Wilderness and the American Mind

Within the context of this book, preservationism was a movement that recognized the need to protect wilderness lands in the US. It began in the mid-19th century, and its first proponents were intellectuals such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerging largely as a theoretical concept, preservationism argued that wilderness itself had inherent value and that its destruction would have negative consequences for civilization. The application of preservationism has evolved, and because of controversies surrounding natural resource harvesting, specifically at Hetch Hetchy in California’s Yosemite Valley, it grew into a full-fledged political movement.

A strain of thought within Romanticism, Primitivism was the view that civilization was a negative force on the quality of life. Nash writes:

Primitivists believed that man’s happiness and well-being decreased in direct proportion to his degree of civilization. They idealized either contemporary cultures nearer to savagery or a previous age in which they believed all men led a simpler and better existence (47).

In addition to ascribing positive value to wilderness, Primitivism held a corresponding antipathy toward civilization.