While many people continue to live their lives in cities, some may come to the impression that they are “wasteful.” The individual who strives to do their best to eventually reach their dreams, and gain the material things they desire might not seem very effective, compared to the one who is content with their simple, more “pure” life in some vast land away from the city. However, there is a better chance of seeing more people like the former rather than the latter. Certainly, most people today do not live on farms, vacant marshes, or vast deserts, and instead live in cities. Most often, those people would avoid living in such provincial places because of their distinct conditions. Although if we were to determine which type of life is more …show more content…
whole, then we can conclude that the “wasteful” urban life and the simple “pure” life are both idealistic and inefficient. Not everyone will become successful in America or any other urbanized country quickly, nor will everyone be able to survive out in the middle of nowhere quickly by themselves. Thus a transition from a conventional life to a “pure” one will never be easy, as one would still be attached to some of the norms coming directly or indirectly from their urban life. Why waste energy just to completely convert to a primitive lifestyle? In urban life, one can accomplish many social, academic, professional, personal, and spiritual goals as they strive to their dreams. Compare this life to the simple one of a “pure” person then. It is safe to say that the urban life is not “wasteful,” because longing for an unrealistic and unfulfilling life is more wasteful. Why do people still find cities and urban life as “wasteful” today?
This is most likely due to an ongoing dualism between the city and wilderness. On the surface, the city is artificial and unnatural while wilderness is all natural. Environmental historian William Cronon finds such views to be problematic. In his essay, “The Trouble with Wilderness,” Cronon argues that wilderness is only a concept created by us, and its high value oppositely impacts urban nature. He stresses that the latter is most consequential, as wilderness’s side in the dualism is exclusive to preserving it. Cronon quotes the radical environmentalist Dave Foreman, who sternly stated, “The preservation of wildness and native diversity is the most important issue. Issues directly affecting only humans pale in comparison.” Cronon indicates that if this is so, this means that several critical environmental problems are now unimportant. From health and safety concerns in industrial places to famine and poverty, these lose significance as they only affect humans and do not involve preserving wilderness. This is noteworthy to his argument as he states that giving this much importance to wilderness will only make everyone less human, and much of the world less legitimate (Cronon 20). It sets too high of an obstacle for urban nature to become an essential environmental concern, despite that “wildness” does have a presence outside of wilderness according to Cronon. Unfortunately, not enough environmentalists seem …show more content…
to embrace his ideals even to this day. With Cronon’s argument in mind, the city-wilderness dichotomy is questionable because it is restricted to limited and irrational principles that are otherwise unnatural. Of course, on wilderness’s side, these unnatural principles go as far as treating the wild in a nostalgic, godlike manner.
Though not only wilderness itself is given high value, this dichotomy also draws large attention to some individuals attached to it. Cronon tackles this in his essay by describing wilderness’s mythical attractions of primitivism and the “rugged” frontiersman of America. Dating back to Rousseau, primitivism was seen as the cure to “the ills of an overly refined and civilized modern world,” as it meant living a more simple life. In the US, “the wild unsettled lands of the frontier” and a heroic, “rugged” man who roams through such lands are iconic to primitivism, as simplicity was eminent in both (Cronon 13). Several Americans, such as Owen Wister and Theodore Roosevelt, glorified the frontier and its individuals, and found freedom to be especially prominent in the life of a lone frontiersman. According to them, life after the frontier was restraining, ill-formed and unnatural (14). Cronon found this to be contradicting, since settling in the frontier often meant to modernize and civilize it. The “wild” frontier’s death was inevitable if this is so, and the only option left was to retain its virtues as more settlements are found throughout time. Sam Shepard’s play, True West, ties in to Cronon’s “frontier myth,” as the struggles of the main characters and brothers, Austin and Lee, display its fundamentals. Starting in the middle of the play, the brothers
admit their jealousy towards one another by first expressing how they pictured one another. Austin, in particular, has pictured Lee in “different places” and “always on some adventure,” and tells his brother, “I used to say to myself, ‘Lee's got the right idea. He's out there in the world and here I am. What am I doing?’” (Shepard 32). From this point on, Austin looks up to Lee and his desert lifestyle as he notices how much freedom his brother has, as well as the instincts he has gained from living in the desert. Once Lee took away Austin’s chance to bring his own screenplay to a Hollywood producer, Austin’s life began crumbling apart. While valuing his urban life even less, he saw Lee as his chance to escape from it. This is not much different from American men like Wister and Roosevelt expressing their nostalgia over the cowboy. Some of the values they saw in a cowboy, or “the last romantic figure” of a “rugged” individual, were that he “did not talk lewdly to women,” he “worked and played hard,” he was “adventurous,” “brave,” and a “bold, free spirit” (Cronon 14). As Lee fondly remembered the botanist from the desert, lived in such a vast land, owned a fighting dog (Shepard 12), and had a brother begging him to be his desert companion, he fits the criteria of a cowboy well. There is no doubt that Americans like Wister would have appreciated Lee, but romanticizing the wild qualities of cowboys only shatters their point of settling in the frontier. So as Austin looks up to his brother, he is only forgetting the point of his career and urban life. Wister, Roosevelt, and Austin would never truly experience what they are idealizing, as their lives lack notable “wild” qualities like Lee’s. In the opposite spectrum from Austin, Lee was not comfortable with his brother’s urban life at first. He seems to assume that most people like Austin only use the city as a place for making and “hustling” deals. Early in the play, he saw Austin’s negotiations on his screenplay with a film producer to be him “bullshit[ting] [his] way into a million bucks” (Shepard 17), and saw his wealth as “Hollywood blood money” when denying an offer from his brother (11). Lee found some impurity in Austin’s life and career, yet he would rather earn money by stealing others’ goods and taking advantage of his fighting dog. Despite this, Lee’s perception of urban life does bear similarities to how sentimental Americans would perceive it. The qualities they found in post-frontier life was its “shapeless state,” lack of atmosphere, totality and facelessness (Cronon 14). Negotiating for deals would have certainly been seen as a factor to the blandness of post-frontier life, and this might have been a great concern for those Americans. Though what is more concerning is how careless and biased their perception of it is. This level of thinking in Lee and some Americans just contributes to the flaws of the “frontier myth,” as it does not take post-frontier life seriously. Again, the wilderness is not alone in being highly valued, some individuals tied to it, like the American frontiersman or Lee, are also given a bit more appreciation than they deserve. The treasuring of wilderness and its individuals are often under the false dilemma fallacy, which reduces a complex matter to two polarized choices. Of course, True West’s characters — notably Austin — easily demonstrate this fallacy. Austin has a mentality assorted in this way: either he stays and suffers in his miserable urban life, or liberates himself and escapes to a new desert life through Lee. He believes that his brother lived in the desert on purpose to become the “rugged” man he is, but in reality it is not clear whether Lee chose to live this way. In fact, Lee explained to his brother that it was not his own choice to live outside of the urban world, as Lee was not fit for urban life (Shepard 59). Austin’s false dilemma is representative of Cronon’s concern of the city-wilderness dichotomy, as Austin prioritizes the wild desert and his “rugged” brother entirely over his own, more fulfilling life. He is willing to leave his Hollywood connections, his parents, his home, and even his wife, just to break out from urban life. Nevertheless, he will regret this decision, as he will realize the wastefulness over a life he cannot live. If the brothers had believed that the wilderness “experience of wonder and otherness” was not restricted to “the remote corners of the planet” (Cronon 24), and accepted how bogus the “frontier myth” is, their lives would have been different, but for the better. Austin would have continued his life as a married Hollywood screenwriter, and never have thought of the idea of escaping to the desert. Meanwhile, Lee would have probably not even been a desert man, but a blue-collar worker who still enjoys leaving town for a peace of mind. As the brothers would learn “to remember and acknowledge the autonomy of the other” (25), they would be more humane to each other. The two would see themselves no stranger to one another then. Thus, with principles that view urban life as “wasteful,” and the high emphasis on wilderness along with its individuals, the city-wilderness dichotomy is rather inadequate and not as natural as it seems.
From the prologue through chapter one in “Wilderness and the American Mind”, the author emphasizes the affect wilderness had on the Europeans during the colonization of America. In today’s society, we are familiar with the concept of wilderness but few of us have experienced the feeling of being encapsulated in the unfamiliar territory. Today we long for wilderness, crave it even. We use it as an outlet to escape the pace of life. However, we have a sense of safety that the Europeans did not. We are not isolated in the unfamiliar, help is usually a phone call away. Though we now view the wilderness as an oasis because we enter at our own terms, in the early colonial and national periods, the wilderness was an unknown environment that was viewed as evil and dangerous.
The Frontier Thesis has been very influential in people’s understanding of American values, government and culture until fairly recently. Frederick Jackson Turner outlines the frontier thesis in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. He argues that expansion of society at the frontier is what explains America’s individuality and ruggedness. Furthermore, he argues that the communitarian values experienced on the frontier carry over to America’s unique perspective on democracy. This idea has been pervasive in studies of American History until fairly recently when it has come under scrutiny for numerous reasons. In his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”, William Cronon argues that many scholars, Turner included, fall victim to the false notion that a pristine, untouched wilderness existed before European intervention. Turner’s argument does indeed rely on the idea of pristine wilderness, especially because he fails to notice the serious impact that Native Americans had on the landscape of the Americas before Europeans set foot in America.
The Europeans changed the land of the home of the Indians, which they renamed New England. In Changes in the Land, Cronon explains all the different aspects in how the Europeans changed the land. Changing by the culture and organization of the Indians lives, the land itself, including the region’s plants and animals. Cronon states, “The shift from Indian to European dominance in New England entailed important changes well known to historians in the ways these peoples organized their lives, but it also involved fundamental reorganizations less well known to historians in the region’s plant and animal communities,” (Cronon, xv). New England went through human development, environmental and ecological change from the Europeans.
According to the thesis of Fredrick Jackson Turner, the frontier changed America. Americans, from the earliest settlement, were always on the frontier, for they were always expanding to the west. It was Manifest Destiny; spreading American culture westward was so apparent and so powerful that it couldn’t be stopped. Turner’s Frontier Theory says that this continuous exposure to the frontier has shaped the American character. The frontier made the American settlers revert back to the primitive, stripping them from their European culture. They then created something brand new; it’s what we know today as the American character. Turner argues that we, as a culture, are a product of the frontier. The uniquely American personality includes such traits as individualism, futuristic, democratic, aggressiveness, inquisitiveness, materialistic, expedite, pragmatic, and optimistic. And perhaps what exemplifies this American personality the most is the story of the Donner Party.
The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson
Changes in the Land by William Cronon depicts the changes in New England brought upon by the European settlers in the 1600s. What was once only occupied by Native Americans, New England’s resources were sustainably consumed by the indigenous people of the land. However, in Cronan’s perspective, the arrival of the settlers brought upon drastic and detrimental consequences that would go on to affect the ecology of New England today. An apparent theme brought up in Changes in the Land is adaptation. Cronan arrays the theme of adaptation by displaying how the natives had to adapt to a sporadically changing lifestyle that the colonists attempted to assimilate into the land and its people.
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
The development of the Western genre originally had its beginnings in biographies of frontiersmen and novels written about the western frontier in the late 1800’s based on myth and Manifest Destiny. When the film industry decided to turn its lenses onto the cowboy in 1903 with The Great Train Robbery there was a plethora of literature on the subject both in non-fiction and fiction. The Western also found roots in the ‘Wild West’ stage productions and rodeos of the time. Within the early areas of American literature and stage productions the legend and fear of the west being a savage untamed wilderness was set in the minds of the American people. The productions and rodeos added action and frivolity to the Western film genre.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
The western frontier is full of many experiences that changed the frontier. Each significant event has an important role on the shaping of society and way it influenced a new nation. Each author brought a new perspective and thought process to the western experience which either contradicted Turner or supported his theories. The frontier ideas that interested me include topics such as trading frontier, farming frontier, nationality and government, and the neglecting of women.
The cowboys of the frontier have long captured the imagination of the American public. Americans, faced with the reality of an increasingly industrialized society, love the image of a man living out in the wilderness fending for himself against the dangers of the unknown. By the end of the 19th century there were few renegade Indians left in the country and the vast expanse of open land to the west of the Mississippi was rapidly filling with settlers.
I agree with Emerson's statement because those who are in the city are prone to more distractions than those in the country. Those who are in the city lose insight on who they are, what they are capable of, and what they can become. Throughout Nature, Emerson's famous statement of the transparent eye-ball plays a major role in the fact that man should view life in different perspectives in order to find their inner soul. When viewing the nature surrounding us in multiple perspectives, we are given the opportunity to create a better outlook in life. This is because we are not sticking to simply one idea of the world, but rather are able to expand our thoughts beyond the norm because "...all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the
The age-old question has plagued many, “Should I live in a city or should I live in the country?”. There are many advantages and disadvantages to choosing a lifestyle in either setting, and careful examination of all aspects is needed to make the perfect decision for you.
Imagine having to choose to reside in one place for the rest of your life. Which would you opt for? Some people would argue that the hyperactive lifestyle that a big city has to offer has more benefits than living in the country. However, others would contend that the calm and peaceful environment of the countryside is much more rewarding. Several people move from the city to a farm to get away from the hustle and bustle. Likewise, some farmers have traded in their tractors and animals to live a fast paced city life. Of course, not all large cities are the same nor are all of the places in the country identical. Realizing this, ten years ago, I decided to hang up the city life in Indiana to pursue a more laid back approach to life in rural Tennessee. Certainly, city life and life in the country have their benefits, but they also have distinguishable differences.
Surely there exist cities that are determined to transform into more eco-friendly representatives of urban civilization, yet these efforts are typically focused on minimizing the harmful output of cities rather than rew...