Once again, the similarities and differences really strike me.
I have a smart phone (which you're increasingly convincing me to ditch), but I don't use it for as much as other Millennials. I love it for music and I love it for maps, but crucially, I also still love to memorize maps, drive 90% from memory, even in unfamiliar places, and never ever use GPS.
Some people think it's a super power that I drive almost everywhere from memory, but I think it just shows that, for all that the paradigm shift pulls people like you and me along with it, there is still a basic status buff of competence to anyone who resists in any way.
And that's pretty damning of the whole project of modernity. If the other millennials and the kids think I have a super power because I can drive around "blind", and I think the guy who doesn't need AC has a super power, then... we've gone too far. We're leaving so much on the table.
I am also a lifelong encyclopedia reader, an absorber of trivia and information, but I more or less completely reject the urge to look up stuff while I'm outside, because it's disruptive of the high fidelity experience. You can be the person who goes to a stage musical and buries himself in the playbill, coming up only to take camera video of the stage, or you can be the person who goes to a musical and feels overwhelming joy and wonderment from the musical itself.
This is far from an original thought, but I think the person who filters the already filtered experience of the musical is leaving *so much* on the table.
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"Open spaces can only survive through deliberate preservation because they are not loci of human activity" is, with apologies, a very East Coast take.
My Uncle lives two miles outside a charming town in Central Oregon. A quarter mile behind his house begins Bureau of Land Management land, which runs straight over the top of the Cascades and down into the Willamette valley. Oregon is something like 60% undeveloped land.
This is not (just) because the land has been held in trust. It is because the land is *very hard* to develop. The character of towns all across the Great Basin was (and is!) that they were not naturally self sufficient places. They were company towns artificially propped up against the dry hard land by mining companies. They were cute tourist towns with the money to buy their water from easier places.
When you get lost in the woods up above the towns of Central Oregon, and you get up on top of a rock and look for a road, and you realize one of your potential directions will send you straight up into the mountains, mountains which are happy to kill you, you realize that we're kidding ourselves, in many places, that nature is there because we allow it.
The Darien Gap isn't there because we allow it. The endless *deadly* ocean around Hawaii and Bermuda and St Helena isn't there because we allow it. The Sahara isn't there because we allow it. Mount Rainier isn't there because we allow it. These places thoroughly defeat us, and will continue to do so until we're... like... a Kardashev 1 society. And then it will be space, forever, that defeats us on the daily.
---
My wife's family also emigrated from China, both from the far FAR north. While they were both Beijing physicists, one grew up urban and the other grew up a truly truly rural farmer on the Russian border in the middle of nowhere with wolves and outhouses and starvation. Contra your mother in law, *my* mother in law loves being in empty places, because she gets to flex skills only she has. Her heart remains in places where you can get fully lost, climb a tree, and sight out the nearest signs of humanity. It remains in places where some plants have water and some plants have poison and you just *know* which things are good and which are bad. She is at her best in these places and in these times, and the effect lingers for long afterwards.
She does cook her meals for ten or fifteen people, always, and she pushes food pretty hard, so I understand the unique Chinese reaction to past deprivations, but I think as pertains to the wilderness, it's personal preference more than a universal reaction.
For some people, modernity was the way to leave all that nasty old shit behind. Never another day without a shower, never another night without air conditioning, never another awkward subway ride without a distracting screen.
But for others, modernity was *supposed* to be the safety net from which to experience difficult things freely and voluntarily, literally for fun and personal growth.
---
Thoreau wasn't an explorer, or an indigent, or a native person, and Walden was less than two miles from town, but he still had an authentic and valuable experience of solitude, of anti-environment, and the more of it he had, the better.
That's where I think we want to be: we know there is something wild and deadly beyond our ken. We know we grew up in places of safety and ease, and we inherit them and preserve them. But we *choose* to camp out at the margins between the two, to stare at the danger and get the willies and feel small and peaceful, and return to the safety, because it makes the best version of us.
1. >> coming up only to take camera video of the stage, or you can be the person who goes to a musical and feels overwhelming joy and wonderment from the musical itself.
I'm reading a book by the philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller where he's arguing that we're seeing a cultural shift after which capturing video of a spectacular performance WILL BE how we luxuriate and find meaning in the experience, and going forward we're going to feel left out or unfulfilled if we can't. He's not celebrating the change, nor does he express nostalgia for the time before we put a recording device between ourselves and an immediate Happening—because in his telling, it's as inevitable as the rewiring of our perceptions and values by television. There's nothing to be done.
2. Oho, it's totally an East Coast take, and an urbanite take. But 64% of Americans live east of the Mississippi River, and 80% of the total population lives in cities or dense suburbs. Most Americans have to go pretty far out of their way to lose cell service or get somewhere they can walk five miles into the woods and still be in the woods.
3. Related: the Darien Gap and the Sahara Desert aren't what we talk about when we talk about nature. They're too unaccommodating, too difficult and too expensive to arrange a trip to, and too hazardous to "reconnect" with or photograph oneself in. (Not at all like Mount Everest. Sure you need physical training and some money, but there's a whole industry of people who will help you get to the top of the world where you can bask in the view and take one hell of a picture for Insta.)
4. Thoreau had an authentic experience—during a period of historical development and in a cultural/media environment where "authenticity" had a more coherent meaning than it does today, and even in retrospect it's possible to ask how authentic it was if the ultimate aim of his excursions was to write a book he could sell, make a name for himself, and put his ideas into circulation.
I don't doubt his philosophical aspirations were in earnest—but he was able to be earnest (and spend two years hanging out in Walden) because he had financial support from Emerson. IIRC, he ended up getting a job as a land surveyor because his books just weren't selling. His experience at Walden was a luxury. It was much longer and more deliberately productive than most of our trips to a rented cabin in mountains or a plot on a campsite, yes, but it was in essence an experience he had the social capital to purchase.
I'm not writing off Thoreau, mind you: he was a genius and a mutant, and appreciated the flora and fauna outside of town in a much deeper, more concrete way than his contemporaries. I don't suppose you're familiar with his unfinished Kalendar project? (thoreauskalendar.org/about.htm)
5. Very Kantian closing remark. Don't suppose you've read the Third Critique?
Incidentally: in the second half of the critique (which has to do with teleology instead of aesthetics), Kant says something to the effect that nature and the world would be devoid of all meaning and significance if there were no human beings alive to perceive them. Not long ago I found a novel called "The Nature Book" in a giveaway box on the sidewalk. The central conceit is that it's a bunch of narratives that don't include any human beings (or other rational, speaking entities). It's been such an utterly dull read so far that I have to wonder if it doesn't prove Kant right.
Once again, the similarities and differences really strike me.
I have a smart phone (which you're increasingly convincing me to ditch), but I don't use it for as much as other Millennials. I love it for music and I love it for maps, but crucially, I also still love to memorize maps, drive 90% from memory, even in unfamiliar places, and never ever use GPS.
Some people think it's a super power that I drive almost everywhere from memory, but I think it just shows that, for all that the paradigm shift pulls people like you and me along with it, there is still a basic status buff of competence to anyone who resists in any way.
And that's pretty damning of the whole project of modernity. If the other millennials and the kids think I have a super power because I can drive around "blind", and I think the guy who doesn't need AC has a super power, then... we've gone too far. We're leaving so much on the table.
I am also a lifelong encyclopedia reader, an absorber of trivia and information, but I more or less completely reject the urge to look up stuff while I'm outside, because it's disruptive of the high fidelity experience. You can be the person who goes to a stage musical and buries himself in the playbill, coming up only to take camera video of the stage, or you can be the person who goes to a musical and feels overwhelming joy and wonderment from the musical itself.
This is far from an original thought, but I think the person who filters the already filtered experience of the musical is leaving *so much* on the table.
---
"Open spaces can only survive through deliberate preservation because they are not loci of human activity" is, with apologies, a very East Coast take.
My Uncle lives two miles outside a charming town in Central Oregon. A quarter mile behind his house begins Bureau of Land Management land, which runs straight over the top of the Cascades and down into the Willamette valley. Oregon is something like 60% undeveloped land.
This is not (just) because the land has been held in trust. It is because the land is *very hard* to develop. The character of towns all across the Great Basin was (and is!) that they were not naturally self sufficient places. They were company towns artificially propped up against the dry hard land by mining companies. They were cute tourist towns with the money to buy their water from easier places.
When you get lost in the woods up above the towns of Central Oregon, and you get up on top of a rock and look for a road, and you realize one of your potential directions will send you straight up into the mountains, mountains which are happy to kill you, you realize that we're kidding ourselves, in many places, that nature is there because we allow it.
The Darien Gap isn't there because we allow it. The endless *deadly* ocean around Hawaii and Bermuda and St Helena isn't there because we allow it. The Sahara isn't there because we allow it. Mount Rainier isn't there because we allow it. These places thoroughly defeat us, and will continue to do so until we're... like... a Kardashev 1 society. And then it will be space, forever, that defeats us on the daily.
---
My wife's family also emigrated from China, both from the far FAR north. While they were both Beijing physicists, one grew up urban and the other grew up a truly truly rural farmer on the Russian border in the middle of nowhere with wolves and outhouses and starvation. Contra your mother in law, *my* mother in law loves being in empty places, because she gets to flex skills only she has. Her heart remains in places where you can get fully lost, climb a tree, and sight out the nearest signs of humanity. It remains in places where some plants have water and some plants have poison and you just *know* which things are good and which are bad. She is at her best in these places and in these times, and the effect lingers for long afterwards.
She does cook her meals for ten or fifteen people, always, and she pushes food pretty hard, so I understand the unique Chinese reaction to past deprivations, but I think as pertains to the wilderness, it's personal preference more than a universal reaction.
For some people, modernity was the way to leave all that nasty old shit behind. Never another day without a shower, never another night without air conditioning, never another awkward subway ride without a distracting screen.
But for others, modernity was *supposed* to be the safety net from which to experience difficult things freely and voluntarily, literally for fun and personal growth.
---
Thoreau wasn't an explorer, or an indigent, or a native person, and Walden was less than two miles from town, but he still had an authentic and valuable experience of solitude, of anti-environment, and the more of it he had, the better.
That's where I think we want to be: we know there is something wild and deadly beyond our ken. We know we grew up in places of safety and ease, and we inherit them and preserve them. But we *choose* to camp out at the margins between the two, to stare at the danger and get the willies and feel small and peaceful, and return to the safety, because it makes the best version of us.
THOUGHTS!
1. >> coming up only to take camera video of the stage, or you can be the person who goes to a musical and feels overwhelming joy and wonderment from the musical itself.
I'm reading a book by the philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller where he's arguing that we're seeing a cultural shift after which capturing video of a spectacular performance WILL BE how we luxuriate and find meaning in the experience, and going forward we're going to feel left out or unfulfilled if we can't. He's not celebrating the change, nor does he express nostalgia for the time before we put a recording device between ourselves and an immediate Happening—because in his telling, it's as inevitable as the rewiring of our perceptions and values by television. There's nothing to be done.
2. Oho, it's totally an East Coast take, and an urbanite take. But 64% of Americans live east of the Mississippi River, and 80% of the total population lives in cities or dense suburbs. Most Americans have to go pretty far out of their way to lose cell service or get somewhere they can walk five miles into the woods and still be in the woods.
3. Related: the Darien Gap and the Sahara Desert aren't what we talk about when we talk about nature. They're too unaccommodating, too difficult and too expensive to arrange a trip to, and too hazardous to "reconnect" with or photograph oneself in. (Not at all like Mount Everest. Sure you need physical training and some money, but there's a whole industry of people who will help you get to the top of the world where you can bask in the view and take one hell of a picture for Insta.)
4. Thoreau had an authentic experience—during a period of historical development and in a cultural/media environment where "authenticity" had a more coherent meaning than it does today, and even in retrospect it's possible to ask how authentic it was if the ultimate aim of his excursions was to write a book he could sell, make a name for himself, and put his ideas into circulation.
I don't doubt his philosophical aspirations were in earnest—but he was able to be earnest (and spend two years hanging out in Walden) because he had financial support from Emerson. IIRC, he ended up getting a job as a land surveyor because his books just weren't selling. His experience at Walden was a luxury. It was much longer and more deliberately productive than most of our trips to a rented cabin in mountains or a plot on a campsite, yes, but it was in essence an experience he had the social capital to purchase.
I'm not writing off Thoreau, mind you: he was a genius and a mutant, and appreciated the flora and fauna outside of town in a much deeper, more concrete way than his contemporaries. I don't suppose you're familiar with his unfinished Kalendar project? (thoreauskalendar.org/about.htm)
5. Very Kantian closing remark. Don't suppose you've read the Third Critique?
Incidentally: in the second half of the critique (which has to do with teleology instead of aesthetics), Kant says something to the effect that nature and the world would be devoid of all meaning and significance if there were no human beings alive to perceive them. Not long ago I found a novel called "The Nature Book" in a giveaway box on the sidewalk. The central conceit is that it's a bunch of narratives that don't include any human beings (or other rational, speaking entities). It's been such an utterly dull read so far that I have to wonder if it doesn't prove Kant right.