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Is Full-On Shaming Really the Best Response to the Rock Toppling Bros?

Toward closing the rifts between public land users.

Judging by how much it's populating my social media feeds, you've surely seen this video by now. Basically, some good ol' boys knock over a 200 million year old rock formation in Goblin Valley, Utah. They claimed they thought it was dangerous, like it would fall over on its own and kill a little kid. But, it's clear in the video it was mostly just for shits. It's tempting to agree with a Dangerous Minds post that, "These boys need to be shamed real bad."

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Goblin Valley is in an area of Utah—the Moab/Canyonlands region generally—that sees an extreme version of the typical split between public lands users. On the one hand are dudes like this, frequently found in the Utah desert piloting 4X4s around black-stained slickrock trails, and then there's the crowd more into hiking and quietly being awed. You know, Coors versus Dales. Or whatever.

I hate even acknowledging it, but every spot of public land in the U.S. will have some version of this user divide. It goes back to old definitions of "use" I suppose, expoitation vs. preservation. Our's vs. our's to protect. It's not that easy, of course, and they bleed together probably as much as they seperate, but it's hard not to see a rift in values. It's a rift that leads to things like this.

The catch is that we're in places like Goblin Valley and other amazing natural places for fundamentally the same reasons. It's not like these bros were standing around in a bunch of "goblins" thinking about how much it sucks. People learn to appreciate things in the natural world differently for a lot of reasons and I think if we're all there for fundamentally the same reasons, it's possible for people to relearn. Which makes me worry about full-on internet shaming and alienation.

It's clear these dudes really didn't know what they were doing. It might not have even taken much to have prevented the damage from happening and that should be our main concern: making sure things like this don't happen. To be clear, I don't sympathize with them and agree they deserve whatever punishment the law can provide. But, at the same time, it's a lot easier to say "look at these idiots" than to acknowledge a deeper cultural divide, one that keeps "our side" firmly isolated from their's and one that makes it much easier for idiots to not know what they're doing in the first place.

@everydayelk

Image: Greg Willis