Cleverness also is evident in our tools and technology. We cleverly develop our egos at high cost to the natural systems around us. A large portion of each of our lives is spent perfecting our identities and leaving monuments to prove that we lived here. We take little time for reflecting on the context of our lives, and even less time trying to understand how the world works. Another reason is that we have created domesticated and urban environments that lack the species diversity and multiple relationships of natural wilderness.
Humanized environments are the only ones most people know.
I always feel compassion for the apocryphal New Yorkers who live their entire lives in buildings and on concrete, die, and are buried withot ever coming in contact with genuine earth. Most of us are not much better off, even though we visit the rural countryside, where natural elements are managed for human benefit, or national parks, where nature is experienced in a crowded campground or displayed at a visitors' center. Such places, however pleasant they may be, are a long way from the wilderness with its many life forms, intricate dependencies, risks, and essential indifference to human interests. An important ingredient of wisdom is the humility that comes from recognition of the transhuman otherness of the world. For centuries saints have withdrawn from human communities in favor of wilderness settings when they were searching for spiritual insight.