Civilize The Wilderness Essay, Research Paper

Civilize the Wilderness

Wilderness, why civilize it? This is an interesting question, and one that is hard to answer. Why not just leave the wilderness alone, and let it grow and decide it’s own beginnings and ends? Does civilizing the wilderness make it better or worse? In what ways is it better or worse if we leave it alone or it we civilize it? These are all excellent questions and are all worthwhile to think about.

Western culture has tried to civilize the wilderness for quite sometime now, but is it really something we should be doing? In the point of view of many, the wilderness should be civilized to accommodate for the increasing number of people in the world. We should also civilize it because we need the extra room and because we cannot live in uncivilized areas of the wilderness, at least not with all of the comforts of home. What effects will civilizing the wilderness now have in the future? Many questions can arise when contemplating civilizing the wilderness.

The wilderness is being civilized for one main reason. That reason is technology. Technology plays an important role in everyone’s lives today. Without it, we would not have computers, fax machines, cellular phones, and all of the modern conveniences that we have today. The fact is, that many people believe that the wilderness is like an unborn country. A country that has nothing and is striving to become more advanced. We see this as an opportunity to better it and make it seem like we are actually helping. But, are we really helping? In my opinion, no. I feel that we are destroying something natural and something of beauty.

In many ways we are making the wilderness worse by civilizing it. We put unnatural objects into the wilderness, and it destroys the wilderness’ natural beauty. Thoreau’s ideal is to pretty much leave the wilderness as it is. If you need to inhabit it, don’t use anything that does not come from within it. For example, Thoreau built his cabin from the trees that were in the wilderness that surrounded it. In this way, civilizing the wilderness is okay. The way we are civilizing it, is not okay. Too just clear-cut an entire forest, then build a house, an in ground swimming pool, and put up a satellite dish, is not exactly ideal to keeping the wilderness natural.

To destroy the beauty of the wilderness by civilizing it in the way that we are, we are throwing away a place that we can go and get away from it all. If we keep on civilizing the wilderness the way we are right now, who says that there will be any left in the future for us. Will all we have left are the images of the wilderness that the books we have read give us, or will we stop in time to save some wilderness? I’m really not sure, but I would like to see the wilderness survive and be able to exist with us, and not have us destroy it all.