Emerson and Thoreau as Prophets of Eco-wisdom :: Biography Biographies Essays

Emerson and Thoreau as Prophets of Eco-wisdom  Ã‚  Ã‚   The major premise of transcendental eco-wisdom is that connection with nature is essential for a person's intellectual, aesthetic, and moral health and growth. One must see and experience nature intimately, whether defined as the "not-me" or as landscape, to participate in the unity of Spirit underlying its visible processes. This connectedness is the basis of the self-reliance which determines how a person lives with integrity in nature and society. Granted, the concept of self-reliance apparently devalues social concerns, including the global commitment and cooperation needed to bring about the kinds of changes that would reverse the climatic greenhouse effect, for example. Indeed, Emerson's ideas have been unfairly appropriated to justify the capitalistic exploitative excesses and insensitivity to social problems and long-term consequences that lie at the root of many of our environmental problems. However, we cannot fault Emerson and Thoreau for not imagining our current dependen ce on technology, the complexity of a largely urban economy or the ties of a global community. Yet even the notion of a self-contained Concord or Walden Pond, which might seem naive and outdated, is reflected in current ideas about eco- regionalism. By accounting for what they could not have known of our present condition, we can still find fruitful ways of understanding where humans, singly and as a species, should fit into nature. Emerson's greatest gift was lessons in seeing in and through nature and extracting symbolic meaning, yet his own intimate encounters with the nature around him were relatively rare and indirect, with few concrete traces in his writings except as occasional metaphors. He wanted his revelations from nature to be abstract and come by surprise, as did the famed mystical encounter at the beginning of his book Nature: "Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear." In such an experience, even the self is absorbed by a greater power: "I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me." The metaphor may be unfortunate, but not his faith that a single person could perceive unspeakable meanings through experiencing nature, even if only indirectly. Such possibilit ies impelled Thoreau and countless others since to mine the details and processes of nature that Emerson had generalized, looking for embedded revelations and sharing in nature's "ecstasy.