My usual post-ballot blues never hit me this time. I sublated it -- no, that's a hollow boast; I simply pre-empted it -- by reading this green shellac job on Ed Abbey, knight of the immaculate conception we call wilderness America.
Fuck the wilderness, the virgin cult of our time and place. And as to the latter day saint Mr Ed, he was just a grasshopper on to a good con, with his
"Magical, sensual evocation of the desert, fierce defense of wilderness and irreverent attacks on conventions of every angle of the political spectrum."Now there's a yoking of sacred asses for ya, eh?
Here's the Abbey outlook on our near future:
"[a] completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment."And then he hits us with this:
"For my own part I would rather take my chances in a thermonuclear war than live in such a world.”
Gotta love that second part, if it has an iota of sincerity in it. But it doesn't, of course. Because in fact those who might opt for the big T Rex of wars over the same old same old, and I mean really opt for it -- those people crave not the sweet breezes of the wilderness but this very same horror, a totally Manhattanized planet Earth.
I venture that in Generation Now such souls are not scarce. Such bravado, real Satanic bravado, explains with Miltonic clarity why lost wilderness tears are so bathetic. At long last, Mr Thoreau, have you no sense of the truly sublime!
Here's another line to clear the sinuses of ballot box blues, this from the worship piece's author hizzseff, answering the musical question "what drives this madness?" The answer:
"human greed exemplified by too many people living too high on the hog."
Are we to accept as self-evident that the pursuit of high-hoggin' it is ipso-facto madness? Narco-nihilists take note.
Abbey and his legendary fictive hero Marmaduke (or whatever his name was) manage to concentrate every kind of arrogant mummy-nature slobbering Wandervogel aestheticism into one single flightless cry of pedantry: "stay off my wilderness!"
What a Grail that, eh? The moral equivalent of "stay off my lawn", for any footloose cellar monkey who happens to be enough of a megalomaniac to "contain multitudes" and burst through the pasteboard mask.
Buy this medicine-wagon con and then you gotta go further and listen to all that "I know its too late" geschrei and still get importuned to "fight on, dogfaces... fight on" against the browning of the great greenness. Throw down your tools of getting and spending, throw down your private chores and go raging into that smoke belching irradiated time tunnel ahead, pausing only to boohoo now and again, and boohoo so church-choir loud we might think it's March 6th 1836, and you're attending a prayer breakfast inside the Alamo.
As if evoking Ed isn't enough for one read, then comes this happy conjecture: "Today, Ed is everywhere" (like the Scarlet Pimpernel or that Joad geef, one imagines).
A f'rinstance alleged Abbey avatar? James Lovelock, "famed contemporary global warming critic and originator of the Gaia hypothesis." His prophecy?
"In the next 30 years rising oceans will displace a billion hungry refugees, worldwide desertification will draw the Sahara north into Europe, and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad."If that isn't enough to curl your toenails,
" By the end of the century... the human world will be torn apart by famine and disease, starving Asians who cannot grow their own food [will be] migrating into Siberia and precipitating nuclear war between Russia and China."Among all the numerous apocalyptic horsemen in Lovelock's stable, they can expect to
"kill off six billion of the world’s 6.6 billion human beings. The plants and creatures of our lovely planet would suffer the sixth great extinction, the most severe yet and entirely human-caused.... Human civilization... would collapse."Well. That does sound nasty. It's not terribly clear what "wilderness" has to do with it, though. But hey, who wants to be a spoilsport?
Comments (33)
"Fuck the wilderness"
Yes... just pave that shit over and get done with it already.
Who needs it? Useless crap.
Posted by Drunk Pundit | November 10, 2010 12:27 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 00:27
little animals need the wilderness to grow up big & strong & not terrorist.
Posted by hapa | November 10, 2010 1:30 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 01:30
the eco simplified human made environs
pervade the all of dear old growth
surface earth
a marine style all over
a high tech buzz cut for lady Gaia?
more like
fried dyed and laid to the side
processed hair for lady Gaia
Posted by op | November 10, 2010 7:27 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 07:27
save the wilderness is as idiotic as save the scrap yard !!!!
Posted by op | November 10, 2010 7:34 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 07:34
epater le greenoise ???
do you have
the glowing pink
radium soaked cubes for it gang ???
Posted by op | November 10, 2010 7:42 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 07:42
can hard hat man made earth
in just in time fashion
construct and install
sufficient means of industrial dialysis ???
i hear the prickly bright banjos a strummin
but in growing crescendo
comes this sardonic chant
to drown out all hope
6 th extinction 6th extinction 6th extinction
Posted by op | November 10, 2010 7:54 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 07:54
I can't wait for the home version to come out.
Posted by Randal Graves | November 10, 2010 8:26 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 08:26
maybe not pristine but left to its own devices, w/ attention, gives a better chance of enduring the very difficult. then come the nanorepairbots, after the strictly human population has asphyxiated in one poison gas cloud or another, denying the chemistry of it all the way down.
Posted by hapa | November 10, 2010 8:48 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 08:48
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/11/09/automating-the-climate-debate/
Posted by op | November 10, 2010 8:54 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 08:54
i'd miss the wild areas more than the people.
Posted by Montag | November 10, 2010 8:59 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 08:59
Does Hopey whistle past the graveyard or gheto blast past to house music?
Posted by Clapham Omnibus | November 10, 2010 10:03 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 10:03
House music?
If the aim is to epater, I'd opt for something a little more offensive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UexCBJF_n-4
Posted by FB | November 10, 2010 10:39 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 10:39
one man's meat is another man's poisson. in point of fact Clap has no idea what ''house music" denotes. the previous post was elaborated by my private secretary from a sketch.
Posted by Clapham Omnibus | November 10, 2010 10:54 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 10:54
Much more interesting when talking RBI stats about econ-baseball hybrids.
Out of your depth here, paine. Sorely so. Hope you have good dog-paddling stamina.
Posted by CF Oxtrot | November 10, 2010 11:55 AM
Posted on November 10, 2010 11:55
fb
the fruitful mellowness of autumn
ripped by chain saws
delightful ..fuck keats
1.
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Posted by op | November 10, 2010 12:22 PM
Posted on November 10, 2010 12:22
"Out of your depth here, paine"
we are all out of our depths in these waters
oxy ..even billy blake
its an abyss
nut shell nihilists not with standing
Posted by op | November 10, 2010 12:41 PM
Posted on November 10, 2010 12:41
hey the post is about this pips legacy
http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/herman/Cactus_Ed_Abbey.JPG
where are his champions ???
Posted by op | November 10, 2010 12:48 PM
Posted on November 10, 2010 12:48
Op-san, I, for one, am absolutely witcha on this one. This Peacock dude belongs in ye olde DbC Hall of Mirrors, as does the unreadable navel-gazer Abbey himself.
http://www.deathbycar.info/hall-of-mirrors/
If wilderness defense is the cutting edge of green politics, then green politics is a madman waving a knife in the air against nothing. I'm all for wilderness preservation. Wilderness preservation, whatever thrills it provides to poseurs, is less than a start on genuine green combat.
This Abbeyan crap calls to mind the fake feminists who, in more pomo days of yore, tried to pass off attacks on science and reason as mere "male knowledge."
Has green even begun? If socialism needs its 2.0 footing, I'm not at all sure ecologism has yet made it out of beta.
Posted by Michael Dawson | November 10, 2010 1:37 PM
Posted on November 10, 2010 13:37
"If socialism needs its 2.0 footing, I'm not at all sure ecologism has yet made it out of beta."
wait
"If socialism needs its 2.0 footing, I'm not at all sure ecologism has yet made it out of beta."
almost
"If socialism needs its 2.0 footing, I'm not at all sure ecologism has yet made it out of beta."
there
"If socialism needs its 2.0 footing, I'm not at all sure ecologism has yet made it out of beta."
ahhhhhh
Posted by hapa | November 10, 2010 7:51 PM
Posted on November 10, 2010 19:51
I got some news for you alls.
Wilderness is where you live.
So yeah... fuck it!
Posted by Drunk Pundit | November 10, 2010 9:50 PM
Posted on November 10, 2010 21:50
It would take a city shitting academic who masturbates to numbers to think out loud, "Wilderness, whoneedzit?!"
Posted by Jack Crow | November 11, 2010 2:08 AM
Posted on November 11, 2010 02:08
dp
perhaps
you conflate wilderness with wasteland
-------------------
as the crow flies :
"a city shitting academic
"..masturbates to numbers "
ah self pleasured by numbers !!!!!
is that so wrong-ah ??
a local hero of mine
before he morphed
into the green man
and then on to the boston strangler
was called by investigators
the measure man
"...to think out loud
"Wilderness, whoneedzit?!"
nothing suggests old growth systems are "needed" by any one
but a sorry abstracting misanthrope
and consider this
darkness at noon scenario:
self selected solitary cages
would they not suffice
for the flock loathing
bitter minor birds among us ..eh ??
....let em dream of the forest primeval
there's plenty of time in a well appointed cell
for dreams
ah yes snoozing inside ...
a hollow concrete cube
the mind ??
why it's in
"some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless"
something stuffy in your words
reminds me of edwardian cambridge
and ge moore's pranging of the ghost
of jere bentham
but that alas gets to be tediously poompous
even with visions
of seed huskings
shitting out your butt
confession time :
as bob denver
that egregious goggled termite
once sang
'thank god
i'm a country boy '
new hampshire raised no less
and
you ???
but yes this tall timber tom jones
has repaired long since
to
the lacey skirts of london town
the piney woods of cow hampshire ??
hell man
they're by nativity
for baby black bears
and
by adoption
rusty
crank sparking
malfunctioning
old and wasted spirits
Posted by op | November 11, 2010 8:16 AM
Posted on November 11, 2010 08:16
Block off the gulf and fill it full of oil, hopey wants to take a bath.
Yogi bear is on in a half hour, and he don't wanna miss it.
Posted by Clapham Omnibus | November 11, 2010 8:39 AM
Posted on November 11, 2010 08:39
"perhaps
you conflate wilderness with wasteland"
Nope. The whole world is wilderness, the rules of life don't change just cuz you put up cities, dump shit in the air and water and call it "not wilderness".
The hubris of the ape species that calls itself Homo Sapiens Sapiens knows no bounds.
Posted by Drunk Pundit | November 11, 2010 10:09 AM
Posted on November 11, 2010 10:09
dponce i grasped your definition
far frpom me to disagree
-------------
clap you are becoming a noisome earwick
keep it up
soon enough you''ll
be in this climactic scene
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0qP81havHnE/0.jpg
Posted by op | November 11, 2010 11:50 AM
Posted on November 11, 2010 11:50
but clap thanx for the pantagruelian resizing
paul bunyon of the brown outed urban scape
Posted by op | November 11, 2010 11:54 AM
Posted on November 11, 2010 11:54
clap
your unbecoming
gut-less wonder
behind a tree
poaching here
is quite welcome
you may have noticed
i love the attentions
of the dwarfishly nasty
but prowling and pot shooting here
without leaving a return address
is
....pusillanimous
for lack of a proper self portait
i picture you as this founding father
pwog icon
http://www.mudvillegazette.com/milblogs/archives/elmer%20fudd.gif
Posted by op | November 11, 2010 12:05 PM
Posted on November 11, 2010 12:05
What's your return address, most noble reverend sir? General delivery, World Wide Web? You can leave my mail here, so long as Pa Smith don't object.
All the world a wilderness, ah wilderness, were paradise enow. They make a desert and call it ... what? ... Clio's finest hour ?... the finest product of the brewer's art?
The purblind nihilism, übermensch-ish complacency and commissar-ish intolerance of so much of the Hopey-text demands the occasional snark, though the Clap is no Koufax for strike zone accuracy. I'm havin' fun and think you are too.
All the best,
the man on the ...
Posted by Clapham Omnibus | November 11, 2010 12:40 PM
Posted on November 11, 2010 12:40
1. oh the hubris of the anglophone, the word 'wilderness' is hundreds of years younger than any major deity
2. a lawn is a forest, not a pet
Posted by hapa | November 11, 2010 1:04 PM
Posted on November 11, 2010 13:04
Paine, the proud, unsympathetic hero of his own saga. Does he love? Can he be loved?
The sworn enemy of human sentiment in whatever guise that hideous monster lifts its mournful, loving, suffering, rejoicing, fearing face. Working for all mankind, he detests actual persons living or dead except for one or two gurus of the Victorian Era. An Achilles heel of sorts, this Marx worship. (Does It prove Paine is human?)
The butt remains kissable, however.
Smack.
Kiss or spank?
Posted by Clapham Omnibus | November 11, 2010 1:40 PM
Posted on November 11, 2010 13:40
" he detests actual persons "
where's the evidence for this ??
if true
i seem to have a blind spot to it
i thought i loved all sorts of actual folks
some more deserving of it then others
a few deserving nothing of the sort
i could be mistaken of course
perhaps to love is
but to invert a deeper detestation
Posted by op | November 11, 2010 4:06 PM
Posted on November 11, 2010 16:06
Most happy to be set straight.
Regards, C.
Posted by Clapham Omnibus | November 11, 2010 4:30 PM
Posted on November 11, 2010 16:30
return address for any of the paine klan
kapshow @hotmail.com
accept sister sally paine (SP )
that is
her e mail
remains
a new cambria
state secret
official SP photo :
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/jmpaget/jmpaget0903/jmpaget090300027/4426865-black-and-white-low-key-shot-of-a-beautiful-dark-haired-girl.jpg
Posted by op | November 11, 2010 7:51 PM
Posted on November 11, 2010 19:51