Good Ancestors Like Dandelions
Urban sprawl is not a new phenomenon, and the battle between environmentalists anddevelopers is well-known. But perhaps the issue is not that the land is being utterlystripped of life and replaced by cookie cutter houses or factories, which has been acontroversy for decades. Perhaps the fighting has exposed a deeper problem: theAmerican acceptance of a false outside, seen through lawns that mimic interiors. People often perceive that any green space is nature. As Michael Ventura says,"America is form opposed to content" (216). Contractors leave some existing trees onlots not because it may be costly to remove them but because those trees also serve asa selling feature for the houses built between. Most people would rather spend theirweekends at an official, regulated and landscaped park rather than hiking through someun-named forest track. While there is the standard human desire for new experiences,people often are only willing to try pre-tested experiences. Even when one realizes thesocietal manipulation, it still seems difficult to jump over the railings and really cut a new So if people are aware that they're being led by the nose through a sterile,pre-chewed and mocked-up environment, why
It'smain purpose is to thoughtfully imitate the larger theme. I'm so grateful to have never have livedin a sub-division of any kind--though I can see what the housing developers had in mindwhen they implanted this brain-washing into their customers. And those perceptions are not just the normal range of sensesdictated by species, but are directly affected by the environment. " Afterall, it is more or less theAmerican motto to "tame" the wilderness, to take what the land has to offer and use it tobetter the standard of human living. A good friend of mine for the past nine years comes from such a family. Large or small, lawns are theirreplaceable pieces of American life. While the typical American scurries around trying to meet theleast common denominator in their lawn's appearance, there still remains some artisticexpression in the world that can coincide nature without infringing upon it. Powerfulstorms become "natural disasters" to our eyes, and weather is judged "inclement" basedon our perceptions. Insteadof the residents individually defining their living space (as was the case before the1950's), the community image is dictated by committee. People now look at the stripped-downecospheres surrounding their dwellings as an extension of their property: something thatis owned and must be used. Conversely, themore Eastern philosophy probably derives from the fact that space is a commoditythere.
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Acceptance Essays
