Response to Roderick Nash’s Island Civilizations.

Roderick discusses in his piece Island Civilizations about his own ideas and thoughts on his vision of human occupancy on earth. He discusses his ideas regarding how we as humans could make changes in our society during the fourth millennium. The concept of moving into an age of being “future primitive” plays a serious role. This role would include taking both steps forwards and backwards in society. That may be a confusing idea, the writer was suggesting that we not only take steps forward to continue to help society but also go back to the more “primitive” times when we would live of the “fat of the land” as some would say. The writer does not simply suggest that we revert back to the simple times as primitives because he does argue that we are making serious advances in technology and medicine that would most likely help society continue to succeed in that aspect. There are some aspects, which we could tone down and go back.

The concept of “wilderness” is also mentioned numerous times. The concept has greatly changed in the past millennium. Once the woods would be considered easily safe and the rolling hills was a simple place, neither considered wilderness nor wild. The writer discusses how in present society we fear the wild and feel the need to tame it and control it. We feel the need to flatten the rolling hills and cut down the unknown.

The writer makes some bold remarks regarding society but was very straight foreword in his ideas and explaining his beliefs. The concept of an island community where society would only make small impacts on the wild and let the rest be self willed.

I though his theory was quite interesting, generally on subjects of social change I have not read where going back and going forward have gone hand in hand. There is a balance, we as a society can grow in technology and medicine along with other things and still convert back to the wild and free will of a natural society. The balance is what was key for me as a reader to hold on to, along with the clear message that did not directly attack the current society. The writer simply was suggesting and publishing his theory in a manner that could not be taken as an offence to current society, while making remarks about change

I very much agree with his theory, the term “wilderness” has drastically changed over the past hundred years. Society today seems to want to control everything and tame the wild. It wants to flatten the rolling hills, tame the lives of the wild creatures, and remove the unknown to make more room to expand the known world. Taking steps back is a good idea and let the earth make it’s own decisions for a bit, before we use up all that we have.

I also agree that even there are some issues with society, we are making steps in the right direction and it is essential that we continue to do so. We are making advances in technology and medicine that are also friendly to Earth. Also mentioned was that we are taking steps to protect our environment and to conserve the “wild.” Laws protecting land and endangered animals have ben signed and enforced. We have not lost all of our ideals regarding our planet and the things around us.

I strongly agree with the piece that Roderick Nash wrote. It was very well written and informative, he had strong ideals and they were clearly original. I enjoyed reading this piece and thought the balance of retracing our steps in history and moving forward was done in a way where it was balanced and understandable.


-John Walsh