Assignment Three – On Chapter Four “Sounds”

Though in its core a religious and philosophical movement, transcendentalism is remembered for mostly one objective: return to nature and its sublimity. Even back in the depths of the nineteenth century, great personalities such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and later Walt Whitman criticized the estrangement from the initial values of life and recommended said return to nature. But in transcendentalism, there was also room for appreciation of man-made things, as the famous Henry David Thoreau points out in his seminal 1854 work Walden. So, if even die-hard transcendentalists could come to terms with the importing of artificial products into nature, it should be easy for us contemporaries to bring in line an attentiveness toward nature and the comforts that technological advance has brought along, right?

Modern life proves the opposite every day. Technology does not only make our lives easier, it dominates them to an extend that not even the most daring spirit of the nineteenth century could have foreseen. When Thoreau acknowledges the sound of church bells as a “natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness” (Thoreau 119), he clearly refers to the wilderness as something precious into which only few concerns may be imported. He appreciates nature as it is, and this is exactly what modern society lacks completely. Not only have we ceased to appreciate nature, most of the times we don't even recognize it anymore, and if we do, it is only to take a picture, not to cherish its dignity. We have lost the necessary skills to do so: patience, humbleness and the will to overcome difficulties in order to achieve something.

Technology has developed to an extent where everything we desire is just a mouse click or a finger touch away. Thanks to on-demand and home delivery services, we are used to immediate fulfillment of our desires. Nature, on the other hand, follows its very own time schedule, and cannot be rushed to meet our expectations. Accordingly, we lose interest. In his 1836 essay Nature, transcendental pioneer R. W. Emerson urges people to “adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” Not even 200 years later, mankind has obviously outpaced nature to an alarming degree.

Apart from plain lack of interest and patience, the absence of a certain humbleness impedes the worshiping of small things, a discipline once held in high esteem. Since technology provides us with an absolute overkill of just about every kind of information, we have grown accustomed to appreciating nothing but the best. We disregard things, be it achievements, movies or landscapes, simply because we have already seen or heard of more impressive ones. Why should we listen to a street musician when we have got the latest tunes waiting for us to listen to on our iPods? Or, referring to nature: why should we bother to pay attention to a mediocre sunrise in our hometown when we have seen stunning photographs of the sun rising in the Caribbean Sea?

Said deficit of patience and humbleness consequentially causes an unwillingness to overcome difficulties. In our technologically advanced world, there is no need to get up at five o'clock in the morning to witness the sun come up since thousands of sunrises captured by professional photographers are just one quick Google search query away. When life takes place in front of a screen anyway, differentiating between experiencing something and seeing something becomes obsolete, all it comes down to is direct accessibility .

Nowadays, there is no way to combine an honest, pure desire to experience nature with modern technology. Although this would principally be possible, every new development has driven society further away from living in unison between nature and technology. Mankind always chooses the path of least resistance, and technology keeps on reducing resistance, whereas nature still holds onto its own schedule.

Works cited:
 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. Boston: Beacon, 1994. Print.
 

Thoreau, Henry David, and Jeffrey S Cramer. Walden. New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2004. Print.