CIVILIZATION AND THE LANDSCAPE — CROWE 541 



selves and the civilization for which we are trying to build an environ- 

 ment. Only if we see clearly the goals of our civilization may we 

 hope to achieve a setting for it. 



Where the landscape suffers as a result of civilization, either the 

 ideals of that civilization are at fault or it means that the whole truth 

 and implications of the ideal have not been grasped, some angle 

 of life has been neglected, some secondary interest overstressed. This 

 lack of balance is evident both in individual countries and in the world 

 as a whole. For the balanced landscape must be seen as a world con- 

 cept. If "no man is an island entire of itself," still less is any 

 country. We can no longer countenance the destruction of one part 

 of the earth's surface to supply riches for another; nor the desecra- 

 tion of one part to provide a playgromid for another. 



Yet the action of one country can have repercussions in others far 

 removed from it. For example, the wreckage of three landscapes, 

 in different parts of the world, can be traced to the same cause, an 

 overemphasis on the benefits of industrial wealth. The dust bowls of 

 Australia and America were formed in providing cheap food for the 

 industrial revolution which resulted in the black country of Britain. 



But while we need a landscape balanced on a worldwide scale, we 

 need also the full richness and variety of local ecology, without which 

 the evolution of both life and thought must stagnate. There are signs 

 that the moronic idea, so prevalent in the last generation, that any 

 organism not directly profitable to man could be dispensed with, is 

 gradually giving way to the realization that only the full variation of 

 landscapes and of organisms can give the rich textures which make a 

 fully conscious life possible. This dawning realization marks an 

 advance in man's relationship to the landscape. He has left behind 

 the stage of unconscious membership, and the stage of exploitation, 

 and is reaching toward the stage of conscious partnership. 



But this fresh outlook, full of hope as it is, is at present only a 

 very small current stirring against a strong running tide. For by far 

 the more obvious forces are still those hostile to the landscape; if not 

 consciously, then through ignorance and apathy. 



Pressure of population on restricted areas, greed, the deification 

 of the profit motive, the belief that speed, machines, and mass 

 production are good in themselves, rather than as servants of human- 

 ity, all these flaws in our civilization are the cause of scars upon our 

 landscape. They result in soulless housing development, holiday 

 resorts where natural beauty is obliterated under tarmac and tawdry 

 buildings; wildlife, both plant and animal, exterminated for quick 

 profit; advertisements defiling the countryside; industries polluting 

 rivers and pouring waste upon good land. All these things may 

 bring quick cash profit, but they impoverish human life and cause 

 long-term damage to the landscape. 



