THREADED DISCUSSION

Engagement by Multiple Students

10 U.S. Students

2 Swedish Students

1 Swedish Instructor

(Note: Although the content of the texts is unchanged, I replaced names with non-identifying initials to protect student identity.)

ENGL_2202_30/Introduction Literature *Lynch

Weekly Topics - Week Nine--Our Animal Selves

Prompt 1: In this essay, Dillard has an encounter with wild nature and wishes to be as "wild" as the weasel seems to be. In the context of this essay, what is "wildness"? Use the text to defend your definition--and build on one another's definitions (don't stop with simple answers).

Prompt 2: In "Living Like Weasels," Dillard revels in the animal part of our human selves. Compare and contrast that with the sense of "man" in Strindberg's poem. (You'll find the Strindberg poem as a link from Content.)

Prompt 3: Choose one of our readings for this week and explain why it is grounded in the tradition of either NATURE or NATURALISM.

1 - M

I think 'wildness' means to live as we were meant to live.  We all have different passions and purposes.  It should be a desire and conscious decision to find our interests and explore them.  Society and the media can mold us to do things we normally wouldn't do and before too long we question who we are.  Dillard is pointing out that we have the ability to make choices and we should do that.  "We could, you know.  We can live any way we want.  People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice.  The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse."  (7)  We should be true to ourselves, "I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your own necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you."  (7) --as the weasel did that was found attached to the eagle's neck. 

2 - Re: wildness - Johny Kronwall ( Mar 8, 2006 4:01 AM )—SWEDISH CO-INSTRUCTOR

Hello --,
This week's first prompt is really a hard one to answer. I reply to your entry because you start by saying that 'wildness' means to live as we are and were meant to live. To me it's more or less the opposite; wildness is a sort of 'otherness' and it's that gap that Dillard and Whitman are examining in order to see whether it can be bridged.
And then there is the eternal question of how we were meant to live. We are and live so different(ly) but we are all humans and thus (hopefully) share more than separate us or should I say we're all animals and include all living creatures? I don't know but find Dillard's and Whitman's answers interesting just as I found yours.

3 - J

Johny - Can you expand on your statement, "Wildness is sort of an 'otherness'?"  I find your statement thought provoking but I'm not sure if my line of thought is where you meant to go...

I would say that we are all animals but I wouldn't go so far as to include all living creatures.  I have many personal reasons for this belief and the best line that I've found to describe my major beliefs is "To have a right to life, you must possess a sense of self, a recollection of the past, and an anticipation of the future…" ("Just Like Us?" Harper's Forum; Pg. 87; Literature and the Environment)

4 - Re: wildness - Johny Kronwall ( Mar 12, 2006 12:41 PM )

Thanks for your reply -----,
What I meant by 'otherness' could maybe be summed up by the last paragraph of the intoductory text to James Wright's 'A Blessing' where "making contact with nonhuman otherness" is mentioned with regard to the meeting man - horse. Somehow I believe that we (as humans) are forced to be alienated from wildness/wilderness because in order to live we fight it. The texts this week support my view, I think, because they all confront the way we live with the we don't and can't live which to me is wildness. If we see wildness as just 'doing what feels good/natural etc in a given situation I think we run the risk of missing the target and making 'wildness' into something trivial, which it certainly is not.
Johny K

5 - Re: wildness - J

Ah... "We are forced to be alienated from wildness/wilderness because in order to live we fight it."  That is a wonderful line and one that I think really connects the message from this week's texts.  Thank you for expanding on your thoughts!  I think that you're right about making 'wildness' into something trivial.  I think that it's a concept that very few humans can attain --- lack of social constraints isn't necessarily wildness.  Perhaps wildness is, in fact, a state of being that only animals can experience?

6 –Re: wildness - M

Thanks Johny, I find your answer interesting, as well.  The 'gap' you speak of, is it the way we live compared to the way an animal lives-such as the weasel? 

7 - Re: wildness - Johny Kronwall ( Mar 13, 2006 11:38 AM )

Yes, Mary that may well sum it up. The gap will always be there - unless we become weasels of course, or they humans - not very likely. But we (but not they, I believe) can possibly narrow the gap. Is that what this week's authors are investigating?

8 - Re: wildness - E ( Mar 11, 2006 1:04 PM )

I completely agree, Mary.  That's exactly what I was thinking - wildness is to live as we were meant to live.

I also enjoyed how it said on page 7, "I would like to learn,or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. Thatis, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular-shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?-but I might learn something of mindlessness,something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive."
I really like this because it feels that we often get caught up in the frustrations of life and we are constantly
thinking about our next move, and we do include bias and motive.  To live in mindlessness to me would be just to
simply live. No more, no less.  No cares.  Nothing of influence in society, just enjoy life.
Oh, and I just thought it was cool how it said on page 6, "His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood
and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose-leaf, and blown."  It flows so well and sounds cool to me...ha that's all.

9 - Re: wildness - M

I like the quote you mentioned on page 7 as well.  Do you think that it's just so 'normal' to be how society wants us to be that if we find and follow our passions and were able to live without the influence of society, that is 'wildness'?

10 - Re: wildness - J

Interesting.... I think the concept of living how we want and not how society would have us live is a wonderful example of wildness.  Imagine... what if we could all be who we really wanted to be and do what we wanted to do... what then would separate us from animals?

11 - Re: wildness - D

You support your view well with the literature M.  I agree with you but I would twist your definition a little.  Wildness to me means doing what comes naturally.  Naturally does not necessarily mean living in "nature" or "off the land" but in what feels right for you.  Oh oh, does this bring us back to our sense of "home"?  Watching a movie with my husband and sons feels just as natural to me as  going camping. 

12 - Re: wildness - E (SWEDISH STUDENT)

I like your definition, Di, nd although I'm not sure it encapsulates entirely what Dillard means with "wildness", I think it goes well with her notion of yielding. And to me, going camping, for instance, would require meticulous planning and would quite possibly involve stress and a fair amount of whining so staying in and watching a movie with people I love - yeah, much more natural and simple. :)

13 - Re: wildness - J

I completely agree with you both!!!  I'm a planner and something like camping would require at least one, if not two, organized and detailed packing and 'to do lists'!!  I'm sure there are many people who can experience nature & wildness at "the drop of a hat," if you will, but I also think that there are many of us who are so far removed from nature that we would require adequate notice and preparation time for a 'spontaneous' camping trip!!  By removed from nature I do not mean to imply that I/we don't have a great appreciation of its beauty, tranquility and everything that is unspoiled by mankind --- I simply mean that it is not part of our day to day existence to commune with nature.  We get in our cars and go to work/school/daycare/errands and we learn about the world through TV and the Internet.  I plan to get out and do some hiking this summer and hopefully I can have an experience such as Dillard's --- maybe not with a weasel but with some sort of creature!!  Hopefully I don't yell and scare it away!! :-)

14 - Re: wildness - A

That is quite true! I can remember planning my first camping trip, it probably took me two weeks to prepare, and making sure I had enough bug spray and calamine lotion! I did have one camping trip that was spur of the moment and it was hard to 'live' that way for a weekend. No cots or blow-up mattresses, tablecloths or portable stoves; it was nice to in the heart of nature to try to survive that way, but in this day and age we have definitely grown apart-sad to say.

15 - Re: wildness – L (SWEDISH STUDENT)

i love this passage, this whole idea that Dillard presents, and her line of thought feels so natural. Why    shouldnt we live like a weasel, without thinking of the past or what will come, why dont just live for the moment, let your feelings overwhelm you, be stunned by the smallest things. it is a bit like bringing out the child in you, honest, pure and innocent. that is what wildness means to me.

16 - Re: wildness - P

M, I should have read your discussion before writing mine. I just read yours and I quoted the same line as you did from page 7 from the last paragraph. It seems we both agree that that line does a good job of describing wildness. The part where Dilllard talks about us having the opportunity to make choices caught my eye in the reading too and I see that you have also written about that.  I totally agree with you about making decisions to explore our interests as a part of being wild. 

17 - Wildness - A

I think that wildness means to live without emotion. From the text, "A weasel doesn't 'attack' anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity" (7). I think Dillard means that to be wild, you do not stop to think how one thing affects another, you simply make rash decision to survive. If a weasel cared how the birds felt about him eating food that they both might like, the weasel would probably die because the birds would get their first. Living with wildness could almost be living without contemplating.

18 - Re: Wildness - E (SWEDISH STUDENT)

A, I think Dillard means exactly that; that living with wildness is living without contemplating. She celebrates the weasels obedience to instinct, how it bites and will not let go, as in the anecdote of the eagle found with the remains of a weasel clinging to its neck. Dillard "would like to learn, or to remember, how to live." (p.7) - implying that she (and every other human being) were once as wild as the weasel but that we have lost our "mindlessness". What Dillard means by mindlessness is not a state of ignorance but "the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive." (p.7) I think that Dillard means that we have lost touch with life and with living through our propensity for contemplation, something which the weasel would never do. The very human tendency to "live in our heads" and think too much removes us from the joy of living in our bodies, closer to the earth and to other creatures.

19 - Re: Wildness - J ( Mar 12, 2006 12:21 AM )

I agree with both of your postings on wildness.  I would like to add a line that I think fits both of your definitions, "And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will."   We humans do tend "to live in our heads" as you stated E, and I feel that this line emphasizes how animals do not.  They remember nothing --- they simply react with generations of instinct.  Even if that instinct leads to their death, as which the anecdote with the eagle.  It is "mindlessness" that we have lost as a species --- we constantly must be doing something, even if that something is thinking.  "Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses."  This is what wildness is in this essay.  "The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting."

20 - Re: Wildness - S ( Mar 12, 2006 5:06 PM )

Do you agree with Dillard's message, and do you think the human capacity to "live in our heads" might also serve to heighten "the joy of living in our bodies, closer to the earth and to other creatures"?

21 - Re: Wildness - E ( Mar 13, 2006 7:43 AM )

I think I agree more with you, S, that it would be quite impossible for human beings to live like weasels, in the sense that man cannot live with a "single necessity" or simply and mindelssly yield to survival and reproductive instincts at the expense of thought, moral decision or emotion. But I do think there is a balance to be struck between "living in our heads" and living in our bodies and that finding that balance is something to strive for. And seeing as humans are quite incapable of living without either thought or emotion, the joy of living closer to the earth and closer to other creatures might well be heightened through a conciousness of doing just that, of yielding to experience perhaps.

22 - Re: Wildness - B ( Mar 13, 2006 8:47 PM )

I agree with you S. I dont think man could live like a weasel.  Not in this lifetime anyways.  There is way to much technology and we are so scatterbrained nowadays that it is simply impossible.  Weasels just need the basics and we as humans seems to need more than that!

23 - Re: Wildness - S ( Mar 15, 2006 10:40 PM )

I have to say that if we did live like the weasel without much thought none of us would be here contemplating nature and literature. Would that be something that some of us would have a hard time living without?

24 - Re: Wildness - S ( Mar 12, 2006 4:57 PM )

I agree with your interpretation of wildness in this passage, A.  I would also say that to live wild as animals do is quite impossible for humans.  For "a weasel lives as he's meant to", that is, for the weasel, what he is, does, and ought to do are all the same thing.  He cannot live out of character and he cannot miss his calling, even as he never had to look for it in the first place.  Looking inward, however, we make some curious discoveries: we find what we actually do, what we know we ought to do, our ability to resist the urge to act, and our capacity to take action in the absence of instinctive impulse.  Unlike animals, people are capable of moral decisions, of right or wrong behavior, of finding life's meaning or dying in despair.  This reality is inescapable, even as attempting to "live without emotion" would evoke emotions in us, and "living without contemplating" would require contemplation to do so.

25 - Re: Wildness - A ( Mar 15, 2006 12:44 AM )

Yes, I agree with you. You bring up some valid arguments-sometimes I, and probably Dillard as well, wish life could be so simple sometimes. But, there are times when I am very grateful I was given the chance to use my mind to contemplate issues and celebrate emotions.

26 - Re: Wildness - R ( Mar 12, 2006 8:25 PM )

I definitely agree with you.  I think that Dillard means that wildness means going with instincts to survive.  Most humans do not live like this because we make so many choices that are not life or death decisions.  We make choices everyday that are not necessity.

27 - Re: Wildness - R ( Mar 14, 2006 5:25 PM )

I agree with you.  Wildness means making decisions by instinct to survive.  These decisions affect your life and not small cosmetic problems. 

28 - Re: Wildness - C ( Mar 15, 2006 12:18 PM )

Very true... they do affect your life and not just your small minute problems.  There are many other things besides cosmetic problems to be worried about.