Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization

Hans Peter Duerr argues that man creates a cultural order inside which he lives. Outside of that form of life is the 'wilderness': the outer wilderness of untamed nature and the inner psychological wilderness of areas of personality hidden in everyday life. Only by stepping outside his culture can man understand his cultural self. Only by experiencing the wilderness outside our normal system of living can we understand what we are as civilised beings within our form of life. He suggests that primitive peoples have a better understanding than modern scientific man of this need to step outside the cultural order in order to understand what is inside it.