The Rediscovery of the Wild (MIT Press)
Patricia H. Hasbach
Language: English
Pages: 276
ISBN: 0262518333
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
We often enjoy the benefits of connecting with nearby, domesticated nature -- a city park, a backyard garden. But this book makes the provocative case for the necessity of connecting with wild nature -- untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed, self-organizing, and unencumbered and unmediated by technological artifice. We can love the wild. We can fear it. We are strengthened and nurtured by it. As a species, we came of age in a natural world far wilder than today's, and much of the need for wildness still exists within us, body and mind. The Rediscovery of the Wild considers ways to engage with the wild, protect it, and recover it -- for our psychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species. The contributors offer a range of perspectives on the wild, discussing such topics as the evolutionary underpinnings of our need for the wild; the wild within, including the primal passions of sexuality and aggression; birding as a portal to wildness; children's fascination with wild animals; wildness and psychological healing; the shifting baseline of what we consider wild; and the true work of conservation.
as hunter-gatherers of the African savanna in the Old Way as they did. One of the most impressive things about the Ju/wasi was their approach to Old Rule One. This involved their social system and knowledge of the natural world. Old Rule One is often translated as “survival of the fittest,” and if we are social Darwinists, when we apply this to human beings we frequently have in mind such things as personal strength, individual abilities, and readiness for combat. Fitness, of course, involves
monkeys, ants that are fed by trees, wasps that live their entire lives inside a fig fruit, gigantic damselflies that look like living fossils from the dinosaur era, giant caterpillars painted black and orange to warn off any animals stupid enough to make an attack, and spiders that look like a bird’s droppings; this is a biologist’s paradise. An important element of experiencing wildness is to feel vulnerable. In my Pennsylvania forest, I cannot recall in twenty years of research ever being in
vestibule. The vaginal opening is about dime-sized with two false openings, or pockets, on either side. And the bladder’s opening is also nearby, and much larger, within the vestibule. (Paulson, 2005) The zoo’s general curator, Dr. Nancy Hawkes (quoted in PhinneyWood.com, 2011), considers that “artificially inseminating an elephant Living Out of Our Minds 125 is a technique that enhances animal welfare.” Bruce Bohmke (quoted in Klein, 2011), zoo chief operations officer, states that
and recover patterns of human-nature interaction. Ecopsychology, 2, 59–66. Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In D. A. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization theory and research (pp. 347–480). New York, NY: Rand McNally. Kohlberg, L. (1984). Essays in moral development: The psychology of moral development (Vol. 2). San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row. Leopold, A. (1970). A sand county almanac. New York, NY: Ballantine Books. (Original
strategies. Much of the region, however, converted to Islam—or locally, Christianity—centuries ago, and continued to manage as well as the other societies did, in spite of the loss of the old religious guidelines. Conservation here was based on the commonsense need to manage whole landscapes. The traditional wet-rice agriculture could use less than 10 percent of the land; other forms of agriculture required forest fallow or forest creation; and people had learned to live by drawing on all classes