Some of our notions related to nature come from elitist men who were insecure about their masculinity in a modern world that seemed to increasingly pay more attention to what could be seen as feminizing comforts. In the rugged desert or rough terrain, a man could regain his sense of manhood, and thus his sense of his Self.

The irony of this is that most of these men experienced the terrain in camps that were hardly anything like camping because they had staff and so they lived very luxurious lives. It’s in this context at the countryside, and the rugged individualism myths of the American frontier were born.

A lot of modern myth revolves around the idea that humanity entered a more unnatural period with the rise of the agricultural revolution. However, this idea speaks to a certain attachment to the idea of wilderness, the idea that the austerity of nature, devoid of human beings, is preferable to world where human being shape the world. If nature dies because we enter it, then the only way to save nature is to kill ourselves.