Crazy Mountains: Learning from Wilderness to Weigh Technology

Front Cover
State University of New York Press, 1995 M10 19 - 264 pages
Reality is slipping away, writes David Strong in Crazy Mountains, and is being eroded by a glut of technological devices and commodities. But all is not lost if we learn to care for the things at the center of the good life.

Written in the tradition of Walden and A River Runs Through It with philosophical clarity and literary power, this book opens with a vivid account of the Crazy Mountains of Montana, an island of high, craggy peaks, forest, meadows, and rushing streams, surrounded by the sweep of the high plains. A newly-bulldozed road and a planned timber sale jeopardize the wild character of the range and trigger the wide-ranging reflections of this remarkable book.

Technology is transforming Earth in increasingly extensive ways, and Strong urges us to awaken from the spell of technology—from the unexamined belief that its devices and commodities make our lives good. He warns that even an environmental ethic can be subverted by the glamorous pull of the consumer culture. From wilderness we learn what things are real and how this reality can re-order our lives, our communities, and our nation. We learn another way to be.

This is a one-of-a-kind book. It soars gracefully, yet presents a comprehensive vision of the challenge wilderness offers to our contemporary culture.
 

Contents

The Danger to the Crazy Mountains
15
The Environmentalists Reply
43
The Other Story
63
The Technological Subversion of Environmental
75
Granting the Thing its Eloquence
103
Learning from Wilderness
117
To Consider Things Again
145
To Experience Things Again
155
To Experience Wilderness
171
To Speak Again
191
To Build Again
205
Notes
217
Index
245
Copyright

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About the author (1995)

David Strong is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rocky Mountain College.

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