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Show 501. yet the movement would have to face the larger problems which tested i t s possible Utopian a s p i r a t i o n s ; a divided loyalty in i t s own membership was dangerous, even as the group buried i t s e l f in the t r a n s i t o r y , c r i s i s - o r i e n t e d battles which raged around Yosemite. For while the Sierra Club focused on these d e t a i l s , the larger p o l i t i c a l and economic forces which would come to be c a l l e d "conservation" were at work. What Muir wanted the Sierra Club to represent was very different from what the "conservationists" stood for, and at stake was more than an i n t e r n e c i n e struggle between warring factions of American Progressives. The Club i t s e l f was a diverse group of professional people, and embodied the tensions evident in Californian society as a whole. The conservationists with t h e i r "resource conservation and development " approach were e s s e n t i a l l y at odds with someone like Muir. The l a r g e r and more powerful movement, as Samuel Hays' definitive history of conservation points out, suggested a whole new way to v i s u a l i z e the future of America - "specialization," "nationalism," "growth," "use values," "efficiency" - the language of conservation implied a technological future, accepted an urban, centralized, Trantor planet. Muir's Club, with i t s new communality and i t s worship of the wilderness, suggested a decentralized homeostasis between humans and t h e i r planet. Even i f most Sierra Clubbers didn't realize i t - and s t i l l don't r e a l i z e i t - the conflict between values born of the wilderness, and conservationists' values, Was destined to grow. |
