ABSTRACT
Gregory Bateson, the anthropologist, who was no believer, once pointed out how the erosion of the concept of divine immanence in nature led men to see the world around them as mindless, and therefore not entitled to moral, aesthetic, or ethical consideration. This led them to see themselves as wholly set apart from nature; when this loss of a sense of organic unity was combined with an advanced technology Bateson argued, 'your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell'. The cultural production of the Lake District was mapped on a template triangulating between the rise of British nationalism, the Picturesque aesthetic, and antiquarianism. Geographical space and social place intersected to construct a network of exclusions through a complex grid of linkages and influences. Intense commercialization of walking has slowly captured the Lake District's symbolic value, converting it to actual value through its indirect incorporation into the marketplace.
