Recreating the Eurasian Steppe

Steppe

This post is really the same topic as an older one: The Divine Cow, but focuses more on the practical aspects of the concept that there's a deep ancestral urge in western people to recreate the Eurasian Steppe grasslands. Parallel to this urge is a hostility to the forest, or perhaps the wilderness in general, and to other predators.

Western civilization seems to be a machine for realizing this ancestral urge, that is mowing down forests and killing all the predators in a region. This can either be seen as the fulfillment of the wish of the pastoral lifestyle, or a complete inversion and corruption of it, as the civilization machine drains life and wealth via bureaucracy and usury where the dead things feast on the living.

People like Henry David Thoreau or Dick Proenneke seem to be the exception rather than the rule. That is, these are men who seek refuge in the wilderness, literally among the trees and in Proenneke's case, where there are other predators like wolves and bears making a living. However, that these men existed, and that this urge, to live a life contrary to the steppe making machine, seems like a strong urge so it seems unlikely that the urge to create the steppe is genetic.

So the question is where does it come from? Where does the will to create the steppe reside? That's one to mull over until next time.