the garden analysis
...een accused of trying to live with zero impact. Zero impact?! Who wants to have zero impact . . . . ? who can have zero impact? No man is an island, and all the same, no one lives on one. As the reading alluded to, Environmentalists and Consumerists alike (those who fight for the preservation of the earth and those who fight for human’s right to manipulate it) seem to forget that humans are animals too. We are natural – our cars are made of natural things in that everything, at some point, came from the earth …and moreover it is in our nature to drive the car in that transportation is essential to our life. Whether we like it our not, the fruits of the human intellect are as natural as a carved bone or straw hut. This train of thought complicates things. For those who subscribe to the wilderness ideal, humans live variably in transit between total consumption and complete care and preservation, much in the way that my life can be characterized. The result, however, is total negligence. For those who ascribe to the Idea of the Garden, the relationship with nature is not love/hate, or on/off – its one of respect. It promotes the thinking that nature respects us humans as much as we respect it – that no nature is pristine and that all nature is pristine. It deals with the way things are, not the way things should be. And that’s the main distinction. An environmental restorationist, whether they like it or not, never creates pristine nature - because they created it! Who is anyone to think that they can be both responsible for and respectful of nature. We are not its parents, nor are we its children, we are its peers. As such we should ...