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TMayse
climber
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Nov 14, 2014 - 06:19am PT
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Muir should be judged by his actions right? Yosemite exists because of his efforts. Ok, he said some jacked up stuff in regards to the Native Americans... Who hasn't stuck their foot in their mouth from time to time? This notion that Muir's legacy is no longer relevant is crap.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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Nov 14, 2014 - 06:36am PT
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A Muir was a mystic, so he's bound to be misunderstood. Irrelevant? That's an arguement that has no legs.
maybe we should work toward his relevance once more?
Yeah. Early on I was giving money regularly to The Nature Conservancy. My wife and I took our three daughters to their Ramsey Canyon Preserve in southern Arizona years back. The docents got all worked up because we would pick up leaves and stones and deviate from the trail with the kids so that they could really see up close and feel and smell all of the wonderful stuff there. So, my kids all ended up being proud tree hugging dirt worshippers because they grew up with the smell of dirt and woodsmoke in their clothes.They want to see it preserved for the future and are willing to work at it because they have experienced first hand how valuable it is.
Most people don't care about wilderness because, in part, they have never experienced, and, in part, because we as humans are typically more focused on meeting our basic needs (food and shelter?) and beyond that buying and consuming and doing stuff that feeds our egos instead of nurturing our spirits.
We could stand to get more about the valuable characteristics (and model them) of Muir the mystic and Muir the conservationist.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Nov 14, 2014 - 07:20am PT
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What frustrates me about conservationists most I suppose is the "all or nothing" mentality. An Extreme example is the idea that the planet is best if no people are on it. If this is what the profs are trying to combat then I could agree with them.
I'm so far from that mentality that it seems very alien to me. I am pro environment pro wilderness within reason. I am also pro industry (well regulated). In my mind the planet is fine no matter what we do. Life will go on. We could nuke the place and life would go on or something truly cataclysmic could happen and Life could completely die off and the planet would go on.. in another 1/4 of the universes age.. the planet will not exist. So what. What matters in my mind is quality of life of humans .. without wilderness some of the greatest experiences will not exist.
Yet the majority of people will never experience it for various reasons. Most people live in cities and urban environments. Conservation for them means clean air, reduced light pollution and perhaps some parks. If this is what the professors are talking about I get it.. and that is important too.
None of it is irrelevant however.
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Nov 14, 2014 - 09:42am PT
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He was an important man for his times. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's lifestyles would not seem too PC by today's standards. Does that make their contributions irrelevant?
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Nov 14, 2014 - 09:53am PT
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Just another bunch of UCLA jackoffs.... I am gravely disappointed in my alma mater. I'd expect that kind of opinion from the environmentally minded folks at USC, but never from the Bruins. USC probably deemed him irrelevant long ago because he had no money and advocated preservation, not exploitation.
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Nov 14, 2014 - 09:57am PT
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This could really get into a catch-22, but if they weren't as relevant as they were in their day and age, we might not be having this discussion in our day and age. :-)
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Captain...or Skully
climber
in the oil patch...Fricken Bakken, that's where
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Nov 14, 2014 - 10:23am PT
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UCLA is pretty damned irrelevant to me, so Eff that guy & all his ilk.
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Nov 14, 2014 - 10:25am PT
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Nice Trojan dig Fat Dad. Always a good thing ;-)
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Nov 14, 2014 - 10:57am PT
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Muir was a visionary despite his fortunate background.
In the end we will learn to be environmentally sustainable or mankind will perish.
And THAT will always be relevant.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Nov 14, 2014 - 11:01am PT
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Those professors need to "shake off their city legs!"
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Under Achiever
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Nov 14, 2014 - 11:56am PT
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“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” J.Muir
I think that encompasses pretty much every modern day environmental concern, especially climate change. Muir appears to be more relevant than ever.
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canyoncat
Social climber
SoCal
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Nov 14, 2014 - 12:02pm PT
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Christensen is an ass. Mic drop
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 14, 2014 - 12:36pm PT
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Environmentally sustainable and wilderness are two different things. Most of Asia hasn't had any wilderness for a couple of millenia and yet the agriculture there is highly productive and sustainable.
Washington, Jefferson, and John Muir were all hypocrites even in their day when it came to regarding non white humans as less than human. Other contemporaneous groups like the Quakers, felt differently even at the time. Democracratic education should expose the warts along with the greatness.
As for the professors, they're not stupid, just self serving. One gets rewarded in academia by countering received wisdom, not by contributing more of the same. It often seems it doesn't matter if the contradictory opinion is true or not, only that it is expressed cleverly. To me, that is a major fault of our academic system, that being critical is so often seen as more important than being creative in one's own right.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 14, 2014 - 12:41pm PT
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Well and succinctly put, Jan.
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Nov 14, 2014 - 12:46pm PT
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I agree Jan. And it is dangerous because these people will now be cited as "experts" in ways that will further dergrade our undertanding of human relationships to the natural world.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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Nov 14, 2014 - 05:06pm PT
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Oregon
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Nov 14, 2014 - 05:12pm PT
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Funny.
When I travel Latin America most stuff we consider trash is worth money and somebody is recycling it.
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rmuir
Social climber
From the Time Before the Rocks Cooled.
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Nov 14, 2014 - 05:44pm PT
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Jon Christensen? Who?
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RP3
Big Wall climber
Twain Harte
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Nov 14, 2014 - 06:19pm PT
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If we begin discounting every thinker, philosopher, or writer who had a belief considered objectionable to some future society, we would have a short list of people to quote!
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ryankelly
Trad climber
el portal
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Nov 14, 2014 - 08:42pm PT
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friday night posting...I need a life
Muir and the movement he inspired protected the Tuolumne and Merced Watersheds over a hundred years ago. To celebrate that level of preservation is necessary. To call it "America's Best Idea" is scary in the face of the work needed now:
To foster resilience at the various temporal and spatial scales of ecosystems so that they can withstand all sorts of disturbance.
Wilderness has a place in the protection of ecosystem services ( economically under valued creations of functioning ecosystems like clean air and water and soil) but it is not the end game of modern sustainability...
this ain't news people: we don't have a knowledge gap, we have a communication gap
Luckily, connectivity is on the rise. Check out google images for the "Adaptive Cycle" for a modern take on systems...
Whooaaa weekend supertopo rant!
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