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CLOSING RANGE DAVE SKINNER WHAT MATTERS MOST
GUEST COLUMN STEWART BRANDBORG TODAY’S WILDERNESS CHALLENGE
CHRISTMAS IS COMING, WITH our sense of peace and mutual goodwill vaporized by yet another bloody slaughter, this time not by some mindless kook, but with malice afore- thought in the name of holy jihad. Our calamity begs many questions.
First, are Islamic morals and values compatible with Western moral and value systems? Can the two be recon- ciled? Can Islamic values be successfully assimilated into Western societies? The answers matter.
Of the three major religions that orig- inated in the eastern Mediterranean, I feel it signi cant that Islam has the heavi- est ritualistic hold on its adherents. Mus- lims must pray ve times a day, follow- ing strict rules governing how one stands, sits, bows, how one prostrates oneself, how many prayers to say, which prayers to say, and which direction to face. One cannot pray if one has become unclean – like “lean against something” – one must perform proper ablutions, meaning one washes face, hands and feet in order to be clean before God.
Was this one-upmanship upon Juda- ism or Christianity by the upstart Mohammed? I don’t know and don’t care – but I’m not attracted to any God that demands my attention 35 times a week.
To secular Westerners, even to the devout who never miss a chance to wor- ship, it’s not hard to regard Islam as a form of physical, even mental, captivity, which in turn reminds me of a concept called metanoia.
Generally de ned as repentance, but more properly as a change of mind- set, metanoia operates primarily in a religious context. To varying degrees, churches will sequester new recruits in order to strengthen their convictions and the conversion. The ostensible, idealis- tic purpose is to save a soul, but there’s a mercenary motive as well. Success- fully prying a seeker away from his or her wicked ways also helps create a faith- ful religionist who hopefully will end up being a reliable supporter of the church – as in money, the funds needed to support the church’s operational infrastructure, to support “good works.”
But if you substitute “politics” for “religion,” it’s easy to see how metanoia also aptly describes processes of political
recruitment or conversion to, or indoc- trination in, political causes, very much like techniques religious institutions use to “close the deal.” Hmmm ... metanoia really isn’t that much di erent from out- right manipulation, is it?
But there’s a reverse side to metanoia. Want to keep another church from con- verting your congregants? Want to keep your believers from thinking impure thoughts? Want to prevent their assim- ilation into a society with competing or di erent morals or value systems? Monitoring them 35 times a week seems a pretty e ective technique for keep- ing people isolated from mainstream thought, doesn’t it?
The big question facing us all is whether or not Muslims, refugee or not, can successfully assimilate into Amer- ican society and internalize American ideals. If immigration occurs with the intent of assimilation and acceptance, it’s all good.
But how good are the values and mor- als on display in Paris, New York, and San Bernardino by supposedly devout Mus- lims? We have the killer husband’s father telling Sonny not to worry about Israel being around much longer. Good values role model, hmmm?
The killers left a baby, leaving us all to ponder the soaring morality of a newly married couple dropping their rst-born daughter o with Grandma and head- ing o for live target practice on fellow humans. What a loving legacy. Where did they learn to think this way? Who the heck brainwashed them?
Even when it comes to moderate Mus- lims, what about that tone-deaf, clueless producer at Al-Jazeera (yep, the network that made Al Gore a really rich dude), who tweeted that because our woman killer had unfailingly worn a burqa, “it’s disre- spectful to show a pic without,” and “dis- respectful to her family.” Seriously?
The slaughter of 14 people, maiming 21 more, was an act of deepest respect, right? What about the failed pipe bombs? Kill- ing dead wasn’t enough? The PLAN was to blow up the pieces? R-E-S-P-E-C-T....
So here we are, in the time of year when we pause to re ect on what mat- ters most to us – who we are, and what we believe.
AS A MONTANAN I AM BLESSED to live in a place of incompara- ble beauty and wealth of natural resources. In appreciation of that I nd myself moved to make a plea to thought- ful citizens to resist the corrosive e ects of growing threats to the quality of life we enjoy.
The wilderness law has delivered to us who live here an irreplaceable part of our American Heritage. The quality of wildness, of autonomous and unfettered nature, was the central concern of those of us who, in the 1950s and early 1960s, wrote and worked for enactment of the Wilderness Act. Now, after a lifetime of work for wilderness, I ask its defenders to never forget: Wildness is foremost the quality of wilderness that we must seek to preserve. It is the forces of nature at full play in the absence of human intent.
Only 51 years ago, when I helped organize the uniquely American pop- ular movement to pass the Wilderness Act, we did not dream of the pace of change and rapid exploitation of natu- ral resources that we face today. In this age of climate change, species extinction and all too widespread unraveling of the natural world that we all depend on, it is more critical than ever to preserve what wilderness we have left.
Wilderness is land left to be wild as well as a principled idea. It is the embod- iment of reverence for nature and the humility to withhold the hand of man from exploitation. Sadly, such wild land and grace- lled humility seem to be in short supply and disappearing quickly due to dominance by moneyed self interests.
Commodi cation of the natu- ral world is, as it was, often based on resource extraction. Now it is increas- ingly made even more pervasive by the pro table industry and expanding self interests of recreation. Humility is too often replaced by a sense of entitlement and sel shness. We are seeing accel- erated loss of wilderness as well as the erosion of sel ess values and actions that set the stage for wilderness desig- nation. The ascendancy of recreation, an optional pastime, even when at the expense of wildness is a sad comment
on the state of American values.
One new vehicle contributing to this damaging trend is the increasingly pop- ular Trojan horse of so-called “collabo- ration.” Industry and recreation inter- ests sit down at a table sancti ed by pol- iticians beholden to industry campaign money and divide up America’s shared natural legacy. They are the self-selected deciders for all Americans and serve to displace meaningful participation by other Americans who live further away or cannot a ord the time to sit unpaid at the table. The way “collaboration” is being used amounts to collusion by a small club divvying up valuable Amer-
ican public assets.
I cautioned groups like the Montana
Wilderness Association and The Wil- derness Society at a recent Wilderness Conference to “resist the fuzzy, fuzzy Neverland of collaboration,” and begin to advocate for real wilderness protec- tion as the law was written and intended.
The willingness of certain conser- vation groups to compromise wilder- ness and their organization’s mission has been rewarded by lavish foundation funds, often from foundations like PEW (Sun Oil), founded with private pro ts derived from exploiting publicly owned resources.
We now see some well-funded con- servation non-pro ts collaborating with the Forest Service and sacri cing wilderness, then accepting taxpayer funds for “in-kind” work participating in “partnerships” that serve the federal agency’s goals.
We conservationists should not advo- cate for deals that include release of pro- tected wildland areas or the inclusion of non-conforming, wilderness damaging uses, baked into the very enabling leg- islation. Exercising the necessary altru- ism we must continue to instill a love for wilderness and rededicate ourselves to the mission of protecting areas for their wildness, using an ecosystem approach based on conservation biology princi- ples, while accommodating traditional recreation to the extent it does not diminish wildness or other wilderness characteristics.
“CAN ISLAMIC VALUES BE SUCCESSFULLY ASSIMILATED INTO WESTERN SOCIETIES?”
Mike (Uncommon Ground) Jopek and Dave (Closing Range) Skinner often fall on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to political and outdoor issues. Their columns alternate each week in the Flathead Beacon.
“WE MUST CONTINUE TO INSTILL A LOVE FOR WILDERNESS.”
Stewart Brandborg, a fourth-generation Montanan, is the last surviving architect of the Wilderness Act of 1964. He served as the executive director of The Wilderness Society from 1964 to 1976. In 2010 Brandborg was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Montana – the highest honor UM can confer upon an individual – for his lifetime of work protecting wilderness and advocating for public lands and wildlife.
DECEMBER 16, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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