What makes an activist? (Part 1)

Introduction

I have sometimes been asked, what events made me turn out the way I am – an environmental and social justice activist, interested in theoretical questions, and still going at the age of 77? More generally, I have often thought about what makes a person the way they are? Why choose one direction in life rather than another? What fosters in a person a sense of injustice, either human or ecological? What makes a person renounce the general sentiment of this society, which is to keep one’s head down and basically pay most attention to personal advancement? Also, what is the role of an activist’s partner or partners in life? Does it necessarily mean that the partner gives up their own self-direction, in order to play a supporting role to the activist? This amounts to basically subsidizing with their lives the life of the activist – is this acceptable? What makes someone say what they believe, no matter how unpopular, to stand up to power, and to public opinion if necessary? Why is it that today, Earth preservation turns out to be of overwhelming importance for some people and not for most others? Are there common factors to explain why someone remains an activist throughout their life, or is this a highly individual path?

Given the fundamental change in my personal health, with the early March diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, I’ve decided to look back on my life and write out what seem to be the significant events that helped shape the way I am. I hope others might find this of interest.

Significant Events in my Life

- 1934, born in Portsmouth, southern England. An industrial city and the main naval dockyard in England at that time. There were four kids, all boys, in our working class family.

- Second World War (1939-1945). Our family spent some of this time in Portsmouth, but us kids were also “evacuated” to the countryside occasionally. My father was not drafted, but worked “on the bench” at an aircraft plant in Portsmouth.

- Failed the “11 plus” exam, which streamed kids into the “grammar”, “technical” and “secondary modern” school systems. I’m not sure how, but I ended up at Portsmouth Technical School. I disliked the school, with its concentration on preparing students to enter the industrial world. I was not much good at “shop” work. However, the school had a field club run by an energetic teacher, Gus Gates. We went on expeditions from Portsmouth into the English countryside. I was already somewhat primed for this, because of an earlier interest in nature. In Portsmouth, near where I lived, we had the mudflats of Langston Harbour and not too far away was Farlington Marshes, with its many ducks and geese. Opposite our house was Baffin’s Pond – a large pond with willow trees, swans, ducks, geese, carp and eels. I left the technical school at 15, at my father’s urging, to enter Portsmouth Dockyard as a shipwright apprentice. My father had a saying that “everyone should have a trade.”

- Portsmouth Dockyard, five-year apprenticeship, 1949 entry. There were approximately 44 apprentice shipwrights. On graduation, I was listed as tenth. Although the apprenticeship covered all aspects of the shipwright trade in the dockyard, ranging from building 14-foot sailing dinghies, to working “afloat” on various naval vessels, and a stint in the drawing office, I never felt “competent” as a tradesperson. After finishing the apprenticeship, I worked for one year in the dockyard as a shipwright. From 1952-55, I studied in the evening at Portsmouth College of Technology, seeing this as a “way out” of the industrial life. I am not sure now how it happened, but in 1954 I passed “Ordinary Level English”. This would be most unusual for someone with my educational background at that time. I like to think it reflected my reading of writers like D.H Lawrence, as well as poetry, as a dockyard matey. Also, my best friend at that time, Alan Marshfield, not a dockyard matey, was a poet. I decided at some point to seek entry to Durham University, which was geared to teaching naval architecture, as a way out of my Portsmouth life. I used the College of Technology qualifications I had earned (basically rote learning) – Ordinary National Certificate and First Year Higher National Certificate – to gain entry to study in the first year at the then Newcastle-on-Tyne campus of Durham University, called King’s College.

   

- Southsea Rowing Club. My elder brother Harry, who had attended grammar school, and later Bristol University to study dentistry, became involved in rowing. Reading Rowing Club was one of the places where he rowed. He introduced me to the Southsea Rowing Club, a sea rowing club in Portsmouth, when I was a dockyard apprentice. This sport became a passion and a significant influence in my life. Club members at Southsea Rowing Club were not working class, and this is perhaps signified by my nickname in the club – “Matey”. Rowing introduced me to a love of the sea, camping in the Isle of Wight, and working with others in a collective sense, in order to become a successful racing crew. During training outings we explored extensive areas of the coast around Portsmouth Harbour. We often rowed over to the Isle of Wight in larger clinker boats, called “galleys.” In summer, we raced at regattas all along the South Coast. We usually travelled to the regattas in the back of a lorry, with the racing shells lashed to a wooden frame over our heads.

- Durham University. I attended the university for the academic year 1955-1956, in the first year of the course leading to a B.Sc. in Applied Science (Naval Architecture). I remember the university official who spoke to the large incoming class of students saying, “Look left and then look right, only one of the three of you will be here next year.” The government covered the course fees and living expenses. I lived with other students, some of whom were Norwegian, in a house off campus. I enjoyed rowing/sculling while in Newcastle and spent a lot of time hanging out with Arts students. I failed the first examination in all subjects in June 1956. When I took the exams for a second time in September 1956, as was then allowed, I passed in chemistry but failed again in mathematics and physics. This was the end of Durham University for me, as I was out of my depth in the science subjects, given my background and general lack of interest.

- Army Service, 1956 to August 1957. At that time, England had what was called National Service, for a two-year period, for males in the Army, Navy or Air force. Someone could get a “deferment” to complete something like an apprenticeship or university courses. But eventually, if one stayed in England, and one was assessed as medically fit, the National Service obligation had to be fulfilled. One option facing young men was to sign on for three years as a “regular.” This meant quite a lot more pay, and also being able to choose where one could be assigned, as long as the basic qualifications for the particular job of interest could be met. I stupidly signed on for three years with the Army and chose to enter the Royal Army Educational Core. According to the Army, I was theoretically qualified, by virtue of previous educational achievements. Before entering the Educational Core for their training program, I had to complete a “basic training” with the Middlesex Regiment. Because I was quite fit from my rowing experiences at the Southsea Rowing Club, I did well and easily passed through basic training. But this was not the situation at the Royal Army Educational Core. After a total of 269 days in the Army, I was discharged because, according to my Certificate of Discharge, “his services being no longer required for the purpose for which he enlisted.” Yet the character assessment provided by the Commanding Officer, written with a view to future employment, while noting my unsuitability for being an instructor in the Educational Core, was quite positive. About Private Orton the CO wrote: “He is intelligent and has a sound academic background. Although quiet and reserved he has sound principles and convictions. His appearance is neat and his manner good. He can be trusted to apply himself well at all times.”  I was told that, after discharge, I would be recalled by the Army, to complete the two-year National Service obligation. As I did not want this, I knew it meant leaving the country, if this could be financially arranged. Recalling this from today’s perspective, the reasons I did not make it in the Educational Core, had to do with my general educational inadequacy. I would misspell lesson plans, for example. I think that while this was the main factor, a secondary factor was my attitude toward army discipline generally, and also toward the way that lessons were conducted.

- Immigration to Canada, via the Empress of Scotland. My brother Harry raised the money for my ship voyage. I sailed from Liverpool, and landed on November 14, 1957, in Quebec City. I disembarked the ship in Montreal. Being a shipwright with apprenticeship papers made it easy for me to obtain immigration status. My first job was a white collar one, as a Freight Claims Clerk with the Canadian Pacific Railway. My second job was working for Carlings Brewery, basically as a tank cleaner.

- Met Gunilla, who was Swedish and employed at the Swedish Consulate in Montreal. We eventually moved in together. This was probably in 1958.

- Became a student at Sir George Williams University in Montreal (later renamed Concordia University) in 1959. I was given credit for previous work done in England and obtained the BA in May of 1963. In school terms I did well. After graduating, I received the following letter, dated May 29, 1963, signed by the Vice Principal of the university.

Dear Mr. Orton:

Every year the Faculty Council has the pleasantly difficult job of selecting from our top scholars those who are to receive the highest academic awards in the university. Unfortunately, there can only be one winner, but we are lucky that a number of very good students every year also rank so highly in their academic achievement that they merit consideration for these awards.

I am writing to tell you that although you did not win the Birks Medal, you came very close to it, and your achievement is so fine that I felt that I ought to write to you and congratulate you upon the fine work that you have done here as a student, and to tell you how proud we are of you, whether you won this award or not. I am sure, by what you have demonstrated, that you will go far, and I wish you every success.

Yours sincerely,

Douglas Burns Clarke

Vice-Principal

I remember taking the exam for graduates to enter the civil service because I was interested in the Department of Northern Affairs. I passed the exam but then decided to go to graduate school. I became a Canadian citizen on January 7^th, 1963.

- Attended the New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, New York City, from fall of 1963 to 1966. (Gunilla joined me in New York City and we eventually married. Our son Karl [named after Karl Marx] was born in New York. Johanna was born later in Montreal. We lived close to the school, on the edge of Greenwich Village.) I had tuition scholarships at the Graduate Faculty. I was granted the MA degree in 1965 (thesis not required) and received the Gelgor Prize “for outstanding student in sociology.” In 1965, I passed the Ph.D. qualifying exam, and in 1966 passed the Ph.D. oral examination. But I never submitted a Ph.D. thesis. It was a very lively political time, and I was politically active on and off campus. On campus I was involved with other students in trying to get the faculty members who were teaching us to relinquish some of their power to decide course content. It was an uphill battle. I also worked in the office of an academic Marxist magazine, called Science and Society. I taught a course at the Brooklyn campus of the New York City Community College. In the graduate faculty, I was the teaching assistant to Dr. Carl Mayer and was responsible, under supervision, for marking student papers.

- Taught at Sir George Williams University, 1967-69. This university and its sociology department were initially keen to hire me as a lecturer in sociology. I was a ‘local boy’ who had done well academically, both at Sir George and the New School. But while in graduate school, I had been quite influenced by Left politics and by the huge and very active anti-Vietnam War movement in New York. I also had been imprinted by the culture of the Village – I had a beard and hippy beads around my neck, with the casual clothes to match. Sir George at that time had a number of faculty members who were characterized by me as “house Marxists” or “academic Marxists.” Some of them were high profile socialist scholars from the U.S. I believed in a pluralistic Left approach (many roads to socialism), but that for the Leftist academic, theory and practice had to find a place together in the classroom. The house Marxists did not seem to like this viewpoint. I remember being told by one of them, that I should stop trying to organize, and instead learn German and read Marx in the original language. The first clash within the sociology department took place before I even stepped into a classroom. It concerned the reading lists for my courses, which were definitely not orthodox. I also had tentative ideas on involving students in influencing what was to be taught, how the courses were to run, marking, etc. A full meeting of the sociology department was held. I was told that “I did not share the consensus of the discipline of sociology.” This was the first of a number of clashes during the two years I was at Sir George.

 I worked with a few other left wing faculty and students from Sir George and McGill University, to form a group called the Movement for Socialist Liberation. (Andre Gunder Frank, the left Latin American economist who was at Sir George, was part of this group.) We opposed the recruitment of students on campus for war-related industries. I remember being involved, in the name of this group, in disrupting a visit by a corporate spokesperson who was coming to campus to recruit engineering students. This disruption quite upset some of the movers and shakers in the university, who saw it as a violation of academic freedom.

When Che Guevara was murdered in 1967, after capture in Bolivia, with the involvement of the CIA, I wrote an article for the student newspaper The Georgian (October 20, 1967): “In Memoriam: Che Guevara, Communist Revolutionary.” This article landed me in considerable trouble in the university. I used Che as a revolutionary model for comparison purposes with the house Marxists. A sample quote from this article is given below:

“Che Guevara was no coffee-house revolutionary. He could not be classified as an academic Marxist. Many of these gentlemen – who may be spotted on university campuses in America and Canada, well salaried, well fed and well clothed – make absolute distinctions between revolutionary theory and revolutionary action. Academic Marxists often do not see any contradiction in such a position and apparently fail to realize the rationalization of interests involved in such a worldview. Che had an interest in revolutionary theory but he also believed in praxis. His message was brutally simple, yet profound: The revolution will be made by those who act, not by those who endlessly talk and contribute to left-wing journals, regarding strategy, tactics, objective versus subjective conditions, etc, etc. As Fidel says, ‘The duty of a revolutionary is to make the revolution.’ In Latin America there can be no peaceful transition to socialism…For Che, ‘the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love’ even if this must be balanced by a ‘cold intelligence.’ Bourgeois self-interest had no place in socialism. Moral incentives, said Guevara, were to be stressed against material incentives. It was this transformation of values in opposition to the corruption, privilege, alienation, racism and absence of meaningful democracy in bourgeois society that Che was so concerned with, that makes him a charismatic figure…”

Since writing the above, I have gained some ecological understanding. For all his positive contributions, Che still believed in “the domination of Nature”, expressing this in a letter left for his children, to be read after his death. The Marxist tradition has greatly contributed to a concern for social justice, but today, Earth preservation needs to be our guiding star.

- Sometime into teaching at Sir George, I came in contact with and started working with the “Internationalists”, who were later to become the Communist Party of Canada, Marxist-Leninist. The university did not renew my teaching contract. Not working on, or showing any inclination to produce a Ph. D. thesis, was a legitimate issue in the non-renewal. But the general sentiment towards me among faculty members was perhaps conveyed in a comment by David Sheps who wrote an article called, “The Apocalyptic Fires at Sir George Williams University” after university computers were burned as a spin-off from an anti-racism struggle within the university.  His writing helped to create the material conditions such that I would never again obtain a full-time teaching position in Canada. (See Canadian Dimension, Volume 5, Number 8, February 1969.) Sheps was then Associate Editor of Canadian Dimension and an English professor at Sir George. Canadian Dimension, which is still around, is Canada’s leading left social democratic magazine. In the paragraph below, Sheps was writing about me as a member of the Internationalists, without mentioning my name specifically:

“One of their leaders happens to be a lecturer in the Sociology department. He is a self-proclaimed Marxist Leninist who, as far as anyone can tell, has read practically no Marx or Lenin. Since he also refuses on principle to read ‘bourgeois sociology’ (which he seems to interpret broadly enough to include most left-wing sociologists), many have wondered if he has read anything at all. The Sociology department had chosen not to renew his contract, a decision every left-wing faculty member regarded as eminently sensible.”

Another reactionary article in Canadian Dimension around my time at Sir George, giving the views of the house Marxists at the university, was by the American historian Eugene Genovese. (See “War On Two Fronts”, Volume 6, Number 1, April-May 1969.) People like me were part of one of the fronts that had to be combated! (After I became involved in the ecological movement, I wrote for Canadian Dimension. Starting in 1989 I wrote about 27 articles in all, including as a columnist for two years.)

- Organizer with the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) until 1975. I eventually resigned over the lack of internal democracy in the organization. When I directly experienced this lack of democracy myself, I knew it was time to go. I ran twice in Montreal in the federal elections as an M-L candidate. Gunilla, my then wife, was also a party member. We were both on the Central Committee, and for some time, I was Vice-Chairman of the Party. Gunilla left the organization soon after I left. While in the Party, I mainly organized in Regina and Montreal but also spent some time in Toronto. In Regina, I helped organize a protest against the visit of a military band from the U.S., as an example of cultural imperialism. I was arrested and charged, but the charges were eventually dropped. In 1972, I participated in a Toronto demonstration against the Western Guard, a Nazi group who had organized a “Keep Canada White” meeting. I was arrested and after the court trial, in which I defended myself, I was sentenced to forty days, or a four hundred dollar fine. I did the time. In 1978, a paperback book by Lorne and Caroline Brown, An Unauthorized History of the RCMP, came out. The book used a house Marxist moralizing tone and said that the RCMP wanted “to prepare a case against one David Orton for sedition in February 1971.” Apparently this was based on a talk called “Revolt versus the Status Quo” that I had given at a University of Regina seminar. The university refused to turn over the tapes of the seminar to the RCMP or to testify if the case came to trial. So the sedition case was apparently dropped. (See pp. 122-124). The academics involved never let me know personally about the sedition issue, and I first found out about it in reading the Unauthorized History. After leaving the Marxist-Leninists, I worked on the Montreal waterfront as a shipwright carpenter for a couple of years, for two different companies – Montreal Ship Repairs and Canadian Vickers Limited.

- Moved to British Columbia in 1977, to the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii, Islands of the People) – a place of which Dave Ellis, a non-aboriginal fisherman on the Charlottes said, “this country is meant for seals, Sitka spruce and people.”

- I obtained a job with British Columbia Packers in June of 1977, as a temporary camp help. The “camp” was a floating barge, with ice facilities where trawlers unloaded and sold their catch. The camp closed down in the middle of October. My job was to see that the fish were iced sufficiently, so they remained in good condition. My family lived with me on the camp. The work brought me, an outsider, in contact with an important section of the fishing community. I also became interested in the position of the Haida towards environmental issues, and particularly when these issues clashed with their land claims. Moving to the Charlottes greatly stoked my interest in environmental issues. I decided to re-focus my organizing work on environmental issues and not social justice politics. I took part in whatever environmental meetings I became aware of. I made organizational contact with the British Columbia Federation of Naturalists and agreed to do some theoretical work for them. One very hot issue was around seeking park status for South Moresby. I eventually wrote a 30-page report for the B.C. Federation of Naturalists, presenting various contradictions in the position that the environmentalists were advocating on the Queen Charlottes for their wilderness proposal. My report was called “The Case against the Southern Moresby Wilderness Proposal”. While in the Charlottes, Gunilla and I decided to go our separate ways. It was a difficult, although friendly, parting. (She eventually took our children, Karl and Johanna, back to Sweden.) I had met Helga earlier, while in CPC-ML. When I broke up with Gunilla, Helga and I decided to get together. Helga brought a two-person kayak up to the Charlottes and we took it into the Southern Moresby Wilderness Proposal area. We mainly lived off edible plants and the fish we caught from the kayak. It was a pretty unplanned trip, with no life jackets or signalling gear, just a compass and a map. This forced us to confront and adjust to some extreme weather, plus the natural rhythms of the oceans. I believe this trip was important in developing my environmental consciousness. It was also a bonding trip for Helga and I.

- Moved to Victoria in the fall of 1977 to join Helga. In Victoria, I did environmental work and joined the local naturalists club. I also worked with a fisherman, Scotty Neish, who was on the Executive of the British Columbia United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union. I went fishing with him once. Scotty was a social activist and an environmentalist, and a member of the Communist Party of Canada. We took on the Tsitika Watershed issue in Northern Vancouver Island. We went to a number of meetings, clashing with the loggers and logging industry representatives, and trying to defend the ecological integrity of this watershed.  I tried to mobilize the Federation of Naturalists around this issue and wrote an article about the Tsitika for their newsletter. I had come to really oppose the land tenure system, exploited by the logging companies in British Columbia, who used their forest land “crown leases” to demand millions of dollars in compensation when a park or protected area was proposed. I also wrote a number of letters on wildlife and forest issues in local newspapers. When we left for Nova Scotia in September 1979, I was the regional vice-president for the Federation of Naturalists, responsible for the Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands clubs. I found the naturalists generally quite conservative on environmental issues. They liked observing nature, but did not want to fight in its defence.

Closing Thoughts

The evolution of my environmental consciousness speeded up in British Columbia, even though I had not yet come in contact with deep ecology. This did not happen until the mid-1980s in Nova Scotia. But, in B.C., I was starting to see the natural world through a non-human focused lens. Why was this? The South Moresby kayak trip showed me that, for survival on that trip, it was necessary to understand Nature’s rhythms and to adjust to them. I also came to understand, through involvement in forest issues, that the forest companies’ mantra of “forests for the primary production of timber” made it hopeless to try to engage with them, unless we had extensive social support and an alternative set of values in defence of wild nature. This particularly came home to me when one logging company, in its literature, proposed putting up nesting boxes in its clearcuts.

My experiences at Sir George Williams University and at the New School, gave me the confidence that I could analyze and make up my own mind about various issues, even if I had to stand alone.

I had to leave Portsmouth and the dockyard on an unknown personal journey, to change my consciousness and to have different opportunities for some life choices. All the various events that happened to me, helped to shape who I finally came to be. My two long-term personal relationships in Canada, with Gunilla and Helga, made it possible for me “to do my thing.” They have both been a crucially important part of my life. Both supported and contributed to the values I struggled to articulate.

End of Part I

Thinking about John Muir

“‘I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.’”  John Muir, as cited in Donald Worster’s A Passion for Nature, p. 181

“Capitalism and nature, according to Muir, worked as allies in the shaping of earth’s destiny.” Ibid, p. 414

Introduction

One of the comments on my blog posting on “Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and Deep Ecology” was, why did I not mention John Muir, as he was “surely more of a godfather type figure to deep-ecological thinking than either Carson and Leopold.” I confessed to him that I had never read John Muir. Since then, I decided to remedy this by looking at some of John Muir’s writings, as well as at a biography of his life. I wanted to place him more in context and to have a view on his relationship to deep ecology. I have now read Journeys in the Wilderness: A John Muir Reader, published in 2009 (interestingly in Scotland, not in the United States); and Donald Worster’s 2008, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir. Arne Naess referred to Muir in a passing reference, in Ecology, community and lifestyle, as one of the “forerunners” of the deep ecology movement. (p. 33) It is Naess’s only reference to Muir that I am aware of. Neither Worster’s book, nor the introduction or the editorial comments by Graham White in the John Muir Reader, mention Naess or deep ecology. I find this strange and puzzling. Reading the two books has enabled me to try and grasp the essence of John Muir’s life (1838-1914) and his overall eco-philosophy. One can understand more why he is such an icon for those who value wild nature, wilderness, glaciers, and mountains – but also understand some of his contradictions and philosophical limitations from an ecocentric or deep ecology perspective.

Muir wrote many magazine articles, based on his adventures and personal travels. He had quite a following, once his articles started appearing in print. He wrote to convey the message to help others embrace nature, but also to generate income for a basic livelihood. The books came towards the end of his life and were based on the extensive personal journals which he kept of his various forays into nature.

Five books were published in his lifetime:

-        The Mountains of California, 1894,

-        Our National Parks, 1901,

-        My first Summer in the Sierra, 1911,

-        The Yosemite, 1912 , and

-        The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, 1913.

Published posthumously were

-        Travels in Alaska, 1915,  

and three books from the unpublished journals and magazine articles:

-        A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, 1916,

-        The Cruise of the Corwin, 1917, and

-        Steep Trails, 1918. (Book publishing information taken from Worster, p. 462)

The Reader only offers a partial view of Muir – really a self-portrait, as my comments in the Discussion section show. The biographical material in Worster’s book is needed to better understand Muir’s important role in the conservation movement in the United States, and his influence today on deeper green thinking. This influence is perhaps symbolized by Muir’s election as the first president of the Sierra Club (which he helped to found), a position he held until his death. But also by the fact that his name is associated with so many protected areas and parks (and buildings) throughout the United States, including the magnificent old growth redwood trees of the Muir Woods in the San Francisco Bay area. A friend and I had the good fortune to visit these woods in October of 2008, a spin-off from the “Is Capitalism Soon Over?” conference we attended in San Francisco.

John Muir was quite a complicated man. While he became a conservation icon in the US, he was also a friend and confidant of some high-placed capitalists and politicians. Muir firmly believed in the role of the state in intervening to protect wild lands, yet he has also become a symbol of “private lands philanthropy” in the United States. This philanthropy allegedly celebrates US society’s “cultural and constitutional dedication to private property” (see: Wildlands Philanthropy: The Great American Tradition, 2008). This celebration is on a collision course with a fundamental tenet of deep ecology. For Arne Naess, along with other thinkers like John Livingston and Rudolf Bahro, has informed us that “the earth does not belong to humans.”

Muir came to understand the interconnectedness of the natural world and also that this world is continually evolving. As he said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” (Reader, p. 232) Many academics and others have poured over John Muir’s written entrails and have opinions as to his environmental significance, and what they see as his various strengths and failings. They have also opinions as to how Muir conducted himself and managed his personal life. It is with some trepidation that one dares to enter such a contested arena. 

Discussion

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.” (Reader, p. 500)

“A cautious mountaineer seldom takes a step on unknown ground which seems at all dangerous that he cannot retrace in case he should be stopped by unseen obstacles ahead. This is the rule of mountaineers who live long…” (Ibid, p. 517)

When I was a grad student, a very long time ago, I was fortunate to be the teaching assistant to a Max Weber scholar, an honourable and courteous gentleman. My professor fled Germany in the 1930s and ended up in the States. His general line on criticism of Weber, which was notably absent from the courses he taught, was something like “before you can criticize Weber, you must read him.” He seemed to mean all the various publications written by Weber, not just The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Curiously, the world of Calvin and his message of “inner worldly asceticism”, explored by Weber in this well known book, helps to understand the demons driving the father of John Muir. Fundamentalist Calvinism – unending work and ‘lessons’ from a literal bible narrowly interpreted – harshly impacted the Muir family. (The mother seemed mainly absent in Muir’s accounting of his early life.) Later in life, Muir eventually became a successful capitalist in California – through his own work, but also by marrying into a family with a large, successful fruit orchard.

In grad school, I took the position about Max Weber, as I do now about John Muir, that the potential commentator/critic has to try and read a “representative sample” of writings, to gain some understanding of the thinker of interest. But not everything that has been written has to be read. Otherwise, one would never get out of university! My representative sample on John Muir is the John Muir Reader, which includes selections drawn from the five books published in his lifetime, plus extra material.

John Muir was born in Dunbar, on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland. He remained proud of his Scottish heritage throughout his life and stayed a Lowland Scot in his personal consciousness. At the age of 11, he travelled to the United States with his father and two siblings. They arrived in 1849, to a country of about 23 million persons with more than 3 million slaves. The mother and four other children followed later. His father obtained a land grant in Wisconsin. Muir spent 19 years there toiling at farming, but he also attended the University of Wisconsin for some time. He left Wisconsin at the age of 22, without a degree, off to his post-graduate travels in the university of life. As he put it: “I was only leaving one University for another, the Wisconsin University for the University of the Wilderness.” (Reader, p. 145)

John Muir was self-educated. He was mainly a botanist – usually carrying a plant press on his travels – and a geologist, with a fascination for glaciers. The sequoia forests of California were one of his passions. As well as a conservationist, he was also a mechanical inventor, with various inventions to his credit. At times, he earned a living not only as the now well know sheep herder in California – sheep were “hoofed locusts” for Muir – but also as a millwright. A major concern for Muir, who was anti-slavery, was to avoid being drafted to fight in the American Civil War (1861-1865). This led him to visit Canada for a time, as part of his draft dodging. When he was 30 years old, his travels brought him to California. The Yosemite Valley became the centre of Muir’s new personal and conservation life. He also made a number of exploratory trips to Alaska, as well as to other countries. But it was Muir’s California experience that mainly propelled him into a leading conservation role in the US. It also pushed him into coming into contact with powerful politicians (including US presidents) and influential capitalists. Such people sought Muir out because of his growing status as a Nature savant of wild places.

Impressions of "Journeys in the Wilderness"

From his writings, which were based on his personal journal notes (polished and perhaps embellished with the benefit of age), Muir comes through as someone with quite a vast knowledge of the natural world around him. He had skills in mountaineering and living simply off the land, usually travelling with ‘provisions’ amounting to a loaf of bread plus water, and the barest minimum of hiking equipment. I see him as the polar opposite of anyone today outfitted for the outdoors by the local Trail Shop. Muir’s drive for climbing mountains and exploring the high Sierra of California, and for exploring glaciers, was done mostly in a solitary manner. Only a couple of essays in this collection show Muir as part of a collective mountaineering endeavour.

The Reader shows Muir as driven by a self-ignited passion to explore and understand the natural world around him. But these writings do not show Muir as an environmental organizer. Graham White, who put the Reader together, claims Muir’s writings “reveal the ethical fountainhead from which so many streams of the modern conservation movement flow.” (Reader, p. 1) Yet I found that, although Muir’s writings contain vivid descriptions of the natural world around him, philosophy is largely absent. And Donald Worster’s book notes “Muir was a naturalist and reformer, not a philosopher.” (p. 307)

A reader of the essays has to try and sort out what Muir sees as the path forward. He was religious, although critical of conventional religion, and we see frequent references to a Christian deity as the moving force behind Nature. “God” and “the Lord” pepper his writings. I believe he had mainly a stewardship and mystical position towards nature, based in the Christian faith, on how humans should conduct themselves. Muir saw nature as a manifestation of God. People still had “dominion”, but this should be respectfully exercised. Yet, for Muir, other life forms were still “people.” He speaks of how “the bird people of Wisconsin welcomed us.” (Reader, p. 82)  Donald Worster says Muir’s definition of people, “included all the plant and animal species that civilized man regarded as inferior or expendable.”  (A Passion for Nature, p. 273) So this is hardly a traditional anthropocentric position! Should we speak of John Muir’s nature philosophy as one of a Christian-based “ecocentric stewardship” position? For Muir, other life forms were “human-like” and should be treated with respect. This is not the intrinsic value of deep ecology, but it is moving in that direction from an ethical perspective.

I found Muir’s nature writings “over-the-top” in his use of descriptive language. His nature descriptions are often conveyed in metaphors that come tumbling out in an overkill, almost frenzied manner. This, for me, was captured in an earthquake Muir experienced, when he ran out of his cabin shouting:

“‘A noble earthquake! A noble earthquake!’ feeling sure I was going to learn something.” (Reader, p. 461)

Ultimately, because of their non-stop abundance, the reader is worn down by Muir’s effusive descriptions. When everything is special, then nothing becomes particularly significant. Muir extols the virtues of the natural world and why it should be preserved, but he does not really put this in a philosophical context. Although often speaking out against rampant commercialism, Muir nowhere opposes industrial capitalism as the motor of environmental destruction, or shows opposition to capitalist legal structures, like “private property” laws.

“He (John Muir) came to believe that governments should have the responsibility of setting aside national parks, forests, and wildlife sanctuaries and such places should be open to all citizens…But then he pushed well beyond the granting of access to every human being toward granting rights and moral significance to every creature that lives on the earth.” (Worster, p. 8)

Donald Worster on John Muir

Reading Donald Worster’s A Passion for Nature helped me obtain a more rounded view of John Muir than by reading Muir’s own writings in the Reader. I found that Worster’s book was basically fair and honest in looking at the various contradictions in Muir’s life. I came to see that Muir was much more than the solitary mountaineer and naturalist in the California high country, being absorbed and transformed by the relatively unspoilt world around him, with a full white beard and staff in hand. Worster shows a John Muir who most of the time was also embedded in civilization – for example, living in San Francisco to pursue his writing.

Muir came to accept industrial expansion, while he fought what he considered its excesses. Ideologically, my major criticism of Worster’s book is that it does not look at Muir’s thinking in relation to deep ecology or to Arne Naess. The “we” the author writes from, is that of ”liberal democracy”, that enveloping cultural assumption, with capitalism at its core, which seems personally appropriated by the United States and is celebrated by Worster. (For an eulogy, see pp. 465-466.) People like me see liberal democracy as providing a cultural screen obscuring a global “resource” funnel that economically benefits the industrial capitalism of the USA and its foreign policy objectives. Worster’s politics are perhaps also shown when he speaks of Muir – the fruit farmer and property owner – after his marriage, as employing “often unruly, undependable laborers largely of Chinese origin. There is no evidence that he exploited them.” (p. 343) Does not the concept of surplus value constitute exploitation? 

Conservation and Preservation

Anyone who has tangled with those who advocate the misleadingly called ‘Wise Use’ philosophy knows that their followers generally hate environmentalists. ‘Wise Use’ supporters basically want open access to exploit nature’s wealth – all of Nature must be available for HUMAN use. Nature must not be “locked-up” in parks or wildlife reserves. Human access to what are termed “resources” must always have priority. ‘Wise Use’ followers call themselves “conservationists”, and their opponents, people driven by genuine environmental passion, “preservationists.” To be called a “preservationist” becomes an epithet. It also implies that preservationists do not make use of the environment, which they must do in order to live. (See the discussion of ‘Wise Use’ in a Canadian context in Green Web Bulletin, “Ecofascism: What Is It? A Left Biocentric Analysis”) So, while the terms conservationist and preservationist are not objectionable in their own right, they should never be used in the way they have been appropriated by the ‘Wise Use’ movement. Worster does not seem to agree. He even uses ‘Wise Use’ himself in writing about Muir. (p. 428) Speaking of Muir, and using the human-centered word “resource”, we are told:

“A sharp distinction between conservation (or wise use of resources) and preservation (the non-use of resources) does not really apply to him. Privately, he was still convinced that man should not be the measure of all value, that justice must extend to all creatures, and that accumulating money should not become the chief end of living. Publicly, however, he defined the goal of conservation as fuller human development.” (p. 308)

Sierra Club

Perhaps I have been running with the wrong environmental crowd, as I have never been a member of the Sierra Club, either in the US or in Canada. But, through all my activist life, I have been listening to sell-out stories over various issues, involving the national leadership of the Sierra Club in the United States. John Muir’s most famous conservation battle was trying to prevent the damming of the Tuolumme River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley within Yosemite National Park, to provide a water and power source for San Francisco. It was unsuccessful. Worster points out:

“No one of substantial fortune came to the valley’s rescue. All of Muir’s moneyed friends either stayed indifferent or went over to the other side.” (p. 452)

The person who donated the land which became the famous Muir Woods National Monument, William Kent, became a key booster for the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and bitterly opposed Muir on this issue.

Racism

Anyone who becomes involved in environmental issues around parks and protected areas, will sooner or later be accused of being indifferent to the fate of indigenous Americans or Canadians, who were often forcefully and brutally evicted to create parks and other protected areas. While this is true, aboriginal peoples were essentially dispossessed from all of North America. The parks issue needs to be placed in such a context, before righteous anger takes over. In his 2010 book Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (see my review), Bron Taylor nicely summed up this clash between the social justice side and the Earth justice side:

“Those with anthropocentric values tend to fear that biocentric values produce indifference to human suffering, and those with biocentric values tend to believe that anthropocentric values lead to indifference to the well-being of the rest of the community of life.” (p. 179)

I do not believe, based on what I have read on John Muir, that, in the context of his time, he was indifferent or hostile to aboriginals or to Afro-Americans. He conveys that he is sympathetic to Native Americans and to the loss of the lands they occupied. He was sometimes condescending or deprecating towards aboriginals in his language, but John Muir was not a racist. In his Alaskan explorations, he worked closely with various tribes of aboriginals, using their sea-going canoes. He spoke out against aboriginal and white hunting excesses, such as leaving meat behind. However, there are statements by Muir which are definitely not acceptable. Worster shows some of them. This is an example from the account of Muir’s Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf:

“’The Negroes are very lazy (revised to ‘easy-going’ in the published version) and merry …. One energetic white man, working with a will, would easily pick as much cotton as half a dozen sambos and sallies.’” (p. 128)

Muir and Naess: Some Comparisons

Both John Muir and Arne Naess were mountain men. High mountains, meditation, solitude, and simple living were essential to their spiritual development, their writings, and how they came to see the world. Both of these men have huge moral standing in the environmental movement today, because of how they lived their lives. If we consider just the setting aside of parks and protected areas, Muir has had more impact than Naess. Yet the ideas of Naess are far more influential in the radical and subversive section of today’s environmental movement than those of Muir.

Unlike Naess, the ideas of John Muir do not challenge the legitimacy of industrial capitalism or private property. Tom Butler, in an essay in the recently published coffee-table-size book Wildlands Philanthropy: The Great American Tradition, which has a quote from Muir on its dust cover, says: “Wildlands philanthropy is not exclusively, but it is certainly overwhelmingly, an American phenomenon because of our cultural and constitutional dedication to private property.” To write about a “dedication to private property”– meaning humans have some unique qualities giving them lordship over other species and their habitats – is not reconcilable with the position of Naess.

When I first became involved with deep ecology, I felt there was a definite culture which extolled climbing mountains as almost a prerequisite for understanding what deep ecology was all about. In my 1986/87 review of Deep Ecology: Living As If Nature Mattered, I said that “deep ecology in North America has to be rescued from the academics, notwithstanding any backpacking, rock climbing or mountaineering qualifications.”

For Naess, no one can own the Earth, whereas for Muir, the Earth is a manifestation of a Christian God. So presumably this deity owns the natural world. Muir was more of a field naturalist than Naess. Muir was also much more of a ‘self-made man’ and only became relatively wealthy later in life. Naess was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Unlike Naess, Muir does not talk about what an alternative society would entail and how to move forward in eco-politics.

Conclusion

My expanding list of environmental “significant others” now includes John Muir. I am willing to accept, as Naess noted, that Muir was a “forerunner” for deep ecology. Yet I find it hard to characterize Muir’s eco-philosophy, and my designation of him as holding a Christian-based “ecocentric stewardship” position is tentative. I do not want to deny or minimize John Muir’s positive and extensive impact on environmental consciousness in the United States. But, as a result of  looking into and thinking about John Muir, and trying to understand his basic nature philosophy, I believe that Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, who both came on the conservation scene much later than Muir (he died in1914), have influenced the thinking of deep ecology far more than the life of this Lowland Scot.