Will Wildness Preserve Civilization?

Henry David Thoreau proposed that wildness would save civilization, and millions of his followers today use that pronouncement to condemn civilization because they believe it destroys wildness and the wilderness in which it thrives. Thoreau had a great deal of scorn for the civilization of his day too, although much of it was tongue in cheek. Many of his serious followers today have a lot of trouble smiling and suffer from humor deficit. They are Thoreauvian fundamentalists.

Here is an answer to their misanthropism: "Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal invented anything so bad as drunkeness - or so good as drink." - "Wine when it is red" All Things Considered by G.K. Chesterton