Chapter 1 of the Ecology of Eden

 Recently, I've started to go back to The Ecology of Eden. In doing so, I have once again been intrigued by Evan Eisenberg's distinctions between the mountain and the tower. In chapter one, Eisenberg suggests that our relationship with nature is a struggle between two different archetypes. Firstly, we see the mountain, which in this case, represents the wild and unmanaged source of life. secondly the tower arty represents our human desire to control that unmanaged source of life.

Something that stood out to me after going back through the chapters is that the mountain of God is an ecological fact, rather than just a simple myth. places with high altitudes act as the planets, ecological spigots furthermore and these places is where water and nutrients are gathered to be distributed amongst the lowlands. To me, bringing in my philosophical aspect into it seems as though the ancient spiritual leaders were actually traveling, as they climbed the mountains, to the cradle of all natural fertility in the world.

Though in the tower mindset, we see the view of nature from a position of managerial authoritarianism. In this concept, it is where we are trying to engineer a man-made paradise into it being something that is always under our thumb and our control. In this Eisenberg frames, a conflict between two concepts, the first concept being the planet manager, which is someone who thinks we just need to have better control over things, then we have the planet fetishes, who simply dream to return back to the state of wilderness, where all humans are just apes.

Ultimately at the conclusion of this chapter, it made me realize how we as individuals are trying to always find a balance in between these two concepts. We are constantly associated with creatures of the tower, as we are people who build cities and develop technology. However, we are still physically dependent on the concept of the mountain. if we begin and continue to treat the world as something that needs to be managed, are we then going to lose the very vitality that keeps our ecosystem going?

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