In this paper, we are analyzing two articles, “The Trouble with Wilderness” by William Cronon and “On the Search for a Root Cause: Essentialist Tendencies in Environmental Discourse” by Jeffery C. Ellis. We will compare and contrast these articles, analyze which one is better and provide solid reasons for the argument.
In the first article, William Cronon points to the potential danger that is associated with wilderness. According to him, humans have evolved and started living in the civilized world. We have left the uncivilized life of the jungle and started living in villages and towns. The authors’ idea in this writing is that if we have left the uncivilized life of the forest, we should completely separate ourselves from nature if we want to be completely civilized. We cannot live in a civilized society and at the same time think that we belong to the uncivilized that we were living in before. The author argues that we cannot cut ourselves off from nature. If we do, we will be only admirers of nature and will not care for its protection. His idea about wilderness is that we need to find a midway solution between civilized life and wilderness. We cannot opt for just one and live happily as the basic relation to nature will keep pulling.
The author Jeffery Ellis, on the other hand, describes a different concept. He believes that cultural understanding of nature can give rise to many landscape issues. He argues that oversimplification of environmental issues is wrong as the earth has a variable ecological history. He argues that if we want to protect nature, we have to first analyze nature in ourselves. The people who make policies about environmental destruction or its preservation need to choose between the costs and benefits of nature destruction on the basis of whether it will be beneficial to America or harmful and whether it will empower or slow down economic development. He argues that the love of nature in our minds keeps us emotionally attached to nature, but it does not help preserve it. There is always a need for balance between how much we choose to construct of destructing nature. He used the concept of palimpsest to answer the crisis, which describes that we are seeing nature and deciding about it without having enough knowledge as the actual purpose has vanished. Using palimpsest to describe the environmental crisis, a mess of social, political and scientific complexity will arise.
In my opinion, the arguments of Ellis, as compared to Cronon, are much more logical. If nature has reached us in varying ways and we do not fully understand the spiritual relationship of nature, how can we judge whether it should or shouldn’t be varied? Ellis’s logic that we first need to find the relation of nature against Cronon’s idea to accept both options (living in nature and without it) partially is more logical as without finding a reason for something, directly jumping inside is unnecessary. Also, the understanding that by destroying nature, if we are looking at the greater good, we should carefully analyze whether the pros are more than the cons. And by answering this question we can understand that not always preserving nature can be an option, we also have right to live in civilized society. Both Cronon and Ellis are in support of preserving the environment, but Cronon’s concept is strict without consideration of positive effects; Ellis, on the other hand, describes how it can affect social, political, and economic the American people and also provides reasons that there can be a time when government officials are left with but no choice to adopt one option which sometimes is beneficial and sometimes not, but we first need to answer where we stand in preserving the environment? Are our actions indirectly against it? And whether or not we want to live in a purely natural environment.
Works Cited
Ellis, Jeffrey C. “On the search for a cause: Essentialist tendencies in environmental discourse.” Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the human place in nature 266 (1996): 258-69.
Cronon, William. “The trouble with wilderness: or, getting back to the wrong nature.” Environmental History 1.1 (1996): 7-28.
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