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Society and nature
Society views nature through the current societal values and its understanding of the world around itself. However, people are constantly changing both the world around them and the communities they live in, so the view of nature changes just as often. Movies, literature, and songs are good focus points for the understanding of a society's view of nature at some point in its time, and the books studied by my class show that the view of nature in regards to society and the role it plays can be very diverse.

**Encounters with the Archdruid**
Brower's ideals center on the separation of the people and the land untouched by us. The Idea of a Garden presents a very good case as to why this would be very hard, saying that people have interacted too much with their surroundings and traveled too far to be able to look at a piece of wilderness and say that it was untouched. Brower also believes that god created the wilderness not to have people abuse it but for it to be beautiful because when he was on the rafting tour with Dominy he pointed out a natural formation and said that it said " do not flood this place.Dominy believes that people were born to rule over the earth to make it hospitable and livable. His work helps communities even though it destroys places of beauty. He admits that the places that were lost were beautiful, but says that he cannot mourn the things he can no longer see. In a scene at the beginning of the book Dominy alludes to Moses when talking about storing water and grain.

**The idea of a Garden**
Garden tending requires us to consider what we want in nature then form the idea with the materials available to use. The Idea of a Garden looked at how we were inescapably linked to nature already and how if we allowed nature to try and grow without the influence of man we were only deluding ourselves into thinking that we could some how take our already present influence away. The invasive species like the Chinese tree in somebody's backyard could have easily grown in the space left over from the pine trees and even though it would have been natural the hand of human intervention would still have been present.

**Creation Myths**
Genesis The Old Testament viewed nature as less than ideal, as a step down from what was supposed to be. God created a Nature that was perfect but had to send the people who ruled over Eden to a lesser Nature because of their own imperfections. The people were also created in God's own image rather than the animals who were dumb and had to be cared for so they were given the born right to rule over the animals. This passage has given many people the justification to make nature as they see fit throughout time because they could use the cultural power of the written work as basis for their argument. When people molded nature to their will they believed that they were doing only good because they saw this as divine right. This lead to an arrogant use everything and damn the consequences because we cannot be wrong within this imperfect world. Pima When the Pima tribesmen created their creation story they included various plants and animals that had cultural significance to them. Their story was rife with cultural nuances because the relationship between nature and their own societal structure was very close like the use of vultures and coyotes as powerful spirits and the creator of the world being called a medicine man. The medicine man created the world with his sweat and created people from the earth symbolizing the complex relationship the people have with the earth as farmers and their respect of their spiritual leaders as supernatural powers. Their culture is mirrored in many other Native American cultures that use their own surroundings to accentuate their stories. Iroquois In their Creation stories, the Iroquois have all good things created by the good mind and all harmful things created by the bad mind showing that they associate all good and evil things with an overarching power that is out-of-sight. The good mind created the sustenance needed for life and the sun and the moon while the bad mind created dangerous creatures that people feared along with dangerous places like cliffs and rapids. Their thoughts on nature were that it was either good or evil and not simply nature, that it was conscious or created with a specific idea in mind either good or evil. Because they associated conscious decision to nature, they believe that all things have their own shade and can be either used and therefore made by the good mind or harmful and therefore made by the bad mind. With this in mind one could have seen in their communities things that were being used and known that in their stories the Indians would have labeled them as good things.

**Jefferson's Notes on Virginia**
Jefferson considered Virginia to be a set of resources to be utilized in the betterment of the the United States in opposition Europe. He and others saw the land in a completely secular way and intended to use it just like that. The notes he took were dry and totally in the interest of industrial exploitation. If there was religious sentiment it lay in a Genesis style god-given-right to use the land and all of it's resources. When he wrote he thought of the resources as just parts of a grand plan and considered the land without emotion. Because of the competition with Europe, Jefferson had to find a way to compete and with the resources of Virginia he could get what he wanted. His attitude when using the resources came from a more matured progression of what had been going with the transition from Cotton Mather to Irving in that people were even less afraid of the wilds and now had lost their belief in a mystical wild enough to be mostly secular with the land.

**Cotton Mather**
The early settler Puritans viewed Nature as corrupting and believed that their communes were safe and orderly places were in danger from the strange and hostile new land. Cotton Mather and other early settlers had to survive in a new land after escaping Europe for religious reasons and they viewed their surroundings as evil because they had to find an explanation of why their young ones were out dancing in the forest. When Mather wrote, he thought about the dangers presented by the surrounding countryside and how it affected his society. When troubles started to occur in his commune something had to be blamed as no one wanted to take responsibility.

**Ben Franklin**
The Way of Wealth was a treatise

**Irving**
Rip van Winkle In this story, the town and nature are juxtaposed in that the town is normal, safe, and hardworking, but the woods are full of merry singing men whose magic ale made Rip sleep for a generation or two. Nature was portrayed in Rip van Winkle as mysterious and a little unsafe as people can lose their way in there, but it was not so dangerous as Cotton Mather or others portrayed it as. The story marked a turning point in the view of nature form corrupting to mischievous and how the religious thoughts of the Puritans was ebbing and the familiar yet different form was growing. People in that area had lived there for a good number of years and while there was a bit of misunderstanding about how the world worked, they felt safe in their own homes amongst the wilds of their countryside. Legend of Scooby-doo The legend of sleepy hollow is rife with culture as Irving tried to portray a small community that was surrounded and attacked by a strange things that people could not understand. The townsfolk were being killed one after another by evil forces coming from the woods because of a strange and deadly curse. The metaphor portrayed by the headless horseman is one of danger originating from the dark and unforgiving woods whereas the people of the town are good folk but slowly dying from the curse.

**Ralph Waldo Emerson**
Nature Emerson said that nature talked to people in the past with religion but now people should go out and talk to nature with their own ideas rather than rely on religion. Their own ideas and dreams are the means through which they should interpret life and their own responsibilities. Emerson thought that the current culture of his day was in need of a re-connection with god through the wild because the wild was as close to god as one could get. the wild was a s close to god as one could get because it is a reflection of naturalness and god's design. Emerson believed that by getting close to nature you were getting closer to god and therefore had a better lifestyle and demeanor.

Nature walk
Going for walks in the woods is a very good way to exercise and relax and taking time to relax is crucial to a healthy lifestyle. When I went out for the walk in the woods it occurred to me that never had I taken the initiative to go out and walk on my own. Before and then, I had always gone because of the insistence of another person, in this case the teacher, and I realized that to me nature was an apathetic issue. I had only cared for it as an extension of my own self-interest and enjoyed it when I was invited to its quiet sanctuary. The preservation of nature and the world is needless to say important to our livelihood and my care was limited to the maintenance of its stability. I did not care for improving it or saving species from extinction. As I walked, I thought about the exercise I was getting out of it and cool air agaiinst my skin. When this had occurred to me I stopped and and thought that i needed this to be relaxed and more willing to be myself without the pressure of time.

**The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn**
The characters of Huck Finn are constantly directed by Nature in their escape from the slave owning states. Jim and Huck have to follow the river using a raft or canoe to float down the Mississippi and along the way, different cultures influence their journey. Huck's affinity to the land, caused by his estrangement to society by his father and subsequent living apart, causes Huck to be able to live close to nature in a way that the more civilized and community-minded people could not. Huck is able to live by fishing and borrowing clothes using a canoe and traveling by night. Nature provides Huck with food and allows him to be able to move towards wherever he wants to go. However Nature also challenges Huck by separating him from Jim, destroying his raft, and making dangerous waters he had to pass over. Huckleberry has to both rely on the river to provide him food and fight it to remain alive. There is separation symbolized by Nature in Huck Finn between civilization and unwanted people because the people who have left the towns and headed to nature as an escape were estranged and generally considered bad by the townspeople who knew what they were. Huck's father was living away from town in a shack and was considered to be a ruffian and vagrant. If the people in the towns Huck visited learned of what he was, they would have taken action to correct what they saw as a problem. This is evidenced in Huck's lies to protect himself. Also Jim has to hide himself from society because they would capture a runaway slave for the profit. Jim chooses to go to Nature because it will shield him until he reaches a place where he can be safe. The confidence men Huck meets on his trip also use the river to travel and escape from danger and their own problems. The towns they visit hate them but cannot follow their footsteps into the wilderness because the confidence men know how to escape their clutches into familiar territory. Lastly, Nature serves as a means of transportation because people travel through the woods and on the river but do not think much about the woods themselves. People on barges and riverboats rely on the river to carry them and their goods, but if they do not have a boat they cannot cross and it serves as a barrier to progress.

**The Urban Wilderness**
Cities are the epitome of human civilization with the various parts of society working in sync to create a living metal and concrete monster, but the mass of people living in the city may not be what society expects as they create their own mini-cultures within the urban district. Higher society see an urban wilderness in Maggie because of the disconnect between the workers and poor who are disenchanted with life and more inclined to violence and lawlessness and the rich who rely on order brought about by the government and police. In Maggie, the people of the streets are seen as uncaring and violent observing their world with apathy, rage, or vindictiveness as the situation calls for. Early on in the book children were brawling in the street and no one raised a hand tostop them and instead watched. Instead of police coming in and breaking up the fight, Pete, a regular boy, came along and made the attacking children flee in fear. Later, the Johnson family is shown to always be brawling in their home while the neighbors do nothing to stop any domestic violence going on. Their constant fights are accepted as a fact of life rather than a tragedy as most other people would think outside of this environment. The neighbors also take a perverse pleasure in watching the family implode, gossiping and laughing about them. The lifestyle of the inner city dwellers is animalistic with people relying on themselves without the societal intervention to solve their problems. When Jimmie finds thinks that his sister has been soiled by Pete he goes and tries to beat him up as punishment for doing such a thing. He takes the law into his own hands in what could be considered a primal need for justice contrasting with what normal people would considered a just response. The world's fair exemplified the urban wilderness because of the abandonment of morals that was perceived by the self-righteous people of the time. In the fair, people let go of their inhibitions and engaged in copious amounts of drinking, watching exotic dancers, and gambling. People like the Chicago Temperance Society saw a corruption of morals through foreign influence that made the grounds of the world fair like a completely alien place. The normal restrictions placed on a common man were gone and replaced with opulence, wealth, women and alcohol. The change was also very sudden and as such the surrounding societal landscape had no time to adjust or reflect the differences caused by the world's fair. The suddenness caused a stark divide in the places where society held sway and the fair where cultures mingled and created new and different values and ideas. With the divide people could consider the smaller isolated fair to be the wilderness because it was closed off and separated from the surrounding land; the fairgrounds were the fair and Chicago was still Chicago.

The Great Gatsby
The separate settings of The Great Gatsby reflects the moral values, actions, and attitude of the people in each place at each separate time. The valley of ashes reflects the desolate wastes and degradation of the human soul because Tom cheats with Myrtle, and Daisy runs over Myrtle in the valley. The West and East Eggs symbolize the power and money of the people living in fancy houses along the Sound. The East and West Eggs are also separated themselves by the distinction of old and new money. New money lives on the East Egg and old money lives on the West. The valley of ashes is the most important setting in the book because it has connections with the rest of the world but is separate and evil things come out of the wastes. When Tom gets a call from the valley, it is his mistress and illegitimate lover calling, and later Tom visits the lady while simultaneously pulling the wool over her husbands eyes. Tom seems to change when he goes to the valley and instead of putting on a facade of care for his wife, family and values, he makes sure that his interests come first. An example of this is the way he treats the Myrtle at the party when he breaks her nose and does not even apologize or show concern for her. Also in the wastes is the sign of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg who watches over all the bad with his ever present gaze.

Koyaanisqatsi
This movie presented its view of nature and society by using a language of music, emotions and time. When nature was presented it was slow and peaceful with all things seeming to be at rest or very solid. The cities, however, were portrayed as hustling centers of activity and growth or destruction. There was a prevalence, in the cities, of destructive energy that was seen in the demolition of buildings and sad, angry faces. People and places never seemed natural and the music was always frantic and full without anyone ever seeing a conclusion. Mass transits were seen but never did the movie show anyone getting to their destinations. Lights turned on and off in buildings but never was any work seen done in the buildings during the work day. When the movie switched to factories, it portrayed them as very impersonal and lacking in individual craftsmanship. The hot dog machine was always running by its self with no need for human interaction other than to unclog its workings. These pictures of city life and humanity in general ended with the destruction of a rocket on its way up into space symbolizing an unfulfilling end to a rapid ascent to the stars and immortal pictures of cave drawings being all that were left in the end.

Our Land Today and How We Treat It
Today, we often take advantage of our land without a care of what becomes of it. A far cry from the fear and respect given by early settlers but we have come to this point from then. We have it as part of our national identity to preserve our land because our own government creates and maintains, both statewide and nationwide, parks that people visit yearly to enjoy and marvel at. Many people that i have interviewed agree that we owe it to ourselves to preserve the environment so that that part of identity and personality as a nation does not vanish from our national psyche. However the manner and process of preservation differed in all of my interviewees.