Barry Lopez

Seeking Reconciliation: Society's Disassociation with Nature and the Devastation that Follows

Kate Musgrave

May 11, 2009

“In a book like Arctic Dreams, I am not trying to promote a cause. I’m trying to do the same thing I think writers in Western culture have been doing for centuries and that is to help us reimagine our circumstances. So much of what gets called nature writing supports a cause. I don’t really have a cause except for the spiritual, biological and intellectual fate of my community.”

-Barry Lopez (qtd. in English D1)

As of the 21^st century, very little if any of the world remains untouched by human beings; that which hasn’t been in direct contact with humans has been influenced indirectly by the likes of pollutants in both the air and sea. The impact of human civilization has been felt across the planet. Our connection with that planet, however, has steadily dropped as we continue to exploit the wilderness for its resources and material wealth. Humans no longer consider themselves part of nature, but dominators of it. Through the works of Barry Lopez, particularly in Arctic Dreams, one might observe how this detachment from nature has not only affected human relations with the environment and wildlife, but also affected relations with other people and, ultimately, influenced individuals themselves.

Even while we continue to take great strides in exploring and studying the land and environments surrounding us, the perception of the land becomes increasingly estranged from that of society. “In all these journals, in biographies of explorers, and in modern narrative histories, common themes of quest and defeat, of aspiration and accomplishment emerge,” writes Lopez. “Seen from a certain distance, however, they nearly all share a disassociation with the actual landscape… In the most extreme forms of disassociation, the landscape functions as little more than a stage” (Arctic Dreams 358). This detachment is prevalent in both thought and action, studying the environment and living with it – or rather, not living with it. Appreciation for nature, particularly in regards to more exotic environments like the Arctic, has come to focus on the material uses it supplies for modern society rather than its innate value as an impressive entity of its own. “To overcome the absurdity – the meaninglessness and destructiveness – of man’s estrangement from the natural world is precisely the goal of Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams (1986)” (Slovic 137).

In his discussion of human disassociation from the land, Lopez was not considering mere geography. That the Arctic and other such extreme environments are geographically isolated from modern civilization is not news. The true concern, however, is that people no longer consider even the land and wildlife surrounding them to be part of their community. Surrounding environments and wildlife are controlled according to society’s whims and what resources can be made useful in a “civilized” context. “The burgeoning of information in the modern era is matched by no burgeoning of knowledge. The strong man… has nothing enlightened to say, no map to share but the one with his personal Eden at its center” (“Epilogue”). A vast majority of those who do come in contact with what might now be considered untamed wilderness tend to do so either out of necessity or in the form of a romanticized vision of “getting back to nature” in a quaint cabin for a weekend get-away but nothing more.

Lopez’s visit to a remote oil rig in the Arctic furthered this notion of disassociation: those living and working in the midst of such an exotic environment not only showed little interest in the land itself, but actually attempted all the more to separate themselves from nature, made possible by their perceptions of the land and the continued development of technology that permits such separation. “A supervisor at an isolated drill rig smiled sardonically when I asked him if men ever walked away from the buildings on their off-hours. “You can count the people who care about what’s out there on the fingers of one hand.” The remark represents fairly the situation at most military and industrial sites in the Arctic.” (Arctic Dreams 397) Modern civilization’s detachment from the land has become a given, and few but aboriginal and native societies consider their surrounding environment to be part of the community to be lived with rather than to be dominated and controlled.

While some environments are so harsh that this alone may pass as an excuse for such separation, the fact that some societies, i.e. Inuits, still thrive there implies that there must be a larger explanation at hand. The difference lies in our perception of the environment; where natives see the environment as dangerous only in the physical sense, modern society has much more of a tendency to view untamed environments (and the people who live there) as "primitive," a danger in both the literal and figurative sense. “We confuse the primitive with the inability to understand how a light bulb works. We confuse the primitive with being deranged,” differentiates Lopez. “What is truly primitive is in us and them (Inuits), savage hungers, ethical dereliction, we try to pass over; or we leave them, alone, to be changed. They can humiliate you with a look that says they know better” (Arctic Dreams 243).

Wildness as it exists in such uncontrolled lands as the Arctic risks reminding us of our own wildness, and we therefore must separate ourselves from the “primitive;” we must not admit or resign ourselves to the now-cliché “beast within.” Throughout history, society has concerned itself with separating untamed nature from human civilization, as can be observed in literature along the lines of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. As colonial explorers such as the character of Kurtz ventured into the mysterious jungles of central Africa, left to their own disposal, their ethics were put to the test. In Kurtz’s case, that unveiling of the primitive in his character was ultimately disastrous. “The wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion,” writes Conrad. “I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude – and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core” (Conrad 74). The threat of finding such a beast within oneself was – and is – considered too great a one to risk. Readers are warned that “[Kurtz’s] soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by Heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad” (Conrad 83). Thus, one must differentiate oneself, a member of civilized society, from such "primitive" natures; by disassociating civilization and nature, one might attempt to suppress the bit of wildness in oneself.

In order to handle such land, society has established certain perceptions so as to make it more manageable without having to risk living with it on less controlled terms. Lopez thus finds that “The course of discovery is guided by preconceived notions;” rather than explore the land to study and appreciate what it is, people have a history of seeking only what they wish to find and attempting to dismiss or restrain what it is that does not suit them, be that in reference to their own “wildness” or that of the newly discovered land (Arctic Dreams 294). “Arctic history became for me, then, a legacy of desire – the desire of individual men to achieve their goals. But it was also the legacy of desire that transcends heroics and which was privately known to many – the desire for a safe and honorable passage through the world” (Arctic Dreams 309). This yearning for a safe passage, however, well-intentioned or otherwise, has resulted in individuals donning blinders when looking upon the environment, voluntarily separating themselves from the land by choosing not to see what it is in all of its untamed glory.

“We turn these exhilarating and sometimes terrifying new places into geography by extending the boundaries of our old places in an effort to include them. We pursue a desire for equilibrium and harmony between our familiar places and unknown spaces. We do this to make the foreign comprehensible, or simply more acceptable” (Arctic Dreams 278). In doing so, the true character of the land is compromised to allow for a more digestible notion of it as humans attempt to convince themselves of their absolute understanding of and control over nature. Consequently, even the terms in which one depicts nature result in a disparaging of its characteristics: “Barry Lopez… notes that in the current climate even such a seemingly obvious notion as the American landscape is a concoction of the media and advertising industries: in truth, the American landscape is a product of many little landscapes, each with its local genius” (Kaplan). Instead, Lopez emphasizes the need for tolerance, an understanding and appreciation of nature as it is without our striving to alter or exploit it solely for our own purposes. “We need tolerance in our lives for the worth of different sorts of perception… and we need a tolerance for the unmanipulated and unpossessed landscape” (Arctic Dreams 313). Separating ourselves from the land, however, cannot completely deny nature’s innate characteristics – whether we approve of them or not – any more than such attempts to control nature and deny our own “wildness” can eradicate that sign of the “primitive.”

For all of the efforts to control the wilderness and the “primitive” nature that it symbolizes, it remains its own entity and amazing in its own right, regardless of whether or not people choose to recognize that. “We tend to think of places like the Arctic, the Antarctic, the Gobi, the Sahara, the Mojave, as primitive, but there are in fact no primitive or primeval landscapes. Neither are there permanent landscapes. And nowhere is the land empty or underdeveloped. It cannot be improved upon with technological assistance” (Arctic Dreams 411). The human conception of land is just that – merely a conception. Attempts to control the wilderness and find value only in its material wealth not only neglect the many facets of nature to be appreciated for their own sakes, but also fail to create a more “acceptable” image while simultaneously exploiting and destroying what really is there.

Lopez saw the Inuit way of life as proof of this self-knowledge resulting from their connection with the land and environment. “The people… have not abandoned the land and the land has not abandoned them… this archaic affinity for the land, I believe, is an antidote to the loneliness that in our own culture we associate with individual estrangement and despair” (Arctic Dreams 266). Lopez was not, however, the first to consider such an “affinity for the land” an “antidote to loneliness.” On the contrary, Henry David Thoreau, a forefather of American nature writing, also spoke of nature as a companion and comfort. “In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since” (Thoreau 150). As Lopez observes the modern disassociation from nature, however, it becomes clear that this ever-present comfort is no longer considered a factor in modern society; many people have instead chosen to wall themselves off from one of Thoreau’s favorite companions. With this, Lopez concludes that “someone someday will trace the roots of modern human loneliness to a loss of intimacy with place, to our many breaks with the physical Earth” (“Cold Scapes”).From this perspective, such detachment from our environment may thus be seen as a direct cause of loneliness, leaving us deprived even of the comfort of nature.

Exploitation of the land, while a significant concern, is far from being the only negative result of recent human disassociation with nature; while this realization offers further inspiration to change our current attitude, such intertwined concerns also have the potential to make the issue all the more complex. The solution as suggested by Lopez will understandably require a great deal of change in the modern mindset to truly have an impact, but the theory that lies behind it is amazingly simple. “Who will the inventors of peace be? … It will be some community where the close listener quiets the eager talker. Some community where deliberation and history are included in the same gesture that recognizes the insights of genius” (“Epilogue”). It is now time to not only listen to the voices of deliberation in society, but to listen to nature itself. Because our disassociation with the land is founded upon attempts to tame and control it and it is this disassociation that has led to such destructive results, it is time that we begin to strive more for an understanding of the land and less for domination of it.

“What is unique for us,” writes Lopez, “is that to a degree unknown in any animal before us our culture will affect our potential for survival” (“Adolescence” 77). In order to do this, however, it is necessary to change our way of thinking, particularly in terms of values. Lopez further explains this required alteration in Arctic Dreams: “What every culture must eventually decide… is what of all that surrounds it, tangible and intangible, it will dismantle and turn into material wealth. And what of its cultural wealth, from the tradition of finding peace in the vision of an undisturbed hillside to a knowledge of how to finance a corporate merger, it will fight to preserve” (Arctic Dreams 313). We can no longer “engineer” our way out of the destruction surrounding us – the destruction very much of our own doing (“Adolescence” 79). Instead, a new perception of nature is required, a perception that allows for the innate value of nature and its undeniable presence as a part of our community rather than a nuisance to be suppressed. “If we are to devise an enlightened plan for human activity in the Arctic, we need a more particularized understanding of the land itself – not a more refined mathematical knowledge but a deeper understanding of its nature, as if it were, itself, another sort of civilization we had to reach some agreement with” (Arctic Dreams 12).

By looking upon nature as “another sort of civilization we [have] to reach some agreement with,” Lopez is notably emphasizing the wilderness as its own entity having various undeniable facets of its own, valuable in and of its own right. “The ethereal and timeless power of the land, that union of what is beautiful with what is terrifying, is insistent. It penetrates all cultures, archaic and modern. The land gets inside us; and we must decide one way or another what this means, what we will do about it” (Arctic Dreams 411). Suppression of nature not only leads to its destruction, but also to society’s and our own; it is therefore unquestionably in our best interest to come to “reach some agreement” with nature rather than to continuously attempt to detach ourselves from it. Therefore, Lopez’s solution to the numerous environmental concerns facing today’s society is brief and clear: “reconciliation.”