Detachment from Nature
Modern life has seen many advances, from industrialization through the cell phone, which work to achieve peak efficiency. Efficiency first began as a means to make the less enjoyable parts of the day such as work go by quickly and relatively painlessly, in order for family and play time to be gained with less work. Somewhere down the road however, something went wrong and this efficiency began to destroy the ends it worked to reach. Today, technology and efficiency no longer work to aid in the achievement of life’s little pleasures that people once enjoyed. Technology has progressed so far that it has created a detachment from nature and the simple things that people once relished.
As Rebecca Solnit notes in her essay, “Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche,” modern methods of transportation seem largely responsible for this disembodiment from nature. People once used to travel at no more than a few miles per hour, whether on foot or horse, which allowed them to really appreciate and take in their surroundings. With the development of trains, this was no longer the case. People were now traveling at such high speeds that the landscape became a blur, and the thrill of this new method of transportation led to few noticing what they were leaving behind. “The speed... with which the railroad proceeds through the terrain destroys the close relationship between traveler and the traveled space” (Solnit 441). The traveler no longer has the time to appreciate what he or she is leaving behind, he is like a ‘parcel’, hurling through space from one destination to the next. People became oblivious to their surroundings and hardly anyone regretted their loss of a connection to nature because they did not know that it was occurring. Transportation was the beginning of the detachment that is now commonplace in society.
Outdoor gathering places have