My Response to Island Civilization

After reading the four quotes listed before Roderick Frazier Nash’s essay you might begin to think about your idea of “civilization” and how humans have impacted the earth in different ways since the beginning of time. Which is the perfect mind set to be in while reading this piece, as he is trying to raise awareness of what the world has come to because of peoples actions; and convince his audience that a change is needed to avoid completely destroying our planet.

 Nash starts out by stating how in the first millennium December 31^st was just a regular day and points out that the same date one thousand years later in 1999 is made into a big deal by many people. He uses this example to show how people are generally narrow minded in that they typically are only concerned with the near future and not how their actions now are going to affect generations to come after them. Through the next paragraphs Nash describes how mankind, particularly Americans, have focused too much on “civilizing” the land while not taking into account the impact we have on the entire planet. He plays around with the idea of wilderness and shows the word has no real meaning as it can be thought of in so many different ways. By using both quotes and examples from history Nash shows how people have realized for many years that our way of life has a negative impact on the planet and have to an extent made efforts to reverse some of the damage. But also points out that most of these efforts were actually more for our benefit than the environments.

By pointing out how life long ago was very different from that of the pioneers and our life today different than that of the pioneer’s Nash is able to transition into telling how he believes that in the future life needs to change dramatically in order for our planet to be sustainable. His idea of “island civilization” is that people will quit trying to draw boundaries around wilderness and instead draw them around the human presence. Most people would think that in order for us to lessen our impact on wilderness we would have to take a technological step backwards, but in Nash’s idea he explains how an island civilization would actually have the potential to be even more technologically advanced. He pictures a world where the greatest minds are put to work using technology to reduce our impact on the environment as opposed to trying to “civilize” it as much of today’s technology does.

Personally I couldn’t agree more with Nash, I think that people as a whole have little regard for nature unless it is convenient for them. And I don’t see any way that our way of life could be sustainable for much longer. I also agree with his idea of island civilization and truly believe that it would solve many of the problems that it is designed to solve. But a closer look quickly brings out enough skepticism for me to believe that it is not a probable solution. This conclusion comes from considering the way mankind has made decisions in the past, even upon realizing there is a problem with current methods a majority of the population is unwilling to change their ways until their current method has completely failed them. Looking at it from another angle in order for this idea to work everyone on the entire planet would have to agree to live this way. Requiring a lot of sacrifice and agreement from everyone, it doesn’t seem possible for things to work out.

Nash stated near the beginning of his essay that he wanted to open up people’s minds and make them think farther into the future than they generally do. By looking that far ahead and seeing all the problems we will eventually face we realize that we will need a solution. So he offers his solution, but makes sure to state that it is okay to disagree just as long as you create your own or provide evidence that there is no need for change. In my opinion there is definitely a need for change, but I do not believe that there is one cut and dry answer. It is going to take years of trial and error and require people to open their minds to a new way of life before we will be able to lessen our impact on the environment and be able to share our planet with the wilderness.