerations: In reviewing this list, do you find
experiences described therein that you would judge worth having? Of
those experiences so judged, do you find it pointless and
impertinent to ask "What are these experiences good for? If
your answers are affirmative, have you not also affirmed the
proposition that nature and the experience thereof are intrinsically
worthwhile?
CHALLENGES AND REBUTTALS
I
"Your list of encounter experiences of nature is
just that: your list of experiences. The list is subjective,
personal, idiosyncratic. As such, is it not without any valid
application to the experiences of mankind in general?"
That this list is subjective and personal, I will
readily agree. After all, I compiled it by the method of
introspection. That it is idiosyncratic and not applicable to
general experience is a point that I would dispute. My answer to the
charge is quite direct: my claims are open to objective
investigation. One such avenue of investigation would be to study
the writings of those who believe that nature is intrinsically
worthwhile (e.g. Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Robinson Jeffers, Henry
David Thoreau, John Muir, David Brower, etc.). We would then ask,
are their experiences of nature at all similar to those that I have
outlined above? My impression, drawn from my personal experience and
study, is that they would generally concur with this list. The
reader is invited to pursue this investigation personally.
I am not, of course, arguing that all persons
have these experiences of nature. Surely we all know of individuals
who are repelled by natural wilderness. What I am suggesting is that
those who are attracted to wilderness share similar responses, and
that the list that I have compiled characterizes some prominent
elements of this response.
II
"Even if we grant that the experience of
wilderness is an agreeable one and that it is felt to be worthwhile
in itself, is this reason enough to preserve wilderness? Is this
worth the of preservation?"
This challenge rests upon the sound assumption
that it is not sufficient for moral approbation that an experience
appear to be good-in-itself. For if the feeling of
non-instrumental worth bestows value upon an object or an act, then
the miser's money, the despot's power, and the sadist's cruelty must
be judged good. Surely this will not do. For the behavior of the
miser, the despot and the sadist has consequences which exact
a moral cost far in excess of the positive personal feelings enjoyed
by the agents. All of which is to say that the "intrinsic worth" of
miserliness, or despotism, or cruelty, is quite simply not worth
it!
On the other hand, a doctor may gain intrinsic
satisfactions of recognition and approval through his practice, or a
scholar might gain the intrinsic joys of contemplation and
understanding -- and in these cases the additional extrinsic results
are beneficial. In brief, then, the intrinsic value alone of an
object or an act should not be sufficient of itself to cause us to
approve or to condemn that object or act.
And so we might be well advised to ask: What,
additionally, are the likely effects of this experience of the
intrinsic value of nature?" "If one has a love of wilderness and
believes nature to be intrinsically worthwhile, how is this likely
to effect his personal behavior, and how is such an attitude, if
widespread, likely to effect the well-being of a society?" These, I
would quite agree, are separate questions to the question of
"intrinsic worth," but they raise problems which we must pursue if
we wish to evaluate the total value of the wilderness experience.
Clearly, wilderness can be hoarded and the
preservation of it can have socially disruptive effects. Thus the
land baron may summarily execute any and all of the starving
peasants who poach the game in his private forest preserve.
Similarly, a nation can starve for resources and food if large
sections of wilderness are "locked up" and protected from human use.
On the other hand, wilderness can be "loved to death" -- witness the
destruction of ecological communities in Yellowstone Park and the
imported smog in Yosemite Valley.
But to say all this is to reiterate what we
already know too well: That the preservation of wilderness exacts a
cost. Even if the wilderness experience is truly worth having, we
must "pay" to preserve it. We will have to control, at long last,
our population and restrain the impact of our technology upon the
environment. We will have to take positive steps to curtail the
exploitation of the remaining wilderness and improve the already
deteriorating remnants of the natural environment. And we will have
to invest in programs of education that will instill an appreciation
and love of the natural environment, and a widespread willingness to
preserve it.
We argue here that wilderness, and the experience
thereof, are intrinsically worthwhile, not that they are absolutely valuable, to the exclusion of all other values. If we
can successfully defend, and teach, the intrinsic value of
wilderness, then we might hope that wilderness values will be
tallied with other values and have a significant place in the
planning and the unfolding of future human destiny. We would further
urge that wilderness values not be assessed primarily in terms of
monetary cost -- a contest in which, according to the rules of the
game, the wilderness would be fated to lose.
In posing the question, "Is the experience of the
intrinsic value of wilderness worth the cost of having these
encounters?", let us once more review our list of experiences. Then
let us ask, "Will a person so sensitized and aware of his natural
element and thus of himself be inclined to add to, or to detract
from, his own well-being and the welfare of his society?" "Will the
intrinsic values of the experience additionally generate some
instrumentally desirable attitudes and commitments?" "What should we
be willing to pay in order to preserve the possibility of enjoying
these benefits, both intrinsic and extrinsic?" Again, I leave the
answering of these questions to the reader's own contemplation. My
own feelings on this matter should, by now, be manifest.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. A feeling not shared, I
would suppose, by certain engineers and bureaucrats who often seem
to be nauseated and offended by an encounter with a piece of
unspoiled wilderness, existing quite well without their sufferance.
2. I am able to feel this
sense of permanence even when paddling on a river due to be
impounded, or when hiking in a forest due to be clear-cut. this is
perhaps accountable to the background awareness that this bit of
wilderness, vulnerable as it is, is but a sample of others,
exhibiting like qualities.
3. Ronald W. Hepburn.
"Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature," in Harold Osborne (ed),
Aesthetics in the Modern World, (New York: Weybright and Talley,
1968), p. 51.
4. "Most of the luxuries and
many of the so-called comforts of life are not only dispensable, but
positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." Henry David
Thoreau, Walden, (Economy).
5. Hepburn, op. cit., p.
55.
