Stephen H. Buhner on Civilisation

“”Nature is,” as Henry David Thoreau understood so well, “a prairie for outlaws.” Those who go into Nature become, of necessity,uncivilized… the word “civilized” comes from the Latin civilis,meaning under law, orderly… Civilis itself comes from an older Latin word, civis, meaning “someone who lives in a city, a citizen.”

Those who go into wilderness, into Nature that has not been tamed, are no longer under (arbiturary) human law, but all encompassing, inevitable law of Nature. They go out from under human law. They are no longer citizens, they are not orderly, they are not civilized – they are outlaws. When you go into wilderness, something happens, something that civilization does not like.”
The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in Direct Perception of Nature,
Stephen H. Buhner