Hi Jim, (and all) 

 Budiansky's  choice of the "environmnetalist" profile is peculiar BECAUSE
(capital 'BECAUSE' for Jim that cannot connect any characterization with
the reationalle that immediately follows) it is very special to SOME PARTS
OF the Anglo-American culture: If there are extreme environmentalists this
is because there are extreme environments, and that's perfectly natural.
The more living in unnatural environmnets gets to the
extreme, the more the people need to escape. (Explained more below).

ANYWAY, if there is such a thing as an environmentalists' profile at
all:
 1) Either Budiansky's version of the profile is true, in which case
Budiansky fails to explain why a love for nature is so universal, and the
hatred for too many people on earth is so universal too. I see nothing
wrong with loving nature even at Thoreau's way, and as Budiansky himself
says, and Jim repeats, that this feeling is valid, people have it.
 (And by the way, it MAY BE good science too, as some Biophilia
experiments show).
 2) If the profile is false, that is, if there are other kinds
of environmentalists, then Budiansky ideally would have to explain why he
chose so extreme examples. 

In any case, I DON'T BELIEVE that Boudiansky has all the history of
manhood in his hands when he writes 'the history' of wilderness loving.
There is surely much more than this that Budiansky refuses to see.
Budiansky describes the WESTERN 'history', and still, i believe, not all
of it. Of course, when wilderness was considered dangerous, it is normal
that people would be afraid to be eaten by beasts and would like to
conquer them, but this is only part of the story. 
The other part is that many natural events, like thunder, wind etc, have
been worshiped as GODS in many other non-european cultures, until up to
too recently. This worship of natural things tells a totally different
story. His 'history' is therefore not really universal. He exploits the
feeling of danger for their lives that people had, in order to falsly
support that people did not love nature (even beast-free). Too difficult
to swallow. 

Budiansky felt there is a revelation in the fact that human presence can
be good on earth. I couldn't disagree, because that's what i am doing
after all, restoration ecology. However, i think that Budiansky fails to
state WHY HE CARES for conservation, since he proves 'scientifically'
that there is no need to be one, except for to cater for human values 
of environmentalist loonies. First he says that virtually there is no need
for conservation except for only when we want it, and then he says that we
have to dusturb the land in order to achieve conservation (true but why we
need to bother at all is NOT explained, unless he is an under-cover
environmentalist). 
 Anyway, I REPEAT that although human intervention can be beneficial,
the human intervention that Budiansky describes, and the reationalle he
uses is dangerous and pretentious: <colon, Jim, in case you didn't
notice) from one hand he says that burning can save a species, and from
the othe hand he disputes that a species has to be saved at all (unless it
is a 'key' species). Why would he save the species anyway? Again, is he a
Muir-believer? What ARE HIS VALUES? Quickly, somewere in the beginning of
the book, he reveils something shallowly utilitarian, mumbling something
about medicinal drugs from wild plants, for example. Is this enough to
justify all this 'disturbance' he wants to acquaint us with? Or is it just
enough for him to prove that he has no 'spiritual' needs, but only
utilitarian? And, in the long run, why aren't spiritual needs utilitarian?
He does talk about value judgements, that are far from science.  He does
say that we do not have to save basically anything that we don't need or
that is not feasible. He agrees that nothing has to be saved if only
science is taken on board. THEN WHY DOESN'T HE ACCEPT THE VALUE JUDGEMENT
OF THE OTHERS (THE 'ENVIRONMENTALISTS')? Are his own value judgements
better than the others? In what way? That's incoherent (<Jim>). If he is
doing science, he has the right to criticize environmentalists, but he
does not have the right to propose any kind of conservation techniques, 
'in case we need it for one thing or the other', because then the
Environmentalists will come with their own techniques, and really,
according to Budiansky, it does'nt matter how many species will be saved.  
If he talks science, and if he believes that scientifically there is no
reason to save anything, then every intervention he does is unjustified on
scientific grounds. Why accuse only the environmentalists?


> In chapter two, "The Cult of the Wild," Budiansky discusses intellectual
> and environmental history that has led up to the "hands off" philosophy of
> environmental management in the late twentieth century.   Ultimately his
> goal in the second chapter is to answer the question posed in its first
> paragraph: "How have we come to believe things about nature that are so
> untrue?" (p. 27).

As i said, i believe that this is only part of the story. I agree with you
that there are people that are 'hands-off', but this is as Budiansky
agrees too, only when people are fed up with urban life (and I add:
Landlessness). Budiansky acknowledges the love of the Environmentalists
for rural life. HE LIVES IN A FARM HIMSELF BY THE WAY.

> 
> First he describes what many here and elsewhere might refer to as the
> "socially constructed" aspects of our (historically) very recent admiration
> for nature:
> 
> --"The modern-day admiration of nature is so nearly universal that it comes
> as a shock to discover of what recent vintage these feelings are.  For all
> but the last two hundred years of civilization, anyone expressing a
> conviction that wilderness contained anything admirable, much less that it
> was the embodiment of perfection, would have been considered eccentric, if
> not insane.  Before the end of the eighteenth century, mountains were
> universally disliked. 

I am not sure about this. THis looks more like the English rolling hills
approach which is not universal. Go and talk to Tibetan people and see if
they dislike the mountains. Besides, there is a whole lot of philology
around the running-down of mountains (e.g in the Mediterranean) 'due to
cultivation' (partially a great inaccuracy, depending on case). People
have been living in mountais for many reasons, but also for many
centuries. People have worshiped mountains. In the UK, people actually are
supposed to dislike woods too. This was my conversation with Brynn Green,
of Wye college. He tought in a Mediterranean Landscape Ecology course and
he believed that it is given that we would like open spaces in Greece,
since there are parts that are so dry. However, all Greeks are crazy about
the wilderness of the forest and the mountains. My great aunt is almost 90
years old, and since ages has a flat in Athens, but she keeps on going to
cultivate her garden in the village for 5 months a year - alone. She has a
trully utilitarian old-style village approach to land use, she does feel
that the town is easier, and she is not as educated to have ideological
constraints against civilization, capitalism and urban life. 
SHE JUST GOES TO THE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE EVERY SPRING AND STARTS THE
CULTIVATION CYCLE AGAIN AND AGAIN. WHY? (She is in no need for money or
the produce). 
That's what i call a healthy link with the land, of people that never
heard about Thoreau or Budiansky's type of ideology.  It is there, it
exists, and Budiansky and you should acknowledge this.


>The fact that nature (loving) is a modern historical phenomenon
> is something that modern environmentalists (especially those with
> primitivist leanings) seek to deny.  

As i said i don't believe this is accurate. However the very existence of
people that are in need for wilderness proves that there is something in
wilderness that Budiansky and his ideology can't provide.
It is perhaps their own value judgement, but, as i said, Budiansky cannot
do anything more but provide some sort of relief against guiltiness of
peole to dusturb nature and some prescriptions that are good ONLY because
we have created, as he admits, an unnatural world for most cretures.

>Budiansky writes:
 	"Many modern-day nature lovers, unwilling to acknowledge such a
> dubious parentage to their deepest feelings, have tried hard to establish a
> more ancient and noble ancestry to their beliefs.  Ancient
> hunter-gatherers, who lived in a state of 'balanced and harmonious'
> existence, altering 'neither the natural firmament nor the animals and
> plants that shared the land with them,' were the original lovers and
> worshippers of nature, writes the environmental historian and philosopher
> Max Oelschlaeger; Western civilization has forgotten these ancient truths
> in its ten-thousand-year pursuit of material progress.  Or if it was not
> materialistic capitalism that destroyed humankind's primordial reverence
> for the wild, then perhaps it was Christianity, individualism,
> agriculturalism, Jews, the Iron Age, rationalism, or possibly
> 'phallocentric society.'  All have been fingered at one time or another in
> this century by various environmentalist thinkers of various political
> stripes" (31-32).  [In a footnote to this paragraph, Budiansky adds, "For a
> discussion of environmental conspiracy theories and the search for lost
> traditions, see (Anna) Bramwell, *Ecology in the 20th Century*, 34-36"
> (Bud. p. 253).]
>

I don't see anything wrong with the above. I have already given you
reference of a book about 'anti-environmental' conspiracy (although i
would suspect that you know it from within!). All the above
have indeed shaped people's attitudes against too much human intervention
and for wilderness. Since it happens, it means it exists (my proverb).

>Budiansky: 
> 	"If nature's value rested upon its being a refuge from the evils of
> society, then nature, by definition, meant separation, the absence of man.

That's because they had the WRONG paradigm of the presence of HUMANS (or,
indeed, maybe 'MAN', as he -and you- prefer). All they saw around them was
corruption of a large scale, and that's what they described. My aunt in
her village did not see this corruption and did not describe it. 

> It was the very fact that man and all his follies were not to be found
> there that made nature estimable.  What Thoreau disliked about man's
> presence was not that it would interfere with or degrade critical
> biological processes; what he disliked about man's presence was its
> presence.  Thoreau disapproved of wealth, church, rules, voting, dinner
> parties, and young men not as smart as he who sought to join him on his
> walks.  he would tell the last that he 'had no walks to throw away on
> company.'  The link between environmentalism and escapism is an enduring
> one, and Thoreau's admiration of the wild as a place to turn one's back on
> the town can be heard in the words of David Brower, Bill McKibben, and
> other nature writers of our day" (37).
> 
> Budiansky sees traces of nature romanticism in such diverse
> turn-of-the-century phenomena as homeopathic water cures (38-9) and the
> personal hygiene reform movements led by such back-to-nature reformers as
> Sylvester Graham (of graham cracker fame) and herbalist Samuel Thomson
> (40).

All these are IRRELEVANT to what he wants to prove afterwards. His
'opponents' today are NOT the cold-water movement guys. When he refers to
globalization and free market economy, what he has in front of him to
challenge should be the (1995 equivalent of the ) anti WTO Seattle
campaigners, and  NOT Thoreau. Simple. We DO NOT LOVE NATURE
BECAUSE WE HAVE READ THOREAU or history. People love nature because they
love nature.
It is too narrow-minded to think that peoples of the earth were
brainwashed with naturalist's sermons, or romantic poetry and paintings,
because simply, for most people, these luxuries were UNAVAILABLE. 
But still they love nature.
> 
> Budiansky concludes his chapter about nineteenth century nature worship and
> the "cult of the wild" with an extended discussion of John Muir.  To give
> Maria-Stella and others an idea of what Budiansky is driving at in this
> chapter, allow me simply to quote several paragraphs here that occur near
> the end of Budiansky's second chapter:
> 
> 	"Even in his arguably more sober moments Muir's religion was
> unwavering.  Nature was a place to find God; nature *was* God.  As God was
> perfect and pure, so nature was perfect and pure.  There is 'perfect
> harmony in all things here,' he wrote; nature is the 'pure and sure and
> universal,' the 'song of God, sounding on forever.

I think this is in harmony with the Buddhist religion too. THis means
about 1/5 of the Earth, or something, i believe. Why Muir then? Can't he
see anything beyond his nose? -(or corporate curriculum of action?)

> 	"This sentiment survives virtually unchanged among the nature
> lovers of our day.  Asked by the Canadian environmentalist Farley Mowat how
> they came to devote their lives to environmental protection, one activist
> after another described a 'conversion' experience.  Mowat himself told how
> he 'glimpsed another and quite magical world--a world of Oneness.'  All the
> more so because it did not include people: 'When I came back from the
> Second World War, I was so appalled by the behaviour of modern man that I
> fled to the Arctic to escape him,' Mowat wrote.  'The world of non-human
> life became for me a sanctuary.'

Jim, if so many people tell this to you, you'd better believe
them!. If they do feel like this THERE IS A BLODY REASON, can't you see
this? Budiansky's rationalization, and even the species that would be
protected with his conservation prescriptions (which i don't radically
dispute in all cases), are immaterial compared with the need of peole to
enjoy wilderness. It just is so, and it is not an effect of any kind of 
brainwashing that can be attributed to Thoreau or Muir.
If people prefer wilderness to the town, then tha's their value judgement,
and Budiansky fails to see this, when he proposes his value judgements.

> 	"Such feelings toward nature are real and earnest and genuine.
> Thoreau and Muir struck a deep chord that resonates yet.  Those who fight
> these wild animals in an urban park; even Harvard biologist and
> environmental advocate Edward O. Wilson punctuates 350 pages on
> biodiversity with the argument that it should be preserved because
> 'wilderness settles peace on the soul.' 

Budansky sees it too. He fails to explain it, and he fails to acknowledge
it as something that has a right to exist in human souls and minds. Wilson
is absolutely right, wilderness DOES settle peace on the soul, and this is
the subject of Biophilia studies.
In the long run it DOES NOT MATTER even if our ancestors feared nature
(although i doubt it). What matters is today's reaction to urban life,
which has not happened before so much. Actually, Budiansky played with
dirty cards:
 He
can go back and narrate that 'there was no nature loving' prior to the
last 2-3 centuries, but of course he is on the safe side, since there was
also no extensive urbanization then, so that we would have something to
compare the present with. If urban life was the same in -say- 1200 AD,
people might do
exactly the same as we do today, because people may react in the same way 
to environmental pressures of any kind. The fact that the conditions
which make us do what we do today were not there then, does not tell any
tale about what human nature is made to do. 
If nowadays we are not happy with urban life, this means that we are made
to live differently (not that we have read Muir).

If you want me to reverse Budiansky's argument, i would say, that people
starting to appreciate more wilderness (say it is true), when urban
conditions became much more unhealthy than the countryside. Actually, the
colonization of mountains (which were not hated, i believe, just
inconvenient), was rapid when there was plague in towns. So if you want to
see it historically, people stopped loving man-made extreme environments,
when they got the plague there. (Today it is called cancer i guess).
So there is ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE IN PEOPLE FEARING WILDERNESS to the
people THAT FEARED THE TOWN. It may well be the same kind of reaction to
danger for their lives or health. In the past the danger was out there,
today the danger lies in here. 
Simple. People fled and flee from either, and go for the more peaceful
option each time.  If the town is dangerous for our peace of mind today,
then this is what we are afraid of. If we are in danger to be eaten by
lions, then we are afraid of wilderness. 


 But none of this is a very good
> measure of what constitutes ecologically sound, or even ecologically
> feasible, policy. 

Not any thoughts for contraception? NO invitation to the ad-busters?
 tsk-tsk!

 Religion answers a genuine human emotion, but it is not
> science.

I think Budiansky is too impressed about the 'religion' type of
naturalism. He completely forgets to address the rest, and this could well
be deliberate in order to create the impression of large contrasts.
In fact, our need to have a 'religion' of every kind is as a scientific
fact as it is our need to believe in science. 

> Maria-Stella wrote:
> >
> >ALSO, he is not coherent. He has a different approach in the beginning and
> >in the end of the book. In the end he becomes somehow a more normal
> >conservationist, when all the time before he comes to this he is accusing
> >conservationists.  I simply don't understand what he wants. THe clue is i
> >think that he wants to confuse the reader so that he passes his ideas.
> 
> The reason Budiansky may *appear* to have a different approach in the
> beginning of the book then at the end (if this judgment of Maria-Stella's
> is really true--I don't think it is) is probably because the first three
> chapters in the book are concerned with providing a historical overview of
> how we got to where we are, "environmental movement-wise."  At the end of
> the book Budiansky is concerned less with history than with giving concrete
> policy recommendations for the here and now (e.g. chapter nine,
> "Reinventing the Wild," which is about present day ecological restoration).
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by the statement, "he is not coherent."  If I
> were to say simply, "Maria-Stella is not coherent" and provide no further
> analysis to support that claim, would that be an adequate account of your
> (Maria-Stella's) thinking? 

Your paragraph above IS provocative: (<colon, which means BECAUSE>)
 I explain immediately after why he is incoherent, you give an answer, and
then you offend me allright. 
. And no, this is not just a
historical overview. It is a deliberate selection of extreme events that
are in fact born by a strictly Western way of thinking and living, either
pre-colonial or post-colonial. He thinks that Colonial europeans were
representative of what the world believes. Actually they did not even
represent Western Europe, in a way. Who were the colonists? Some of them
were the ones that had been kicked out of their commons at the time of the
Enclosures. Also, other desparate and poor people, except for the
genuingly greedy. Well, this is certainly not the representative coctail i
would chose to send to other galaxies if i wanted to describe Humans to
extra-terrestrials. 
You have also failed to explain why we like THE SUBLIME, and ARMCHAIR
FEAR: Today, we go and watch thriller movies. We literally bring the
sublime in our own house and enjoy it on our sofa. WHY DO WE NEED THIS?
Well, if you are in the evolutinary psychology list, you will hear a few
versions about this. By the way, other anthropoids to it too. They like to
watch horror when they feel safe. The sublime DOES give us pleasure.
If Budiansky dismisses it as 'unscientific', he is at least naive (<please
note conditional form in the beginnng 'if'>)

 You write, "I simply don't understand what he
> wants."  Well, that's partly what we are here to discuss.  <smile>  Just
> because you don't understand Budiansky's book does not necessarily mean he
> is "not coherent."  I happen to find him both coherent and persuasive.  But
> on that we can continue to agree to disagree.
> 

I think you are provocatively absurd BECAUSE you play with words. I did
not say that i don't understand Budiansky's book. I understand that he is
incoherrent, because he tries to support his 'disturbance' argument upon
a makeshift of a history that supposedly contradicts what supposed
environmentalists believe. All he is doing, is take extreme cases and put
them together in order to create huge impressions. 
IN ORDER TO SUPPORT THE 'DISTURBANCE' ARGUMENT, SCIENCE SHOULD BE ENOUGH,
AND THERE SHOULD BE NO NEED FOR HIM TO OFFEND NATURALISTS. 
THEN, HE GOES BACK AND ADVOCATES CONSERVATION, THE NEED OF WHICH HE HAS
DISMISSED RIGHT BEFORE ON SCIENTIFIC GROUNDS. 
If you have understood this, please explain. 

> >Essay to follow soon.
> >
> >Maria-Stella
> >
> 
> I look forward to reading your essay to follow soon, and in particular I am
> looking forward to your exegesis of Budiansky's third chapter, "Nazis,
> Planners, Eugenicists, and Other Ecologists." <s>
> 

Basically i write most of the essay here, slowly-slowly. I think the above
title is self-telling of his bias. Another great example is the way he
presents nature: YOu have quotted him already above (somewhere) for his
description of feelings that people had about the mountains (as if they
were universally representative). He has also said that this was the
impression of wilderness in the US too, as i understand. The people were
'savages' etc. That's in his section that he describes these feelings
against wilderness and forests. OK. 
On the other hand, he said also that in the US, everything was neat and
tidy like English Parks. So where was the wilderness?
I think i am not describing this accurately, because i don't remember the
exact pages, but it stroke me when i read the book.

> But in order to give people a sense of how Budiansky himself leads in to
> his discussion of turn-of-the-century ecology in that third chapter, I'll
> include the final paragraph from chapter two ("The Cult of the Wild") as a
> segue to our and Maria-Stella's discussion of "Nazis, Planners,
> Eugenicists, and Other Ecologists."
> 
> Budiansky writes (this paragraph follows immediately after ". . . Thoreau's
> day to ours" above):
> 
> 	"There are fewer true ascetics about these days; today's nature
> lover is more likely to try to save the rain forests by buying the correct
> brand of chocolate-and-nut-covered ice-cream bar than he is to try to save
> his soul by eating nothing but coarse flour for two years. 

Since when hermite-type of guys are representative for humankind?

 But attitudes
> toward conservation practice remain entangled in a web of introspective
> human sensations--the aesthetic love for nature's beauty, the spiritual
> search for solitude and peace and personal health, the nostalgic yearnings
> for a golden age.  And rather than tear away those strands of confusion,
> the science of ecology that arose at the end of the nineteenth century was
> to find itself caught in them" (43).

This 'golden age', 'paradise' etc, is so universal that is probably more
true than narrow (in time and space) estimations that science has to make
do with today. There is no need that there was a golden age. You have to
realize that people WANT TO BRING IT.    It does not matter if it is not
correct to say that people WANT TO BRING TI *BACK*.  
> 
> Enough for now.  Hope this helps further our understanding of Budiansky's book.
> 

So do i for you!

Maria-Stella



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