Despite the extreme urgent and potentially positive reasons for a widespread adoption of the revised wilderness concept and a complete abandonment of the ―Received‖ wilderness idea, there is a crucial element that the revised idea misses, that prevents it from standing against Callicott‘s strongest argument in the current context, which I represented as ―claim E‖ at the start of this chapter. This argument is that the received wilderness idea of ―pristine, untouched, uninhabited nature‖ has such a strong hold over the hearts and minds of those fighting to defend wilderness, that any attempts to reform it will be doomed from the start, so embedded as it is in the historic struggle to protect it, and engraved in (American) law and most dictionary definitions. But this will only be true if the clearly communicated and understood need to correct this idea to the definition myself and others are working with fails to evoke emotions and thoughts with at least equal powers of conviction. And it is precisely here that the problem lies, for the ―received wilderness idea‖ does have within it a crucial element evoking such passions and conviction, that our revised notion, as it stands, lacks.
There is an ongoing conflict between those seeking to protect wilderness, who often become responsible for legislative decisions in this regard, and those who have never believed in wilderness—or at least in the need to protect it – in the first place, and who will continue, as much as possible, to go on destroying it. These others are satisfied that they are right (as they
are) in thinking that the ―Received‖ wilderness idea being defended is incoherent and not reflective of environmental or economic or political realities. There is something absolute in the Received Wilderness Idea – wilderness, by definition, is forever untouched, untouchable, pristine. There is something equally absolute in its outright rejection, a brash embrace of the economic and technological realities of the moment, as simultaneously the best thing we‘ve got, and an unstoppable force that will destroy any environment it cannot commodify sufficiently and replace it with one it can. Here, between the two, is a true struggle.
In comparison, the idea of a wilderness that can be inhabited by humans and open to appropriate levels of sustainable economic activity that may not be incompatible with the drives of contemporary societies seems insubstantial, vague, and lukewarm, and smacks of the kind of bureaucratic compromise where neither side can win, and everything proceeds sluggishly, going nowhere. How can one be passionate about something so mundane, so ordinary? The idea of wilderness has lost its extreme, its untouchable, unknowable quality of a romantically religious absolute—has lost its wildness itself! Whilst this may not actually be true, there is something deeply entrenched within people that needs this inner conflict to act, that needs the outer environment to reflect this inner conflict—I want it, but I cannot have it,
but we must save it, because we are destroying it! What is it in this received wilderness idea, that inspires such passions in people? The remaining two chapters of this thesis, in part, will attempt to answer this question.
It is an error to view the specific sense in which nature is out of control in wilderness environments as having no significance or consequence for the general, that is, universal
sense in which nature is out of human control. For that matter, it is also an error to immediately discount it as irrelevant and inconsequential for the potentially innumerable other specific senses in which this is so. This becomes much clearer, as will be seen, when it is shown how some key different senses in which nature is out of human control relate to two other senses in which this is so. These initial two senses are, firstly, in terms of nature‘s life- support capacity for human existence, and secondly, in terms of the tendency of human
behaviour to collectively destroy the capacity for this life-support. In fact, what I am arguing is that only when nature out of human control in wilderness environments is consciously
related not only to these two senses, butto the way in which nature is out of human control in general, can the revised concept have the impact required on thought, emotion, and communicative action sufficient to overthrow and make redundant the received wilderness idea. Only then can it be effective as the basis for wilderness protection and the possible and positive values inherent within this.
Wildness, as applied to nature, means the degrees to which it is free from human control. Since on the fundamental level, nature is out of everyone‘s control, all the time—that is, in
terms of the basics of what holds us together, of time and space, life and death, and things we either cannot predict or cannot avoid – human existence itself is fundamentally wild. The earth may be capable of sustaining human life without wilderness. Plantations and farmlands sufficiently rich might do the trick. But significant plantations may have to be free, in such a scenario, from excess logging in order to sustain the necessary life-support functions. Once established, however, what would be the sense in human beings remaining in control of their structure? The fact is that if allowed, with appropriate safeguards from a complete die-out, to return to a state of wildness, might not such reserves become more self-sustaining? Does not our existence depend on nature out of our control within us and outside of us? As a fundamental condition for human existence, it seems unlikely that it is even possible for us to
rid ourselves of the concept belonging both to those environments crucial for our survival and to the very facts of our existence – wilderness, or at least, wildness. If we keep chasing the pristine, impossible wilderness as the holy essence of nature-in-itself, then those who cannot see it are justified in doing what they like with those environments we seek to protect, since they can see that what we seek only exists for us. But unless we can properly discern the relationship between the wildness within ourselves, our cities and towns, and how we behave within, outside of, and towards wilderness environments, we will avoid neither the ludicrous reifications involved in the received wilderness idea, nor the tragedy of the final destruction of the world‘s last wilderness areas, but only the potential for renewal and transformation.
It is crucial that when we talk about and make decisions about wilderness, we understand the difference between these two concepts, reject the first in favour of the second, and suggest ways we might ensure and promote this crucial conceptual reorientation in future thought and decision making. In order to make these steps, however, it will be necessary to enquire into what we mean by nature. Only by getting a clear idea of what we mean by nature, and the kind of relationship we have with it, can we then understand what it means for nature to be out of our control. Specifically, we must enquire into the what it is in the experience of the places we identify as wilderness that seems to give nature itself such an elusive and contradictory quality, and what it is in the perceptions of nature we already bring to wilderness that gives rise to the confusions of the Received Wilderness Idea. By clarifying the significance of nature and the human-nature relationship, we clarify just what it is that can be wild for us.