The Failure of Humanity

To cross a border is to cross a human barricade instilled in part by fear and in part by the need to enclose or provide with finite an ending to a given place or idea. Especially understanding that our Canadian neighbors originally installed the said border merely to protect their countrymen from the wrath of the Northern Abolitionists during the 19th century. From this idea, it remains a mystery in my mind that even as I come to understand my utter passion for the northern Canada that such a burden be placed in my heart if its purpose were rooted in the cause of injustice. May it be the Jeffersonian paradox that my Americana lifestyle has fused into my being or simply the innate human ability to see a pessimistic glow in the face of joy, but as Steinbeck stated scores ago:
I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother…The Santa Lucia stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I have always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east (Steinbeck East of Eden 3).

In my experience, the Canadian society sits majestically to my north, as comforting as the Gabilan Mountains, luring me into its comfort, its liberality, and its passion for the maintenance of tradition when other nations, such as the United States fail to maintain a universal culture amidst mass immigration. In the setting of intellectual immortality, a nation interested in progressing towards the future, yet continuing to grow in understanding the morals and cultural idiosyncrasies of their ancestors deserves the grander respect over a nation who abandons cultural ideologies for commercial gain. To love the purity and simplicity of nature is to love the northern Canada, in opposition to the southern America with its destruction and loss of morality, a dark and brooding society emulating Steinbeck’s perception of the foreboding western Pacific Ocean.
The ideals of Emerson profess that it is the person’s role on this Earth to blatantly seek the good and decency of life by abandoning its call for the reliance of others for one to develop and seek the establishment of genuine and consequential ideology and philosophy. Thus, one should only attempt to discuss in the manner of Socrates if and only if he or she understands his or her position and beliefs. One should not talk for the purpose of talking, just as one should not live for purpose of living. One should live simply to cherish the spirituality of life, and move on as the time comes necessary. Borders are not meant to last forever, but simply to protect the development of a society until it is necessary to relocate. To take borders down and to reunite with those whom a society have neglected over the years in an effort to seek emotional and spiritual guidance in the forest of life. It is as if we all, as a global community, must seek shelter at Walden for a period. Simply to develop a meaning in our lives so that when the time comes to greet thy neighbors, we have the intellectual capacity to communicate our unique matured ideologies. Thus, by understanding my personal passion for liberality I journeyed up to my beloved north to experience the simplicity and naturalistic society of Prince Edward Island.
Yet, upon the commencement of my trek I became to understand most clearly that the technological influence on the modern society, particularly in the field of national security, is merely a manipulative agency that concentrates its energies on the safety—and naturally maximizing the affects of its weaknesses—of the masses, and defying the capabilities of the individual. The introduction to Canada was merely a representation of the insensitivity and bureaucracy that has contaminated the previously mangled Democracy of the nation. After all, the beliefs and morals of a nation are a culmination of those of the individual, and yet each national government continues to attempt to aid the needs of the mass and, adversely, conquer its abilities. Although, it is my personal curiosity that leads me to question what a government, which operates off of the thoughts of elected individuals and the process of uniting such ideas for the better of a society—or more logically, the better of the body politic. However, it is not the national government that I seek in this experience. I journey to the Prince Edward Island shores not to experience the broad capacities of individualism, reacquaint myself with the people of the nation, and the unique and largely unhampered environment and wildlife.
The technology of the day would, perhaps, give reason for the long and foreboding passage of the border, yet following the terroristic and ideological threats of the contemporary era, one may assume that it is our human nature to dwell on the past and forget the future and thus refrain from understanding the meaning it holds. During the birth of our nation, thousands flocked to discover, as many came to understand, a nation developed by the future for it is without a past. But due simply to the unreliable nature of the future, America became a nation governed by the present motives of its politic. As the World Trade Centers shattered the security of the nation a half-decade ago, we continue to be fearful of the East, of the people it holds, and of the ideas it has developed. Instead of looking to the future and hopefully coming to understand what it means, we refrain, timidly, and continue to whisper eerily around the Islam. It is as if today the border serves as a protection of the South from the wrath of the relaxed immigration policies of the north. However, it is known that those who seek protection for protection’s sake merely seek the maternal warmth of a Gabilan mountain. We cease the passing of time between events by hiding solemnly behind the structures of our governments, when in the philosophies of the transcendentalists suggests that we should simply abandon all that is human, to seek the comfort of nature to learn to comprehend the limits and thus the unimportance of the actions of man and time.
It is in the underdeveloped nature of the North that one truly discovers the paradox of humanity. We navigate a politically empirical society in an effort to migrate the production of materials necessary to continue to fuel our societies when we have the power and the ability not as a politically-contained nation, but as a human race to develop and exercise a method of production that will ensure that our posterity can treasure the North as we can through our contemporary lives. It is as if we seek nature and Earth only in the regions of tropical spectacularity, and abandon its presence in our own lives and homes as burden or a bothersome neighbor that cannot help herself and has the incomprehensible ability to meet us at the worst possible moment. But as Jefferson remarked of the enslavement of humans for labor, through our enslavement of nature, “as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other” (Jefferson). But what is self-preservation? Is self-preservation to do as I have raced to the roughly robed shores of Cavendish, Prince Edward Island to experience the sun’s revolution around the Earth? As if the rich, sienna soil and rock brought up against the pastels of the sky inspire a moment of peace and utter tranquility to the viewer. What is it to humanity to learn to openly experience the wonders of nature, when we have the capacity to destroy and potentially devastate a planet that may simply be the only one of its kind. We know that within the vast mulitverse we cannot discover another place that we can survive through, and yet our species, ill by the fault of hubris, continues to breed invincibility.
The feeling of entering a region, so long defined by the tensions of the past and present, and liberating one’s tainted human soul in the face of Mother Earth is indescribable beyond the capacities of language. “Nature”, as Emerson romantically described, “is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece…” it is in nature that one can discover the intensity of being, “glad to the brink of fear” (Emerson “Nature”). For in nature, one leaves behind a world plagued by a history of human events and a society, through the affects of over-reliance on the masses for guidance, addicted to the idea that the needs and desires of its people forever surpass that of Spiritual Soul of the Earth. Through the lights of our streets and the velocity of our travels we lose the capacity for conscientious in regards to the power of our universe and of the human mind. We forget the lessons of our ancestors in regards to self-preservation and freely abandon the self in an effort to maintain the power of the politically dictated boundaries. However, in all sense of justice, the world is to humanity as a child is to a parent. If we only listened to the wisdom it has to offer, we could only save ourselves from the attack of the wolf that is humanity. To understand the importance of life is to experience the celestial powers of Re, as our Mesopotamian ancestors called the god of the sun, and sit peacefully on the soft burnt sands of Prince Edward Island and be gracious for the knowledge and human capacity to understand that we still have the ability to prevent Mother Nature’s demise.