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A Sense of Place
After Tuesday’s discussion, I read some more of Naess’s essays with the thought that he was writing with the idea that his environmental outlook was better than everyone else’s, or that he was trying to indoctrinate people into his way of thinking. However, while reading the essay about Tvergastein I found that he was simply expressing his own profound respect for nature and sharing his ideas about why this respect is important.

Are we told what to think?
One of the most confusing topics that came up in discussion on Monday was the disagreement in how different readers felt when they read "The Ecology of Wisdom". Is there a didactic strand to Naess's argument or is he simply revealing one way to live.

Class Notes 9/28
We started class by disussing some of the posts people made since the last class on A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

"Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwrecks." ~Robert Louis Stevenson
While reading the beginning of The Ecology of Wisdom I was struck by the passages on pages 46 and 64 where Naess speaks about a distinct sense of "place" and that was can be defined by or identify with a particular place. He says, "… the development of a place in which a person feels at home and feels a sense of belonging shows exceptionally clearly some of the forces at work in the establishment of a place," and then later speaks about a physical place being lost or destroyed, saying "… choose a place that you will likely to be able to master when you are older.



