``...The long list of reactions to those atrocities has little to do with American individualism, ...'' CG)
Well, I wouldn't say that -- American individualism has provided many of the atrocities, not that there weren't others lined up to take a shot if it missed. Gordon Fitch
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You know, I was afraid of that sentence. What I meant, which you probably realize anyway, was the theme of individual self-reliance and self-sufficiency which Emerson and Thoreau shared (silly, since Emerson had to foot the bill), isn't central to the various movements involved in global ecological and political issues---rather its the reverse. In other words, they mostly dropped the rugged individualism stuff---recognizing it as John Wayne, The Enemy, and kept the communing with nature parts.
Certainly the victimization take is probably accurate, except I suspect that reflects how nature is read by US and Euro groups. It would be interesting to hear how other progressive groups in other parts of the world see the relationship---particularly where the forces of global capital are convergent. If I had to guess, I would guess the victimization stance is even more intense, since it's whole communities of people and ways of life that are disappeared or threatened, and not just a few trees and some obscure animal species.
I got a mild taste for these scenes in a long forgotten save the Stanislaus campaign (1980) that failed. The issue was an Army Corp of Engineer's project to build a stupid and un-needed earthen filled dam on a California river---in a stretch that would put the last sections of the rafting parts under water. The stated purpose of the dam was irrigation for farms and orchards down stream. Most of the people involved were at least ten to twenty years younger than me, very idealistic and had built up a nice communal organization for wilderness recreation for the disabled and inner city kids, called ETC. None of that mattered. Agri-buz wanted the water and they got it. There was some `compromise' in which the dam was only partially filled for awhile, but I think it was temporary.
I don't know what happened after that, except the political failure pretty much did in the organization and the people moved on to other things, like getting jobs or going back to school, or whatever. What it had finally come down to was a bunch of hippy kids against big business and the State.
Of course the in-fighting broke out and got worse with each set-back, something along the lines of the life-stylers v. committed. It was sickening to be around, so I dropped out of it, just in time to watch James Watt become Secretary of the Interior and start work on privatizing federal land, parks and national monuments. Shortly after that there was a big riot in Yosemite with the climbers on one side and Rangers on the other. That pretty much did in a lot of the political climbing scene for awhile.
Now some twenty years later, I don't care who is truly committed and validated up to their ass in practice and who is just styling on vacation---as long as they can scare the assholes in power--that's good enough for me.
Chuck Grimes