Killing conservation – the deadly cult of the empty wild

Killing conservation – the deadly cult of the empty wild


Yosemite Valley, US. © Chensiyuan/CC BY-SA

By Stephen Corry

That is the fifth article in former Director Stephen Corry’s sequence on conservation. For a full checklist of all articles, please click on right here.

A model of this text was revealed by Alternet on January 31, 2017.

Conservation claims to be science-based however was actually born from beliefs originating in Protestantism, notably its Calvinist department. It’s not typically realized that the environmental motion ultimately diverged into two doctrines with opposing views about individuals. Certainly one of them incorporates human beings into its imaginative and prescient, however the different, the oldest and strongest, doesn’t. If they are surely to have an opportunity of contributing to a greater world, those that care concerning the setting should press the large conservation organizations to revoke their founding dogma.

The primary white males identified to have entered the Yosemite Valley have been troopers from the Mariposa Battalion looking Native People. The tribes have been rebelling towards the theft of their lands they usually needed to be contained and pacified to guard the invading “forty-niner” gold diggers. When “negotiations failed, pressure (was) used to deliver the Indians to phrases.”1 By the point the militia reached the valley in 1851 the tribespeople had sensibly overwhelmed a tactical retreat, aside from one girl too outdated to flee. The battalion retaliated by destroying the Indians’ winter meals shops.

Three months later the Mariposa Warfare was over and a kind of peace reigned: The Native People had both been killed, compelled onto reservations, or decreased to conquered and dispossessed remnants.2 As soon as it had been largely emptied of its authentic inhabitants, the brand new invaders characterised Yosemite in non secular phrases. Outstanding Protestant preacher, Thomas Starr King, sermonized about it in 1860 proclaiming, “A passage of scripture is written on each cliff.”3 The identical credo was quickly promulgated by that son of a preacher, John “of the mountains” Muir (now revered as the daddy of American environmentalism), who characterised his ascent of Yosemite’s Cathedral Peak as “the primary time (he had) been at church in California.” Seeing himself a “lonely worshipper,” Muir waxed lyrical, “In our greatest instances every little thing turns into faith, all of the world appears a church and the mountains altars.” The seed was sown which grew into the environmental motion we all know at this time.

The Yosemite mannequin of conservation is the unique model, and it’s basically anti-people. Its genesis lies largely within the improvement of beliefs named after sixteenth-century Frenchman Jean Calvin, the second outstanding founding father of Protestantism in northern Europe.

Calvin was born 26 years after Martin Luther, the German monk who first attacked the appallingly corrupt Catholic clergy. Luther’s theses ended up splitting Western Christianity into its two warring branches. Since then, Protestantism versus conventional Roman Catholicism has develop into the principal narrative ensnaring a lot of Western Europe’s historical past as much as the current. Each Lutheranism and Calvinism begat myriad church buildings and stay among the many most essential pillars of Protestantism at this time (although each are nonetheless outnumbered globally by Roman Catholics).

To grasp why conservation is seen so in another way the place Calvinism by no means gained a lot sway, includes recognizing the divergence between Jean Calvin’s core beliefs and people of most Roman Catholics. Evaluating two complicated theologies in a sentence is a idiot’s errand however, in a nutshell, Calvinism tends to emphasise the significance of the person slightly greater than it does society as a complete.

This distinction turns into clear when evaluating the best way through which Catholic and Protestant missionaries work internationally at this time. There are numerous exceptions however, broadly, the Catholics search to ascertain a congregation after which minister to their flock, whereas the Protestants lean extra in the direction of saving particular person souls. Non-Christians will be shocked that not solely do many in every camp regard the opposite one as not Christian in any respect, however that extremist Protestants, even these days, see the Roman Catholic Pope as an agent of Devil, the chief satan himself!

Calvinism revolved round three core precepts – the Bible was literal reality, God manifested via the seen creation (“nature”), and humankind was sinful. It positioned much less emphasis on New Testomony teachings about human love or charity, as taught for instance via the “good Samaritan” or “love thy neighbor” (which isn’t, after all, to say that Calvinists aren’t loving or charitable).4 Downplaying the view that people may attain salvation via compassion and good works, it confused perception above all issues. In Calvinist theology, we are able to do little – really, nothing in any respect – to make sure we’re “saved:” God’s resolution about that’s immutable and timeless. Just a few are chosen, the overwhelming majority aren’t.

The primary Europeans to settle completely in North America have been Roman Catholics. Later, colonists hailing from the northern European heartlands of Calvinist Protestantism – the British Isles, Germany and the Netherlands – famously started taking their new faith to the American colonies (in addition to to southern Africa, which is related, as I’ll level out).

It was their theology, ultimately syncretizing and borrowing from romanticism’s enrapture with panorama, which straight knowledgeable the delivery of the conservation motion. Nature was divine and humankind was evil; just a few individuals have been righteous (on this case, those that believed in conservation), most weren’t.

Though Catholics have been nonetheless the biggest denomination in the USA when conservation was created within the nineteenth century, outstanding environmentalists invariably hailed from Protestant backgrounds. Henry D. Thoreau was a “transcendentalist”, a perception descended from Calvinism. Aldo Leopold, creator of the well-known “A Sand County Almanac,” was born right into a household of Lutheran Protestants (his first language was German) and went to Bible lessons at Yale. He believed in, “a mystical supreme energy that guided the universe… extra akin to the legal guidelines of nature.”5 Rachel Carson, creator of the equally well-known “Silent Spring,” was the daughter of a religious Presbyterian (Presbyterians are Calvinists). She wrote, “the rain and the wind have been God’s,” and “the stream of life would circulation (alongside) no matter course that God had appointed.”6 David Brower, a founding father of Associates of the Earth and maybe probably the most well-known twentieth-century environmentalist in California, characterised himself as a “dropout Presbyterian,” and lectured on “drawing individuals into the faith,” even referring to his talks as “The Sermon.”

These are the “prophets” of conservation, family names amongst American environmentalists. Lots of them might need disavowed the established faith underlying their worldview, and plenty of couldn’t themselves be characterised as anti-people or, least of all, held liable for conservation’s crimes. Nonetheless it’s clear that Protestantism typically, and Calvinism particularly, formed each secular ideological programs dominant in at this time’s United States, environmental safety and financial progress (as Robert H. Nelson convincingly reveals).7

Recognizing the divine in nature clearly isn’t confined to Protestantism: It’s widespread, maybe ubiquitous. Native People do it, although in slightly alternative ways, as do Roman Catholics. Perception in nature’s holiness is just not the issue with the USA’ strategy: What’s flawed is the doctrine that “wilderness” should inevitably imply “with out individuals.” That single thought, pitting sinful humankind at loggerheads with heavenly nature, has disastrous penalties for conservation and it derives straight from its theological origins.

It’s essential to understand how rigidly the American, people-free idea of conservation is enforced. For instance, paths within the “wilderness” zones of Yosemite Nationwide Park (away from the Disneyland-like Valley itself) are solely flippantly marked, with dwellings and financial actions forbidden. Backpackers should preregister each their route and the strictly designated locations they’re allowed to camp. They pay, and should carry their allow or danger ejection. When the rangers resolve a given path has sufficient trekkers, they merely cease issuing tickets. Guests are ordered to hold out every little thing, even used bathroom paper!

Fervent advocates of this American “wilderness” worship it as a hallowed sanctuary the place persons are tolerated solely on sufferance, when they comply with the ruling commandments, and pay for the privilege. Based on the theology, such “pilgrims” undoubtedly get one thing massive – very massive – again for his or her bucks: As former Presbyterian, John Muir expounded, “In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world,” and he went on, “nothing actually wild is unclean.” By the Nineties, when Roger G. Kennedy, head of the Nationwide Park Service, sermonized, “We must always conceive of wilderness as a part of our non secular life,”8 the “wild” had develop into an article of religion far past the bounds of Calvinism.

Nonetheless, the non secular connection is rarely removed from the floor. Two of environmentalism’s current gurus are Dave Foreman and Doug Tomkins. Foreman is a founding father of Earth First! and a former director of the Sierra Membership. Earlier than his revelation that, “Earth is Goddess and the right object of human worship,” he had thought-about turning into a preacher. Tomkins, millionaire co-founder of North Face and the person behind protected zones in Chile and Argentina, was equally to the purpose, “The idea of sharing the planet with different creatures to me is a spiritual place… That… is the ethic that informs biodiversity conservation.”9 The well-known “father of biodiversity,” E.O. Wilson, was additionally a religious Protestant in his youth.

A few of these folks go so far as bending language to suit their religion, with the most unlikely story that the English phrases “wild” and “self-willed” as soon as meant the identical factor.10 “Wild Nature” (usually capitalized, like God) is supposedly the identical as “self-willed Nature.” As soon as upon a time, or so the vanity goes, individuals understood that “wilderness” adopted its personal, “self-willed” plan which people have been condemned to wreck – simply as (or actually maybe, as a result of) Eve corrupted Adam, resulting in humankind’s well-deserved eviction from Paradise. Characterizing the world as a battleground between sinful man and divine Nature is, clearly sufficient, a spiritual proposition which has nothing to do with science.

What is for certain within the minds of those that observe this dogma is that folks – aside from themselves – are barely tolerated in Eden’s wilderness. Dave Foreman is way from alone in seeing humanity as “a malignancy” and in considering that the world inhabitants should be decreased to 2 billion from the present seven. In fact few environmentalists dare brazenly enterprise any imaginative and prescient about how seventy per cent of humankind may vanish. One jocular exception is the primary U.Ok. president of the World Wildlife Fund, the Duke of Edinburgh, who reportedly mentioned, “Within the occasion that I’m reincarnated, I wish to return as a lethal virus, to contribute one thing to fixing overpopulation.” (A purpose which appears to be eluding him as he has, up to now, a minimum of seventeen direct descendants.) Anne Petermann, head of World Justice Ecology Challenge, put it much more graphically when she used to hitch Earth First! chants, “Billions live that must be useless,” and, “Fuck the human race.”11 (She now campaigns for Indigenous peoples in addition to the setting so presumably has modified her thoughts about a part of the human race.)

Many environmentalists are unabashed about their work not serving humankind; if a few of their initiatives do find yourself benefiting individuals, that’s purely incidental.12 They search slightly to promulgate Nature for its personal sake, believing they’re beholden to its “will” alone, and positively to not man’s. Exchange the phrase “nature” of their musings with “God” and their theological heritage is unambiguous.

They aren’t bothered if nobody – aside from them – visits the protected zones they declare to talk on behalf of, the less the higher actually. Some have taken their views to the wildest extremes. Jonathan Spiro13 reveals how American conservationists have been within the forefront of each the eugenics motion and the opposition to immigration from “non-Aryan” international locations (or checked out one other means, largely from Catholics and Jews) within the early twentieth century. He additionally describes how their misanthropic agenda opposed “mixed-race” marriages and supported obligatory sterilization.14

This wasn’t simply coincidence, as some present-day environmentalists are eager to say. They prefer to consider that such views have been common, however they weren’t: There have been all the time voices arguing for racial equality and compassion.15 Nevertheless uncomfortable it could be to confess it these days, the reality is that there was a direct hyperlink between eugenics and conservation’s invention of recreation administration – culling the weak to maintain the species robust.16

Certainly, blaming overpopulation for environmental degradation stays commonplace at this time.17 It’s clearly not with out basis, however in actuality the united statesA. remains to be sparsely populated. For it to strategy the identical density as Nice Britain, for instance, would contain an eightfold improve within the variety of its inhabitants. (Additionally it is value mentioning that America’s inhabitants might nonetheless develop by practically that a lot and but expend no extra sources than it does now – if, that’s, everybody consumed not more than the common human being does in Mexico or Central America.)

Regardless of the shortage of any actual menace to the setting from “immigration,” it was nonetheless extensively seen as endangering the U.S. panorama, with the Sierra Membership – itself arrange by a Scottish immigrant, John Muir – brazenly opposing it for many years earlier than lastly dropping the matter on the finish of the Nineties.18 That call provoked Earth First! founder, Dave Foreman, to stop the membership’s board, and plenty of main environmentalists – regardless of being descended from immigrants themselves – nonetheless see immigration and inhabitants because the world’s greatest drawback. Foreman routinely blames the Catholic Church, however feminism can also be in his cross hairs, for “taking on” household planning “to let girls do no matter they wished to.”19

The actual stress on the setting, and never simply nationally, comes from America’s excessive ranges of consumption, slightly than from easy inhabitants density, however the former is way too sacred a cow for {most professional} environmentalists to confront. It’s additionally true that these generously paid folks setting the agenda within the massive conservation organizations, jetting from convention to session and again, normally have a “carbon footprint” very a lot larger than most of us.

The US is the principal driver and paymaster of environmentalism however Europe is an in depth second, and issues there couldn’t be extra completely different. For Europeans acquainted with their nationwide parks, the place hikers can just about come and go and bivouac in a single day as they please,20 American restrictions is likely to be shocking. Europeans can revere nature as a lot as anybody, however individuals’s integration into the panorama can also be embraced. It’s a really massive distinction.

European nationwide parks regularly embody working farms, villages, and even entire cities. How humankind has marked its environment is well known. For instance, most European mountains lie inside protected areas however they’re nonetheless strewn with shrines, and topped with enormous Christian crosses, seen from a distance and dwarfing these souls who attain their summits. These are sometimes inscribed with an inspirational verse, normally invoking divinity.21

In a continent the place written historical past covers hundreds of years, the place historic peoples constructed huge stone buildings and roads, and which is thought to have been inhabited by Homo sapiens for over forty thousand years, and by Neanderthals for ten instances longer, any notion of “wilderness untrammelled by man” – to cite the problematic phrase from the 1964 United States Wilderness Act – sounds just like the blind and blinding mistake it really is.

Europe’s protected areas do nonetheless present their wild aspect, however I can discover no conservation zone on that continent which has been based on the eviction or killing of its inhabitants. This isn’t due to completely different interpretations of faith or “wilderness,” it’s as a result of the resultant outcry would instantly kill off well-liked assist for conservation (which in Europe remains to be largely funded from the Protestant heartlands of Britain and Germany).

Tragically for tribal peoples nevertheless, it was the sooner, American, mannequin which was exported to Africa and Asia. This noticed virtually each African protected space, in addition to many in Asia, stolen from tribal and different native individuals. The theft is ongoing and has entailed the compelled evictions of thousands and thousands.22 Complete tribes have been destroyed within the course of, simply as they have been within the nineteenth-century United States. Shamefully, there was and isn’t any loud, well-liked outcry in opposition to this.

Though the mannequin was American, the crime will be laid on the door of north Europeans: With the (obvious) exception of Virunga, Africa’s first park,23 the empires behind the imposition of the foremost nationwide parks in Africa have been largely British, French and German, whereas those that created the South African conservation zones have been descended from Dutch and French Huguenot colonists. It’s straightforward to see African parks, and your complete “African wilderness” fantasy for that matter, because the invention of individuals with the identical ethnic and spiritual – virtually all the time Protestant – heritage as conservation’s founding fathers from the USA.

The creed of empty wilderness is a racist assemble. Africa is the place our species began maybe 200 thousand years in the past and we’ve occupied North America for no less than fifteen thousand years if not for much longer. There’s now a rising physique of scientific proof proving that tribal peoples altered their lands in all places over hundreds of years, planting, clearing, burning, encouraging herd grazing, and utilizing all method of different ways in which conservationists couldn’t see, to handle the animals and crops that gave them life. Like everybody, they have been actively adapting the ecosystem to enhance their dwelling.

Nevertheless, nineteenth-century racism meant that these environmental impacts went unrecognized when the American nationwide park mannequin was invented. The reality is, none of those areas have been “empty” within the first place, however their black- and brown-skinned inhabitants weren’t thought-about as human as hubristic white conservationists. They have been supposedly decrease on the evolutionary scale, and even under it fully.

It was exactly as a result of they have been “barely human” that their lands might be referred to as uninhabited and pristine, and their territories then made uninhabited by chucking them out. Tragically, simply because the colonists’ slim imaginative and prescient prevented them seeing the best way Indigenous peoples had managed their lands, many environmentalists at this time nonetheless don’t.

Most Western “ecotourists” don’t know that the nationwide parks they pay to go to in Africa and elements of Asia have been forcibly emptied so as to create a man-made “wilderness.” Supporters of environmental causes are among the many most public-spirited and humane folks, and plenty of can be shocked to comprehend that unlawful evictions and human rights abuses are nonetheless widespread within the identify of conservation, and that anti-poaching schemes rely more and more on extra-judicial – in different phrases, unlawful – killing, principally of poor locals.

Although many consultants realize it solely too nicely, not one of the massive conservation organizations publicly acknowledges that the deadly “inexperienced” militarization they’ve unleashed is worse than ineffective at tackling the true enablers of poaching, corrupt officers. Atypical environmental supporters don’t notice that these embody members of the identical authorities departments which can be financed straight via their donations.24 It’s insanity, and is certain to make issues worse. There is a gigantic quantity of dissimulation at work within the supposed safeguarding of nature and the general public is routinely being conned.

It’s sure that in the event that they proceed to alienate native individuals, conservationists themselves will quickly be tolling conservation’s dying knell. We’re continually advised poaching is on the rise, for instance, however we’re by no means advised that’s largely as a result of of their deeply flawed methods. If we wish to shield the setting, as we absolutely do, we now have to get up to the truth that the time period “wilderness” has been hijacked for the homelands of peoples who have been booted out to meet the biblical story of an empty Eden.

It’s time to banish this antediluvian homily from the environmentalist canon. It’s time to start out approaching the tribal peoples and different native inhabitants who stay in and close to conservation zones with the respect they deserve. Normally it’s they who created the so-called “wilderness” within the first place, and so if we see it as divinely inspiring we should welcome them as its foremost sensible guardians and assist them on this position.

That may contain dealing with squarely as much as the crimes attributable to conservation. Environmentalism’s success will largely depend upon whether or not the leaders of the conservation motion and the billion-dollar trade beneath them care extra about defending their fantasy of an untouched Eden than they do about the true “pure” world, which individuals have nurtured and formed over millennia.

The 1850s was a shape-shifting epoch. Whites destroyed the Yosemite Indians then ordained their land hallowed, so scripting conservation’s romantic creation fantasy. Darwin put paid to the traditional biblical model of creation together with his bestseller, “On the Origin of Species,” on the identical time ushering in a satanic new fantasy – at this time referred to as “scientific” racism.25 In the identical decade, Henry D. Thoreau gave us his loopy masterpiece of American literature through which he sensibly counselled, “It’s by no means too late to surrender our prejudices.”26 He was absolutely proper. Historical past is greater than self-serving leisure, it’s a information and mentor which may lead us away from endlessly repeating previous cruelties, and no less than level us within the course of one thing higher for everybody.

The empty wilderness isn’t Paradise on Earth, it’s a false idol which desecrates the graves and reminiscences of its creators and remains to be killing individuals at this time. Understanding this received’t diminish environmentalism or harm nature in any respect: Quite the opposite, it’ll impress its actual and lasting safety. Our divine planet, the place a type of scripture is certainly “written on each cliff,” is unquestionably value defending correctly, together with from the deliriums of the conservation trade: In spite of everything, it’s our solely actual heritage.

Stephen Corry is grateful for the possibility to stroll and climb in nationwide parks on a number of continents over half a century – and finds them divinely inspiring. He has labored with Survival Worldwide, the worldwide motion for tribal peoples’ rights, since 1972. The not-for-profit, which is profitable at halting the eviction of tribal peoples from their ancestral homelands, has an workplace within the San Francisco Bay space. Its public marketing campaign to vary conservation will be joined at https://www.survivalinternational.org/conservation. That is certainly one of a sequence27 of articles on the issue.
___________

Footnotes

1 Ralph Simpson Kuykendall, Early Historical past of Yosemite Valley (Washington: Washington Authorities Printing Workplace, 1919), https://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/early_history_of_yosemite_valley/.

2 General the Californian genocide eradicated about 90% of Indians within the span of a few generations. See Benjamin Madley, “It’s time to acknowledge the genocide of California’s Indians,” Los Angeles Instances, Might 22, 2016, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-madley-california-genocide-20160522-snap-story.html.

3 Kuykendall, Early Historical past of Yosemite Valley.

4 Martin Luther’s authentic 1517 “Theses” did recommend giving to the needy was higher than paying the clergy; and the instructing that people ought to behave as in the event that they have been certainly one of God’s chosen is widespread in Protestantism.

5 Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Wisconsin: The College of Wisconsin Press, 1988) 506-7, https://www.religionandnature.com/ern/pattern/Meine—Leopold.pdf.

6 Yaakov Garb, “The Politics of Nature in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” in Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology, ed. Dave Macauley (New York: The Guilford Press, 1996) 250, https://goo.gl/r2oMCt.

7 Robert H Nelson, The New Holy Wars: Financial Faith Versus Environmental Faith in Modern America (Pennsylvania: Penn State College Press, 2010).

8 Ibid., 65.

9 Doug Tompkins, interview by Paul Kingsnorth, Chile, 2011, transcript in The Darkish Mountain Challenge, December 16, 2015, https://dark-mountain.web/weblog/doug-tompkins-remembered/.

10 Nobody is for certain concerning the etymological origin of “wild” in Germanic languages.

11 Nelson, The New Holy Wars, 121.

12 Frances L. Flannery, Understanding Apocalyptic Terrorism: Countering the Radical Mindset (Oxon: Routledge, 2016), https://goo.gl/rY9tvQ.

13 Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Grasp Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Vermont: College of Vermont Press, 2009).

14 Legal guidelines towards “miscegenation” weren’t totally abolished till 1967 in the USA, and obligatory sterilization was nonetheless taking place in 1981, and presumably a lot later.

15 Maybe most famously, the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942) in the USA and the author G.Ok. Chesterton (1874-1936) in Britain. Curiously, the previous was of Jewish descent and the latter a convert to Roman Catholicism.

16 Stephen Corry, “Whose setting, whose regulation? or Why Darwin is dangerously flawed” (presentation – Keynote speaker 3, Public Curiosity Environmental Regulation Convention, College of Oregon, OR, February 28, 2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RcN8PTKdNg (from 27 minutes).

17 American environmentalism has been concerned within the debate over immigration since its earliest days. 100 years in the past many main conservationists opposed immigration from southern and japanese Europe, principally for causes of eugenics: They didn’t need “non-Aryans” comparable to Italians, Greeks and Jews, to “swamp” the “Nordic race” which had colonized the USA. Extra not too long ago the opposition has been focussed towards “Latinos” from Mexico and Central and South America.

18 Brentin Mock, “How the Sierra Membership Realized to Love Immigration,” Colour Traces, Might 8, 2013, https://www.colorlines.com/articles/how-sierra-club-learned-love-immigration.

19 Dave Foreman, “Rewilding North America” (presentation throughout his book-selling tour, Southern College of Oregon, OR, October 23, 2013), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w92mpvcWoW4.

20 Technically, a lot land in English and Welsh nationwide parks, for instance, is privately owned and the landowner’s permission must be sought earlier than spending the evening. In actuality, few trouble. I’m not alone in having spent numerous nights, unchallenged, in “wild” locations inside protected zones in a number of European international locations.

21 A favorite of mine is from Austria and is a deliberate misquote from the twelfth century German saint, Hildegard von Bingen, “The place love abounds, there are the mountains, for that’s God’s realm.”

22 Estimates range from 5 million to a number of tens of thousands and thousands. Charles Geisler places the quantity in Africa to no less than fourteen million. https://orionmagazine.org/article/conservation-refugees/.

23 Virunga was created within the Belgian Congo in 1925 and initially named after Belgium’s Roman Catholic King Albert. Nevertheless, the park’s prime mover was actually Carl Akeley, big-game hunter and “father of taxidermy” from the American Museum of Pure Historical past.

24 Stephen Corry, “Wildlife Conservation Efforts Are Violating Tribal Peoples’ Rights,” Truthout, February 3, 2015, https://www.truth-out.org/op-ed/merchandise/28888-wildlife-conservation-efforts-are-violating-tribal-peoples-rights, and Corry, “When Conservationists Militarize, Who’s The Actual Poacher?” Truthout, August 9, 2015, https://www.truth-out.org/op-ed/merchandise/32255-when-conservationists-militarize-who-s-the-real-poacher.

25 Darwin first denigrated the Indians of Tierra del Fuego in his journals in 1832 and summarized his concepts forty years later in “The Descent of Man.” The work which was first extensively seen, nevertheless, was the 1859 “On the Origin of Species”. The complete-blown thought of eugenics was devised by Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, in 1883 and had been extensively taken up by the top of the nineteenth century. It nonetheless underpins racism at this time. See additionally Corry, “When Conservationists Militarize.”

26 Henry D Thoreau, Walden (New Jersey: Princeton, 1971), 8.

27 See https://www.truth-out.org/creator/itemlist/consumer/47328.

Doug

Doug

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *