For my ILC Spring Quarter, I am delving into the world of land commodification, specifically the National Park system. My blog post contain content for both land use policy and the commodification of nature. Though my research so far I have found that the wilderness is just a fabrication, in fact many of these National Parks have been vigorously constructed to reflect a human centric approach; this includes removing species and Native people from conservation lands.

In the book The Lives of Animal by J.M. Coetzee there is a passage where the mother is in conversation with a group of people at a dinner table she says “I often wonder what thinking is, what understanding is. Do we really understand the universe better than animals do? Understanding a thing often looks to me like playing with one of those Rubik cubes. Once you have made all the little bricks snap into place, hey pesto, you understand. It makes sense if you live inside a Rubik cube, but if you don’t…” (Coetzee 45).  To me this passage holds weight regarding my project, and perhaps my entire education at Evergreen.

As I start to understand the land displacement endured by Native People for the establishment of National Parks, I start to understand a deeper oppressive system put in place early on in US policy, but that still exist today. Although the National Parks are starting to mend those wounds, we still have a long way to go. The Rubik’s cube will probably never be finished, at least not until the lands have been given over to the first inhabitants (animals).

I’m finding, in my quest for knowledge, that we understand the world in way that we can try and make sense of it. That understanding is not better or less than any other animals understanding. Orca have a sense of self that reaches beyond what humans sense, where we are very self-centered, Orca’s are group centered. They possibly understand the world though their group or families. Does this mean we will have a true deeper understanding of our world? No. We put the Rubik’s cube together differently than the Orca.

Our understanding of the universe becomes a problem when we start to manage other species and their understanding, as we do with National Parks and Land Management. We start deciding which species can go on living and whose understanding needs to be altered. This is all the knowledge I am understanding this quarter. How we use land policy to shape and mold our nature to fit within our understanding of the universe.

Humans have been changing the natural world around them since their rise in evolution, so it is not a great shock that we continue to do this today. We need order to survive, not chaos. We control our environment, and then we can understand our environment. This is the approach of National Park systems. Usually this control is exercised as a safety precaution, visitors cannot be trusted to their own vices. For the most part that is true. As we removed ourselves from nature, we have forgotten how to be in nature. We have forgotten the rules of nature. One great example is bear training. We humans need to be trained on how to interact with a bear, especially in a world where we understand animals to be our pets. They are not.

These are all ideas you will find in my blog posts. I have decided to change my ILC just a bit. I will not be doing research papers. My blog posts will serve as individual essays on each topic: Land Use Policy and The Commodification of Nature.