I’ve written much on the definitions of “wilderness” and “wildness” and the simple word “wild.”  The culture at large misuses most of these words to describe “wild gangs” (of kids and adults) or “all of them (kids) are wild.”  Once again - the very image of a wild creature is distorted - the actual meaning of these very important words - lost.  

The average person has no idea how the word meanings in his brain affect his behavior - his attitudes - his philosophy - his psychology about life - about the creatures who exist in the last remaining wild places on earth.

Different Faces

The faces on the men who fought in WW2 had a wildness.  A wildness that came from hard physical labor - spending hours in the hot sun - alone.  That has all disappeared - even from the faces of young men who still come from the land: the remaining agrarians in America.  Life has gotten much easier physically as it’s gotten much harder intellectually.  One wonders about the actual toughness of today’s Army.  Most of them - including the officers - look like they’re out of shape.  Their faces are soft.  They know anger - the can swear as well as any generation - but the fierceness that was needed to beat the Japanese and the Third Reich - is completely missing from their faces.  The Japanese and German soldiers of WW2 possessed a fierceness that is missing in the faces of the men in those country's as well. 

Instinct

In the movie Instinct (which stars Anthony Hopkins as a man in Africa trying to understand the gorillas) there is a scene where several prison officials take the Hopkins character to a zoo where a few gorillas live.  The Hopkin's character asks them to look at a big gorilla's face.  “He’s dead,” says the Hopkin’s character.  “All the spirit of life - is gone.”  The fierceness needed to live in the wild was gone because life got soft in the zoo.  His food was brought to him.  A mate was brought in when the zoo wanted breeding to occur.  Clearly the Indians got to know actual wild animals.  Got to revere them.  Included them in their rituals and sacred dances.  In short - picked up the fierceness from them that was needed to survive the toughness of life.

I believe that the wild and the wild creatures who survive there are needed to teach us how to get tougher - not in a way to beat up people - but to endure the ever-increasing difficulties of the modern world (learning a marshal art does not get it done).  Today - many young people stay at home for years after college.  One study said that over 50% of college grads move back into their parent’s home.  Think of that - HALF of them can't face the world.  College grads aren’t prepared intellectually, physically, or psychologically, for the 21st century.  The modern school system - at all levels - is not preparing young people for the world they must face.  It seems that "Most Will Be Left Behind" is a truer slogan.  Mom brings them their food.  Mom does their laundry.  Dad complains about them - but feels superior in some strange satisfying way.  

As more and more people put off taking responsibility for their own lives (this social-symptom is pandemic internationally) - they're own behavior and attitudes - they continue to abuse the natural world.  If they feel like throwing something out of their car while driving down the road - they throw it.  Each year the various states send out crews to pick up things thrown out of cars along the Interstate Highways that corridor through them.  Thousands of tons of every conceivable item is found strewn about for hundreds of miles on both sides of the highway.  But off those well-beaten highways are tens of thousands of roads that remain littered with things.  No one is picking the stuff up.  Animals get to it - eat what is edible - suffer from much of it - and all those people who threw out the stuff remain oblivious to what they’ve done. 

Thoreau's famous statement - made in about 1850 - "In wildness is the preservation of the world" - has taken on an ominous sense as we begin the global cultural wars that many scholars believe will dominate the 21st century.  Since Thoreau's time the population of the world has multiplied over 6 times.  To survive - people are going to have to get dramatically tougher.  Their inner being is going to have to grow fangs (a metaphor for fierceness).  But where can we go and get tougher inside?  Pascal said "All the woes of man are the result of his inability to spend time alone in a quiet room."  People can't stand quiet.  The average person today can't stand to be alone.  They watch TV for hours everyday - as a companion.  Or they're "hanging out" with friends.  The inner makeup of people is wanting - and they know it.  What to do?   When they go to the woods - they go on well-managed trails produced by the Forest Service.  What is needed is to spend time alone in real wild places.  It means saying YES to the fact that we're afraid of things.  To overcome any fear is not easy.  But spending time alone - in quiet wild places - which means no media for long periods of time - not even a radio - is a starting point.  More on this theme in future posts.