Abstract
In an area of increasingly widespread practices, the strengthening of the self through physical activities is exponentially reinforced by the inflexible laws of wild nature, now seen as a supreme judge. The knowledge of one’s personal limits and their overcoming through the verdict of an implacable, inscrutable but fair nature, allows access to the powerful source of meaning of green spirituality. This phenomenon is closely linked to an unprecedented imagery of nature. In contemporary Western society there is a widespread trend to sacralise nature, but in the terms of a “disneyfied” object—to paraphrase David Lyon. The ritual of “symbolically challenging death”—to say it with David Le Breton—through extreme sports, forces wild nature to manifest its transcendent properties: Getting out of this trial unharmed means being able to recognise one’s higher qualities. Challenging death and coming out unscathed means giving back to the disoriented contemporary individual a right and “nomized” cosmos—in the words of Peter Berger—capable of recognising the “chosen ones”, that is to say the ones that deserve salvation. I conclude that the growing phenomenon of extreme sports in the wilderness represents the attempt of experiencing an amplification of the self in order to “enter into resonance” with nature, to become “one” with it. Nature strengthens the ultimate meanings of experience, integrating them into a sort of green eschatology.
Highlights
The “death of God”, announced by Friedrich Nietzsche [1] in the early twentieth century, reveals the dissolution of a stable hierarchy of values
In essence, becomes a powerful source of meaning as it supports the construction of identity with a solid hierarchy of values made of a mixture of spiritualism, animism, mysticism, ecologism, communitarianism, sensualism—that is, antithetical values compared to the Western ones
The only desirable revolution is that which causes a complete metamorphosis of human inner life
Summary
The “death of God”, announced by Friedrich Nietzsche [1] in the early twentieth century, reveals the dissolution of a stable hierarchy of values. Green spirituality is a candidate to be, at least potentially, a sort of spiritual path available for all social strata and not just for a small elite circle [19] It is precisely because of its deeply ambivalent nature that green spirituality is a powerful resource of meaning: This disguised ambivalence, in which the rational and irrational sphere become one, is the ontological basis of its sacralisation and its best metaphysical shield from possible external critics. Challenging death— often on a merely symbolic level—and coming out unscathed means giving back to the disoriented, contemporary individual, a right and “nomized” cosmos [24] capable of recognising the “chosen ones”, that is to say the ones that deserve salvation [25] Dealing with this latter aspect in an organic analysis, that considers the above-mentioned issues, is the goal of this paper. The argument turns to underlining, in a phenomenological way, the narrow relationship between physical culture and green spirituality, especially analysing the role of nature and wilderness imagery in contemporary society
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