Remember those Apocalyptic types?

Remember all those apocalyptic predictions we read and heard about earlier in the semester? Well apparently they haven't gone away, and the people behind them aren't wasting their time. It's funny when history repeats itself. The accompanying story and source for that image can be found here.

Back to Alcott

This transcendentalist troupe really captures everything that goes wrong with Utopian projects. It's the same for them as it is for Thoreau. They stop eating animals, but why? If their goal is to save animals then they have failed; if their goal is to slightly drive down the price of beef, then they have succeeded modestly. Part of maturing, so I've been told, is learning how to live in society without sacrificing your values. Sometimes that means compromising on a value here or there...

Speaking of not growing up and compromising...

The Tea Party is making headlines again after a relative slump in press coverage because apparently they are upset about the recent budget deal. If they are still upset, maybe they should try setting up some kind of tax-free Utopia in the wilderness.

Idealism and Realism

A second irrepressible being held that all the emotions of the soul should be freely expressed, and illustrated his theory by antics that would have sent him to a lunatic asylum, if, as an unregenerate wag said, he had not already been in one.

I rather enjoyed Alcott's story of this Transcendentalist Utopian troupe because it really captures the problems I have with On Civil Disobedience; severing yourself from society is noble or whatever, but society isn't going to change because you decided to leave. Thoreau was bothered by the problems of his country, but I don't know who he thinks he was helping by not paying his taxes. Actually, I do know who he was helping, himself. He unburdened himself of his own guilt, but that didn't free any slaves. The lawmakers who would bring about the end of slavery didn't go live as hermits without paying taxes; they married themselves to the same corrupt system and made it better.

So I think the choice is clear. You can either fool yourself into thinking that your hands aren't covered with the blood of war, climate change, or poverty, or you can come to terms with your own guilt and try to fix the problems that you inherited as a citizen of corrupt (but not wholly evil) society.

I really didn't address Alcott's story here...

A Lake

This is from the pond behind the baseball fields.  The sign there has a Thoreau post about lakes as the eyes of the Earth.  By a strangely appropriate coincidence, I found it this weekend.

Time

I'd like to take a look at the relationship between railroads and time as articulated in Cronon's article, and maybe take another look at what Hill has to say on the matter. Cronon pointed out how the rise of the railroads led to the standardization of times across the country, severed the ancient relationship between time and the sun, and drastically changed notions of how much work could be done or distance could be traveled over a week, a day, or an hour. Also, farmers who once might have packed up their goods for the market once it felt right now had to conform to the railroads' timetables. But once American interest in transit shifted from rails back to roads, farmer Bob could go back to hauling his corn when he felt like it. And by "farmer Bob" and "corn" I of course mean "suburbanite mother Jane" and "kids". The conformity of schedules is the problem that Hill seems to have with trains, and it is of course a legitimate concern. But Hill doesn't seem to complain about flying, whose scheduling and security demands often require passengers to show up at the airport hours early. And what about commuters? Looking at a crowded highway during rush hour is perhaps the strongest argument for rail development. It's true; riding a train means submitting to its schedule, but the reality is that we aren't all pioneers living on the frontier anymore, and we already make concessions.

Oh, shoot! You caught us!

The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

Honestly, I don't know much about George F. Will, but it doesn't look like he has a filter between what he thinks and what he writes. He must just be pandering to conservatives because I don't want to believe that a journalist who must have had some success in his field really believes that high-speed rail is some liberal conspiracy to turn the people into sheep. Maybe he just forgot about the massive subsidies to both air and auto transit, maybe he forgot about rush hour, maybe he forgot about the dismal state of non-aerial intercity transit in this country. As a college student who periodically tries to get from Chicago to Minneapolis on a budget, I can attest to that last one.

I should probably explain why this issue gets my blood boiling. I grew up 2 blocks away from a train station, and when I was little my great-uncle would take me to the station to watch the trains. Fast-forward many years to my late adolescence, and it only took one year of commuting to high-school by car to make me lose the fascination with driving that came with getting my license.

I'll come back to make a rational point. The healthiest state for our transportation structure to be in is a state of balance, where road, rail, and air all exist and are all viable forms of transit. It won't be easy to work trains back into the American transportation arsenal, but sooner or later it will become clear that adding more lanes to our highways and more runways to our airports won't be enough as the country grows and develops.

Ha ha! Just kidding! I just want trains to ease Americans into communism. Because that makes sense.