Wendy AP Language

I find Thoreau’s opinions in this chapter to be quite true and something every person could use in their everyday life.  This is one of Thoreau’s ideals that I actually agreed with and could relate it to my life.  Sometimes the best company is oneself, and you can really learn a lot about yourself when you have some alone time.  Nature is peaceful and relaxing, and I think everyone should take the advice that Thoreau gives us on this topic.  You may think that your life is at its best when you are constantly surrounded by people and always in a social situation, but this can cause you to become disconnected with your true self.  Time alone is well spent, according to Thoreau, especially if it is time in the natural world.  However, not even Thoreau spent his whole life without human contact and interaction.  He had supposed “neighbors” whom he sometimes socialized with and even went into town quite often.  I think he teaches us to have a “happy medium” between solitude and interactions with others, because both are crucially important in our lives.  Even if a person is not too fond of nature, some thinking time in your room or in the car serves a similar purpose and can have the same effect.

At this point in my life, I am still unsure of what I will live for.  I want many things in life, the most important probably would be to remain happy and peaceful in my life, but I haven’t quite gotten my philosophies down pact as Thoreau has.  I like Thoreau’s ideas of finding reality in life, and I would like to live a modest, realistic life.  How I might do this I still don’t know.  I would like to have a positive impact on the place I live and on the people who know me.  I think all of that is possible wherever I choose to live.  At least environmentally, as the family in Manhattan has proven.  If they can live a low-impact life in a place so populated and industrial, it can be done anywhere.  They are able to find reality in New York City, and are happy doing it.  Okay, I don’t particularly enjoy the idea of eating sprouts and homemade yogurt everday for lunch, but I would like to be “green” to an extent. 

As for the happiness aspect, I think if you want to be happy that can be achieved almost anywhere, but there are also personal desires for happiness.  I can’t see myself as being happy in a crowded, dirty city, but to each his own.  The place where you live may affect your happiness, but it does not determine it.  As the man stated in Freakonomics, it all depends.  As much as I hate that idea, it really does apply here.  What you live for can change throughout your life depending on the circumstances or people who influence your life.  So for now, I will stick with the goal to remain happy with my life.  In doing that, there is a lot of room for change.

Affluenza, a word coming from the words affluence and influenza, occurs when people are so concerned with wealth and material things that they become stressed and unhappy because of debt and anxiety. It is truly considered an illness, especially in the eyes of Thoreau.  The world that Thoreau spoke of, where we all found happiness in ourselves and were satisfied with our work, has made a turn in a completely opposite direction.  People are overcome with the problems of debt and class, and although they have all the material things they could ask for, are still stricken with unhappiness.  This is exactly what Thoreau and other Transcendentalists did NOT want.

The pressures of the society that we live in have caused the violent spread of affluenza.  The vast wealth of media is especially helpful to convince people of the United States to ”measure their worth by financial success and material possessions.”  Not only is this “illness” spreading through media, but the attitude is being passed on from parents to their children.  We now live in a world where sleepover camp costs 10,000 dollars and parents cannot even leave their children be for one week.  I wonder how it can be possible to live as Thoreau did when our society has strayed away from that almost completely. 

I must applaud Thoreau for predicting the cycle completely.  Material possessions are thought to make you happy, so everyone strives for that.  However, no matter how much false wealth you may have, there is still an emptiness that you want to fill, and you are left with debt and unhappiness.  Thoreau basically warned us of what would happen if our society was strictly based on economic wealth, but of course, we ignored him. 

Thoreau’s ideas seem to be the cure for affluenza.  He lived with only the bare essentials, and was perfectly happy with that.  He didn’t believe in money for the sake of money, only if it was earned through manual labor did he really approve, and that he used for necessities.  Maybe it seems nicer to have all these material things to make us “happy,” but really they bring more unhappiness than joy.  It’s not like we need to live on the streets in order to fulfill Thoreau’s principles.  From where we are now, we have to start small.  But even baby steps are moving somewhere.

In less than a hundred years, views in America concerning race and culture have distinctly changed.  Now, America is no longer a place where minorities are accepted among whites, and many different nations are living simultaneously in one country.  Culture has become more important, and the minority culture of the United States has grown distinctly.  In numbers, “white” America is fading slowly, and eventually the majority of America will be non-white.  However, “where the culture is concerned,” white America is long gone.  The way that America is desceribed in “Trans-National America,” where many different cultures are intertwined, is becoming more and more real.  But the manner in which America was said to be embracing those minority cultures in 1916 has turned into those cultures becoming the true culture of America.  The multiculturalism of hip hop and other pop culture aspects “seems to value every identity- except whiteness.”  Whites are the only ones who feel they don’t have a distinct culture, and therefore try to embrace other cultures.  Maybe this is leading to the end of “white America,” but it actually is a step towards individualism, instead of being affiliated with racial standards.  Hsu makes the argument that the end is not a bad things, rather a “bridge, and we crossed it.”

In Randolph S. Bourne’s essay, Trans-National America, asks Americans to reconsider the idea of the “melting-pot,” as it has ultimately failed.  He belives that, on the contrary, “assimilation…instead of washing out the memories of Europe, made them more and more intensely real.”  Americanism is much more elaborate than the simple melting-pot theory, and he wants Americans to re-think the ideals concerning that.  All colonists and immigrants came for the same reasons, it was not to start a new culture, but to gain freedom and get rich.  English colonists came up with nothing new, and were simply “imitative of the mother country.”  It was the people coming from other places that “saved us from our own stagnation.”  He basically states that America would be nowhere near where it is today if it wasn’t for the mixes of races coming.  From the many different cultures coming into America comes new ideas, “wisdom, intelligence, industry, and social leadership,” and if the idea of the melting-pot had truly worked, it would not be this way.  The idea of every person and place in the United States be indentical culturally is the idea of America stopping its growth and change.  However, the way that America had no defining culture from the beginning let different cultures come together under one roof, and rather than blending together, they are simply mingled, in a “unique sociological fabric.”

Although there is no true defining culture of America, the failure of the melting pot was actually a good thing.  There are so many different cultures living in American, side-by-side, semi-peacefully.  Bourne has the idea that the original colonialism of the American people has turned into cosmopolitanism, meaning that England is no longer the root that we sprung from.  Every nation that has ever been a part of our country added to America’s uniqueness.  Immigrants with different “cultures” should not be looked down upon, for they are what makes American citizens feel more like “citizen(s) of a larger world.”  He suggests the idea of dual-citizenship, because it causes people to see things in a new light.  The cosmopolitan ideals are sophisticated and worldly, and promote embracing many cultures.  America is the one place where it is a possibility to become a “trans-nationality.”  If everyone embraces the idea, America can be a place where all different nationalities are “woven” together, and instead of just being a citizen of the United States, you can be a citizen of the world.