The Idea of Wilderness

There are two sorts of wilderness in the way I think of the word. The wilderness on the map, spread across a very real, shared, and physical landscape I think sets the tone and definition of the other idea of wilderness… the wilderness of the mind… which shares so many of the same characteristics though none of the physical dimensionality. In a life of the modern world we are incessanstly inundated with distractions — a world where we are constantly bombareded by the eletronic signals created by other humans. These signals are designed to get our attention. By design they are meant to offer more information than the immediate landscape around us. And while they have served to the benefit and entertainment of humans in many ways, they have also increased our dependency on others for our own thinking. They have additionally weakened our individual abilities to move and interact alone in the world. They have weakened our ability to enjoy the benefits of solitude. They have interupted our focus, a focus that leads to a deeper level of thinking. By putting an electronic device in everyone’s hand we have created a gateway into everyone’s mind — a gateway for any corporation or individual, no matter how responsible, or not, to have access to how we spend our time thinking… they are able to direct how, when, and what we think about at any given moment. They are able to define what is going on in the world, and distract us enough to be lead to believe there are things going on that otherwise contradict the world truly in front of us, just beyond our screen. And these things are not necessarily with one connected purpose, but rather the haphazard conglomerate of a mulitude of competing factors. They do not always lie, but they often do. And there is an endless array of the caucophony of voices that would love to vye for our attention. Attention which, when we give to others, is no longer focused on the world actually in front of us.

We are losing the wilderness of mind. This space is so critical to us as individuals, and as a society. In the wilds of the mind we are able to explore the mystery of our long connection to the places we live. Only in that landscape can we be pushed further into our consciousness, a consciousness built through the ages, not with artificial electronic signals, but with the building blocks in our genetics of our interactions with the surrounding landscapes. Only in the absence of distraction can we create/tap into/listen to/and evolve our own voice. Without wilderness of the mind we are only allowed to think about what others tell us to. And those external inputs, those voices, are slowly being homogenized and controlled by increasingly few, and more powerful entities. Power, as it naturally does, is rapidly becoming consolidated. This is a cycle natural in the world, but no less dangerous for being expected. The wealthiest slowly consolidate their power over society. But now more than ever before, their reach across humanity around the globe is unprecedented. Ghengis Khan may have taken over many nations, but never was his reach truly global, nor truly over the entire livelihood of his conquered. Their day to day often consisted of the same thing before his conquering so long as they paid his tax. But now the powers that control the screens control the electronic messaging to millions… billions around the globe. The masses slowly (and willingly) are succumbing to having the majority of their day dominated by the electronic screen input… other people and entities controlling the pathways and content of all the messaging they receive while they are awake.

And this is why I am so drawn to the other form of wilderness, very specific and remote areas of the landscape where I can walk in and away from all the electronic messaging that is otherwise so nearly impossible to escape. Where I encounter lands, animals, and even other humans currently not under the influence of the electronic signaling.

The wilderness of land is also a wilderness for the mind. It is a place where one can go as far, or not, in their mind. Often the true magic of thought occurs not when we go deep into our mind, but when we let our mind go deep into the landscape that surrounds us, or into the people around us. These connections are so much more real and lasting in the sense that they take our consciousness somewhere deeper, more genuine, more true. Once you have experienced this sort of truth you will recognize it. You know it for what it is — and you more readily know when it is absent. The wild of land and the wild of mind are deeply connected. Their meaning goes far beyond the false gratifications inherent in human greed, want, and accumulation. Their truth lies in the connection to people and places. These are where the secrets to human happiness or contentedness lie. The electronic voices want only to sell you things — to make them money. They do not truly care for you one bit. They want only to hold your data, to sell it to others, or to profit off you somehow. To monetize you for themselves in whatever way possible. And when you are gone, you were nothing to them, they will not even notice, you were simply a pixel to be replaced by another that will immediate fill their electronic void.

And to be fair the wilderness of landscape does not care about you either. But there is a difference… You are naturally evolved and truly connected to the wilderness of land, even if you do not realize it initially. You have evolved for it and it’s secrets are interwined in your existence. This truth, the sort of thing you will recognize when you see it, does not exist on the electronic plane so recently introduced and heaved upon us. The wilderness of the landscape and wilderness of the mind both recognize one another if we can only clear our minds and bodies of the clutter to allow them to meet.