WILDERNESS AND CIVILIZATION
...ause they steal sheep, otherwise he will have wood filled with infected and ill animals. Same with deserts or rainfalls. They are all unique and they weren’t built in a second just because of wish of somebody. We now have the huge heritage of ecological problems, all of them resulting in global warming. Finally, when we go too far in fighting wilderness, we get the opposite result. The third reason is recreation. In the world of constantly growing population people experience more stress than even several thousand years ago when hunting a mammoth. Sometimes modern man needs a rest in quiet atmosphere, think of returning to his roots and smell the warm air streaming from the heaps of the fallen leaves in the wood. Today in the nearest shop you may find audio recordings of rain, wind, sea or birds singing meant for relaxation. This again proves the constant human desire to be with nature. The best relaxation happens when we go to a wood for a picnic or go hiking, go to the sea, etc. On September 3rd, 1964 a Wilderness Act was signed. Since than, many wilderness zones were created to preserve wilderness. But the question is not only in preserving wilderness in one place. We need wilderness every day. Most people like having a lawn in front of their house and like when tress stand along the street, giving shadow during hot summer days and scratching windows with its branches during the storm. That is why we need preserving nature every day. We need more awareness, though lately this topic was very actual one. Again, when we talk about combining wilderness with civilization we need to compare to concepts of philosophy: concept of Eastern garden and concept of Western garden. Maybe this is not very relevant at first sight, but if you think a little and then compare nature in cities of West and East, you will find the complete difference between them. Concept of Western garden says that when we let nature into our life we adapt nature. We like bushes to be round or square, which is not natural, but looks more accurate, we don’t want to see weeds in our garden, nevertheless weeds are the part of nature, too. We want nature to look the way we want to. And here is where wilderness turns into civilized substitute of nature. On the contrary, of you come to Japan, for example, you will find that Eastern people like to accept nature and wilderness as it is. They are concerned that your garden needs to look natural, like human being never touched it. So analyzing this we come to a question – what is the right way to cooperate with nature? Do we let it in as it is or adapt it? Surely, there should be some balance between these ideas, because not many people would like to invite cockroaches into their bedroom. Not many people are likely; any more, to look upon what we call "progress" as an unmixed blessing. Just as surely as it has brought us increased comfort and more material goods, it has brought us spiritual losses, and it threatens now to become the Frankenstein that will destroy us. One means of sanity is to retain a hold on the natural world, to remain, insofar as we can, good animals. Americans still have that chance, more than many peoples; for while we were demonstrating ourselves the most efficient and ruthless environment-busters in history, and slashing...