Beyond Geography: The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness

Rating:
Summary: The Fear of Going Native
Review: Here Frederick Turner advances a spiritual and religious thesis for the destruction of nature by Western civilization. What sets the West apart from almost everyone else in the world is a lack of connection with nature, which has lead to vast environmental destruction and the extermination of entire peoples. With great historical insight Turner traces this tendency way back to the very earliest cultures of the Near East such as Sumer and Mesopotamia, which were besieged by hostile nomads who resisted their attempts at the settled life. This influence continued into the Roman Empire which was constantly on the verge of collapse from barbarians at the gates, and Western culture developed an innate fear of unstructured and unknown nature. Meanwhile, as Christianity became the world's most bureaucratic religion, God was removed from the world and confined to the church, and stifling dogma prevented followers from attaining new revelations and awareness. In turn the outside natural world became the realm of Satan and had to be conquered and controlled. Turner extends these dire trends into the eras of exploration and expansion into the new world, with the stipulation that the inherent Western disconnection from nature led that culture to destroy it out of hatred and repressed desires.

This is a very strong thesis and Turner's research and insights are sound, especially for the time he wrote the book (1980), though he does tend to do a lot of stretching. An example is the implication that Westerners were so likely to slaughter other peoples because Christianity did not allow ritual sacrifices. Another problem is the inconsistent writing in this book, as Turner's distinct history and anthropology often drift into sentimentality and repetitive complaining about the West's evil deeds. Early in the book he condemns the doctrine of the "noble savage" as a patronizing effect of hypocritical Western culture (which it is), but in the final two chapters Turner is dangerously close to this attitude himself. Despite some inconsistencies, Turner has delivered a very insightful look into the culture that destroyed much of the natural world and the deep historical influences that prevented remorse and guilt, except in the subconscious of every nature-deprived Western person.