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submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz to c/solarpunk@slrpnk.net

Outdoor recreation often slips into what I call an achievement-based relationship with nature. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Whether it’s “bagging peaks”, racing to finish the AT, or stamping the land with machines and monuments, the focus shifts from ecology to ego.

Being obsessed with Peak Bagging is not Solarpunk.

Nature is not your personal obstacle to challenge yourself against, it is a shared place of discovery you trample when you only see it as a place to endlessly, exhaustingly conquer.

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[-] seat6@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

Is this really an issue though? Whatever gets people a bit closer to nature seems good to me

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes, yes it is. Just look at how the top of Everest is trashed by climbers insisting on conquering it and it is a perfect symbol of the broader outdoor movement in many ways.

When people relate to nature as something to be tested against and conquered/overcome they begin to lose the capacity to understand how they can have a meaningfully negative impact on nature from their actions because this entire perspective frames nature as an obstacle far bigger than us, hopelessly more powerful than us and so encompassing we are tiny in comparison. There is a rotting false, dangerous comfort and naivety embedded in the core of that belief. It reminds me of this catastrophically off base speculation in Moby Dick about how since Whales are so much more powerful than humans and the ocean is so big that we could never diminish their numbers in hunting.

But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions. But though for some time past a number of these whales, not less than 13,000, have been annually slain on the nor'-west coast by the Americans alone; yet there are considerations which render even this circumstance of little or no account as an opposing argument in this matter.

...

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah’s flood he despised Noah’s Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

How awfully wrong that quote was about the future of whales...

[-] seat6@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago

I agree that its not a great attitude; but exposure to nature seems like a good way to correct it. I've known people who didn't care about climate change; until they realized it would effect the trail they like to go running on.

The trash left on hiking trails isn't great; but its nothing compared to the damage corporations have done. If just a few more people discovered a love of nature, that could inspire tighter regulations on corporations

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

Sure, but my argument is that it isn't just about being physically in nature, that doesn't magically make it impact you, it can end up just hurting nature and driving you further into an internal quest that diminishes your capacity to witness the world around you.

I am glad when people decide to care about climate change because their personal exercise facility is impacted but it is a shallow reason to care and it is fragile too. It is far better to invite people into nature in a way that actually deepens and radicalizes them.

this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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