Lumir Hladik

About human wilderness and the rational defense of irrationality My urge to preserve and venerate “divine destruction” generated by innocent, anonymous wild animals is a knee-jerk reaction to a phenomenon I describe as the “derailed civilization”. Symptoms, to name a few, are loss of humility, loss of common sense values and an “entitlement” addiction. I claim that, “our disrespect for death is killing life!” It is not a coincidence that I chose Canada (with access to true wilderness) as my new home back in 1981. My need for a neutral playfield or clean slate when confronting derailed “conditions” was a key factor. It was the Canadian wilderness where I began to search for a balanced relationship between decline and rise, birth and death. I began to juxtapose natural wilderness against “human wilderness”. It is evident that my work always was and, still is, aiming to expose the irrational in human reasoning. It is also clear that I use Wilderness as a tool: a safe haven to achieve my objective. I believe that “wilderness is not contaminated with human thought” and consequently with irrationality. The absence of entropy in our culture resulted in us feeling invincible, untouchable, and ultimately... immortal. As we equate regress with failure, we tend to progress at all cost: irrationally and unsustainably.