Evolution of Environmentalism

1
Evolution of Environmentalism in America
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Founders Came with 2 Basic Sets of Ideas (Focus
Western Intellectual Tradition)
Biblical Teachings Myth Lasting Imprint on
American Thought
3
Pre-Christian Perception Survival was of Utmost
Concern

• Positive
• Paradise
• Often on islands or otherwise enclosed, pastoral
  and bountiful
• Persian Gardens

• Negative
• Wilderness as dangerous and beyond control
• Association with the supernatural
• Greek God Pan

4
Myth

• Link between supernatural and wilderness
• European trolls of Scandinavia
• followers of Lucifer
• Anglo-Saxon Beowulf Epic
• man vs. blood-drinking fiends

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Wilderness fraught with danger
Paradise as pastoral and bountiful
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Old Testament Ideas

• Negative
• Wilderness is untamed nature
• usually as a symbol for evil

• Positive
• Wilderness as sanctuary

7
Negatives

• wilderness is untamed nature, symbol for evil,
• Adam and Eve

• harshness of nature importance of water,
  symbolic value of water e.g., baptism

8
Positives

• Wilderness as sanctuary
• Wilderness as a way to get closer to God
• Wilderness as a proving ground for the faithful
• Moses led Jews out of Israel and into the
  Sinai where God revealed himself

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New Testament Ideas

• Positive
• John the Baptist and Jesus

• Negative
• John the Baptist and Jesus

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New Testament Ideas

• Negative
• John the Baptist suffered the physical
  challenges of the wilds of the Jordan River

• Jesus tempted by the devil
• in the wilderness
• Positive
• John the Baptist sought wilderness to make
  ready for
• the Messiah
• Jesus experiences spiritual catharsis in the
• wilderness

St John The Baptist Pointing Out Christ in the
Wilderness - Salvator Rosa
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Medieval Christianity Continues the same Themes

• Negative
• St. Francis man as equal to animals
• Branded as a heretic

• Positive
• Monastic orders seek isolation, havens in the
  wilderness

edonart.jrmhost.com
ipo.asu.edu
12
Pioneers come with basic bias against Nature

• Nature/wilderness
• constituted a
• physical threat (wild animals/native
• americans)
• Nature/wilderness
• constituted
• a moral threat
• (barbarism)

Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter, 1850 Hester
Prynne Pearl imp of evil, emblem and product of
sin
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Appreciation of Nature Begins In 1700s in
Europe Triggered by the Enlightenment (sublimity)

• Romanticism
• Picturesque appreciation of untamed nature
• Deism nature demonstrates Gods omnipotence
• Primitivism Defoe R. Crusoe 1719 Rousseau
• Emile 1762

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Attractiveness of America to European Intellectual
s

• Fed romantic
• notions of
• wildness
• De Tocqueville
• and Chateaubriand
• visit and write about
• America

15
Late 1700s Early 1800s

• Americas inferiority complex sets the stage for
  an interest in nature a new nationalism
• Adams important quotes
• James Fenimore Cooper
• The Pioneers, 1823 and remaining
  leatherstocking tales

Abigail Adams
samson.kean.edu
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The Transcendentalists beyond romanticism and
nationalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David
Thoreau nature is a symbol of the spirit look
through and beyond nature
man
spiritual
material
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Recap

• Duality of Judeo-Christian teaching
• Duality of medieval Christianity
• Fearful medieval myths
• Duality of Protestant beginnings in America
• Calvinism/Puritanism
• Escape from religious persecution
• Manifest Destiny
• From cities and educated upper class
• Romanticism
• Picturesque
• Deism
• Primitivism
• Transcendentalism
• Nationalism

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Origins of Protection for American Wilderness
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George Catlin
what a beautiful and thrilling specimen for
America to preserve and hold up to the view of
her refined citizens and the world, in future
ages! A nations Park, containing man and beast,
in all the wild and freshness of their natures
beauty
- 1932
Portrait by Fisk, 1849
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Thomas Cole

• Amercian sceneryhas features, and glorious
  ones, unknown to Europe. The most distinctive,
  and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic
  of American scenery is its wildness.

The Oxbow
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Samuel Hammond

• mark out a circle of a hundred miles in
  diameter, and throw around it the protecting
  aegis of the constitutiona forest
  foreverthe old woods should stand always as
  God made them

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George Perkins Marsh
a garden for the recreation of the lover of
nature and an asylum for wildlife
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Frederick Law Olmsted
the enjoyment of scenery employs the mind
without fatigue and yet exercises it
tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it and thus,
through the influence of the mind over the body,
gives the effect of refreshing rest and
reinvigoration to the whole system
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Wilderness Protection Recap