31 May 2009

Michael Pollan on American perspective of We and Nature, from his book Second Nature:

A society that produces “gardens” (or “anti-gardens”) like Central Park is one that assumes nature and culture are fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed. And it seems to me that in order to design true gardens of distinction one must have a vision of how the two can be harmonized. It may be this that we lack. Americans have historically tended to regard nature as a cure for culture, or vice versa. Faced with the question of what to do with the land, we always seem to come up with the same crude alternatives: to virtuously subdue it in the name of “progress,” or to place it strictly off-limits in “wilderness areas,” hallowed places we go seeking an antidote to city life.