The Entitlement Culture

William Cronon in “Changes in the Land” does an excellent job of describing how the cultures of both the Indians and colonists altered the New England environment. While Cronon analyzes the effects of the “political organization, systems of production and in human relationships with the natural world,” he fails to recognize the root of these behaviors. Plainly and simply, Cronon nearly entirely neglects to adequately judge the obstinate ignorant hubris of and the colonist’s alienation from nature as not only having played a significant role in its effects on the environment but also having played a foundational role in the creation of their culture. Furthermore, his descriptions of the colonists in relation to the Indian way of life could not paint a more glaringly contradictory portrait.

If the Indians lived with nature, then the colonists lived off nature. For all the ignorance of ecology that the colonists exhibited, the Indians on the other hand displayed a deep appreciation and understanding of the realities of nature and defined their limited needs accordingly. And while it may be true that there doesn’t exist a “pristine world of an earlier and now lost time” due to the unending variations inherent in nature, it is without question a legitimate judgment to say that the early colonists, whose legacy still persists today, were not only unquestionably ignorant of the cycles of nature in which they lived but that the breadth of their culture formed both in the old and new worlds seems to have flowed from their colossal arrogant ignorance of their relationship with nature and in doing so has undoubtedly left a “fallen humanity in a fallen world.” Cronon’s description of not only the behaviors but the extent of the ramifications of the relative differences in ecology between the colonists and Indians could not make this point more lucidly.

Essentially Cronon argues that the cultures of both the colonists and the Indians were responsible for “changes in the land.” He posits that capitalism through the creation of international markets, debt and the commoditification of nature, English law by way of its violently backed supremacy, its property bounding requirements and its unequal treatment of the Indians, the importation of domesticated animals, which rapidly consumed resources and required fencing and the dispersal of colonists throughout New England, in addition to a factor somewhat a part of but not entirely removed from culture, epidemiological hegemony, which in some cases resulted in the wholesale destruction of communities of Indians, were all factors that influenced changes in the land. While the Indian “community’s social definition of “need” was inherently limited, and made economic abundance a relatively easy attainment for its members,” the culture of the colonists seemed to push them towards an insatiable drive for more.

The very act of sailing wooden ships across the vast ocean without a destination was a very clear example of their voracious appetites. Once landed, the imposition of the colonist’s culture upon not only the Indian’s way of life but also on and against the realities of nature describes a people alienated from their own relationship with the land and their culture as merely the product of this estrangement. Only a people so affected could create a culture thus; to violently impose its way of life on others, to perceive it as one’s right to not only treat nature but also people in such an injuriously officious manner, to sell the products of nature for the accumulation of an arbitrarily established form of profit, to continually encroach upon a people despite the fact that mere contact leads to their macabre demise. Where Cronon sees culpability of both cultures in altering the landscape, prudent analysis should certainly judge the Indian culture as infinitely more responsible, just and sustainable in making changes in the land as viewed against the backdrop of a culture making changes ????????to the land.

Why are so Many Disturbed After Fighting for “Noble Cause?”

A victim of the war within
Suicides of Houston Army recruiter and his wife leave questions of struggle that endured after Iraq
By LINDSAY WISE

Army recruiter Nils Aron Andersson sat behind the wheel of his brand-new Ford F-150, firing round after round into the truck’s CD player and radio with a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Spent cartridges littered the seats and floorboards, along with a paper pharmacy bag holding a prescription for the antidepressant Lexapro.

Andersson’s wife, Cassy Walton, had been trying to reach the 25-year-old sergeant on his cell phone for hours. He finally picked up about 2 a.m. and told her he wanted to kill himself.

Walton begged him to keep talking to her. Andersson told her he was on the top floor of a downtown Houston parking garage and ended the call. Then he put the pistol to his head, just above his right ear.

Minutes later, Walton raced up the stairs of the garage….

To read more: A SOLDIER’S TRAGIC TALE

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