Monday, October 16, 2017

A Minute Meditation

Henry Beston
Northern Farm: A Chronicle of Maine
written during the late 1930s
first published in 1949


When the nineteenth century and the industrial era took over our western civilization, why was it that none saw that we should all presently become peoples without a past?  Yet this is precisely what has happened and it is only now that the results of the break have become clear.

The past is gone, together with its formal arts, its rhetoric, and its institutions, and in its place there has risen something rootless, abstract, and alien, I think, to human experience.  Nothing of this sort has ever occurred in history.   

This was written during the late 1930s and published in 1949.  Is any of the above relevant today?   To be honest, I'm not even sure I know what he means.   Perhaps it's because I'm an urbanite (if there is such a word), having grown up and spent all of my life in cities.  I did spend a number of summers while growing up on my grandparents' farm in Wisconsin, but that was only for three months of the year.  I wonder if that loss he speaks of accounts for my fascination with and love of the writings of Loren Eiseley, Joseph Wood Krutch,  John Muir (a recent discovery), Konrad Lorenz, and now Henry Beston.  All focus on the natural world and on those who share this unique planet with us.

Yet, Beston speaks of this loss: The past is gone, together with its formal arts, its rhetoric, and its institutions, and in its place there has risen something rootless, abstract, and alien, I think, to human experience.  What has this to do with our alienation from the natural world?    Unlike so many fortunate people, I find only questions and more questions and seldom answers.

22 comments:

  1. interesting quote, i think, but i'm not sure what point he's making... i don't think human nature has changed much, but the circumstances of existence have certainly changed... technology has been boon for many, but has also wrecked the environment for many more... i have a feeling he's talking about capitalism more than anything...

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    1. Mudpuddle--that could be, though he never mentioned capitalism in the book. The source most frequently brought up seemed to be the industrialization and urbanization, the separation from the natural world.

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  2. It sounds like he's lamenting something that we lost millennia before the 1930's when we moved into cities. Over the last 10,000 years we have become progressively more divorced from nature and I doubt that's going to change anytime soon (unless the whole thing implodes). The last people's truly close to nature - so close that they were part of the natural background - were nomads. But then you could argue that we only became truly human when we turned our back on nature and became Homo Urbanus.

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  3. CyberKitten--Yes, that's part of it--the separation from the natural world. Oral traditions from all parts of the globe talk about the loss of the garden of paradise, of a fall from Eden. That I can see.

    It's the second paragraph that puzzles me. What's gone, as Beston lists them, do not sound like parts of the natural world.

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  4. I guess that I hear this sentiment somewhat commonly. I do not completely understand it either. I think that there is somewhat of a loss inherent in modernity from a dissociation from nature to a deemphasis on community, the arts, etc. On the other hand I am not as pessimistic as many. Appreciation of the natural world is still there, as is art, history, etc. Sometimes our appreciation for these things is just strained.

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    1. Brian--I wonder if appreciation of the natural world though art, history, etc. would be sufficient for Beston. I think, based on his two works that I've read, that he would insist on our actual physical presence in the natural world.

      It does seem as though Beston is implying some sort of connection between presence in the natural world and the community and the past "with its formal arts, its rhetoric, and its institutions." It is this connection that I am puzzled by.

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  5. Reader-response to Beston:
    The move from agrarian to industrial unsettled many wistful people; perhaps that is the explanation. Sometimes change is neither good nor bad; it is simply change, a perpetual motion in the history of everything.

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    1. R.T.--that's true change can be neutral, but Beston suggests this move to the industrial age was a bad one overall.

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  6. It's difficult for me to guess what he is saying. I think many people are disconnected to the past because they are absorbed in modern technology and are only interested in what is currently trending.

    That is a tragedy because history, literature, art, music etc.. offers us so much meaning and fulfillment.

    But I don't know if that is what he means. It's true for some people not all and it seems that often the big cities are epicenters of culture and connections to the past.

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  7. Sharon--yes, it's difficult to get a precise idea of what he is saying. I think the basic theme is that the rural life is now (this was written in the late 1930s) the only way humans can live in the natural world and also live in a human community.

    I wonder what he would say today (he died in 1968) if he would see so many people communicating with others who aren't present and ignoring those who are.

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    1. fred: that's true, isn't it... i hadn't thought about it that way, but internetting does inhibit personal communication, somewhat, doesn't it?

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    2. Cellphones are worse.... watch people in restaurants for evidence....

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    3. Mudpuddle--I think it reduces the amount of time spent with others with whom one is in immediate physical contact, based on what I see in restaurants, for example.

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    4. Not to add to the gloom and doom, but I have been in restaurants where the people sitting together don't speak two words to each other but had their heads bent over their phones.

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    5. Sharon--unfortunately, that's all too common today. Those at a distance are more important than those merely in front of them.

      I can remember many years ago, before mobile phones, when I would be in a store or restaurant, in front of the cashier, paying for my purchases, when the phone would ring. The cashier would immediately pick up the phone and leave me standing there irritated, obviously less important than that person on the phone.

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  8. R.T.--no argument there. I wonder if we will ever reach the point where the people sitting across the table from each other will prefer to text each other, rather than talk to one another.

    Silly idea, isn't it?

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    1. not so silly... i think one of the attractive things about blogging is the chance to think about how to say something before you say it; also, i've often experience intimidation from others when trying to phrase an idea in person... the web makes communication easier in some ways...

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    2. Mudpuddle--there are advantages to the Net or mobile phones or texting, otherwise they wouldn't be so popular, if popular isn't understating the situation.

      I wonder if we are losing something by this communication at a distance.

      I find a thinness? about digital communication, a lack of solidity that's present in communication with someone who is physically in front of me.

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    3. Mudpuddle, it is certainly true for me that I can give a better response in writing because I can think through what I want to say.

      However, writing can also be harsh because you cannot see the others person's facial expressions or hear their tone of voice, other cues that help to give us a better insight. We can also ask for clarification and receive it instantly when simply talking.

      However, I would not know interesting people like you and Fred and everyone else in the blogging world if I was limited to the people physically around me.

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    4. Sharon--Writing does give one the opportunity to think through carefully what one wants to say, but based on what I see, there aren't too many people who take advantage of this.

      Yes, the lack of immediate feedback is serious problem for digital communications. We can't see their facial expressions of their body movements while we are typing away.

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  9. I read the short essay that mentions Northern Farm. I really picked up on the mention of living most of one's life in an urban environment. I grew up in a Connecticut town Newington, that was changing from farming to suburban in the 1950's My dad always took me an my brother out in the country for a walk usually near water. Somehow the country was my love even though I have lived most of my life in suburban places.

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  10. John--I've lived most of my life in urban areas: Chicago and now Tucson. But, whenever things pile up and seem insurmountable, I get in the car and drive out of town and just sit for a while where there's no houses, cars, people. It never solved my problems, but I was in better shape now to handle them.

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