WILDHOUR! Midnight in America | ON THE NECESSITY OF ROADLESS AREAS (I)

ON THE NECESSITY OF ROADLESS AREAS (I)

Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor.
(I see and acknowledge the better way, but follow the worse.)
Ovid (The Metamorphoses)

Because of the near complete motorization of North American culture,
roadless areas have gained tremendously in significance in the past
twenty years or so. Now, at road’s end, we also reach the spiritual end
of what I see as a defining imbalance of the made-in-the-USA meta-
physics of the world, namely, a remarkably one-sided way of thinking
about freedom.

North Americans seem largely to take a self-centered view of freedom,
one which we might call the freedom to of the individual. Why might
this be imbalanced? In my view, it is because it fails to take adequately
into consideration the possible harm caused by the potentially negative
consequences of our actions as they reverberate out into wider con-
texts, out into the wider community.

It is really very simple, this idea that freedom always has two sides,
the freedom to, and the freedom from. Take for instance the example
known well to every big city apartment dweller: I want to listen to my
loud music in the middle of the night; You want to sleep. So to make
life livable, we have to work out some kind of balanced agreement be-
tween us. What I want to suggest is that all freedom works essentially
in this same way. And what is more, individuals and cultures may be
characterized by which side of the two they tend to give emphasis,
give the most significance and legal protections. We can easily imag-
ine the extremes, and it is good to do so for the sake of clarity. On the
one hand, we have the state of absolute lawlessness, where every one
just does as they please; And on the other, we have the state of total con-
trol where no one is allowed to do anything at all freely. Whereas North
American culture has evolved an exemplary balanced form of liberty
in the areas of freedom of speech and expression, it seems to me at the
same time it is remarkably imbalanced when it comes to the three key
defining areas of finance, private property, or anything powered by hy-
drocarbons. If I can make money, if its my land, or if its my car or truck
or dirt-bike, 4-wheeler or snowmachine, the basic assumed metaphysics
is, “Get the hell out of the way!”

roads of any kind undoubtedly originally concerned itself with the harm
wrought upon the environment by the negative side-effects of mecha-
nized travel, roadless areas now also offer us a place to experience the
benefits first hand of a more balanced idea of freedom. In addition to
the freedom to, we now have a complementary freedom from. Predict-
ably, the freedom from part of the equation here deals mostly from the
unwanted by-products of Car Culture, like freedom from noise, or the
freedom from air pollution, or the freedom from the fear of getting run
over.

Like water meanders through an alpine bog, finding a kind of living
balance by turning now to the left, now to the right, I think this more
balanced idea of freedom is something beautiful to behold. But don’t
take my word for it. It might be worth making a bit of an effort to get
out of one’s car and hike up into one of those wilderness areas just to
rediscover for oneself what freedom is really all about.

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