Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche - Essay Example

Rebecca Solnit, in her work, “Aerobic Sisyphus and the Suburbanized Psyche” tackled about the importance of walking in the past centuries. She wanted readers to realize what was been treasured had been lost. Walking, in its “golden age”, she mentioned, was treasured by early people, which they made it part of their lives. They used to walk on foot for several activities. They walk for work, walk for recreation, walk for themselves, and they walk free. She wants us to know how suburbanization of this and the past centuries affected the old life, or simply how human’s eagerness and curiousness to life covered the “golden age” of walking. She was trying to convince readers that suburbanization, or shall we call it technology, had made walking, as part of way of life, obsolete. It strikes through the effect of industrial revolution, which in turn led to suburbanization. Her writing seems to be quite very important; it serves like a reminder to us especially today when we are peeling the covers of life itself. We, people of today are experiencing and living with technology, we depend too much on it sometimes, that we even forget or somehow dump our golden ways of living. Ms. Solnit utterly mentioned many arguments, social, political, etc. But especially, she discussed more about culture and way of living that involves the walking. She wanted the readers to know outline and transformation of activities from the 18th to the 20th century. In this line: “but still impressive for its creation of places in which to walk and its valuation of recreational walking” she described the old setting of urban life in the late centuries, where some parks and mountaineering were made for recreation. Somehow, on this line: “This transformation happened in mind as well as on the ground. Ordinary Americans now perceive, value, and use time, space and their own bodies I radically different ways than they did before.”, she pushed that walking nowadays is in some kind of a boundary, in which people are walking not as a culture, not for they want to travel, not for there is a place they wanted to go, but only for aerobic purposes. People nowadays tend to do walking only inside their houses or to gyms to do aerobics. She’s trying to imply that society nowadays is lacking public space or there are no enough free spaces to walk to and no more people wanted to walk. She used strong words to push her arguments to the readers’ thoughts like in: "Too, the estate was on a sale that permitted walking without leaving the grounds; the suburban home was not, but suburbs would eat up the countryside and diffuse the urban anyway." The way she sounded when she mentioned the words “eat up the countryside” was more like saying that the suburbs are more of an animal trying to devour and consume the countryside or the old way of living. Industrial revolution, as a reason of suburbanization, led to the absurdity of mankind of the way of its culture has come. Walking, before, was almost you could say “their life”. It was a monotonous indoor and outdoor struggle to live their lives and to earn for it. “Sub-urbanization has radically changed the scale and texture of everyday life, usually in ways inimical to getting about on foot”. An improvement in cities and an invention of sidewalks created safe streets to walk, yet people were discouraged by the improvement and they felt unsafe: such as threat of acquainted people and industrial pollution. Solnit also mentioned: "The most perverse of all the devices in the gym is the treadmill (and its steeper cousin, the Stairmaster). Perverse, because I can understand simulating farm labor, since activities of rural life are not often available - but simulating walking suggests that space itself has disappeared. That is, the weights simulate the objects of work, but the treadmill and Stairmaster simulate the surfaces on which walking takes place.” where she points out that walking nowadays are done indoors only. Unlike in the past centuries where it has freedom to be, walking nowadays tend to be more like it had been taken away of its spacious freedom; it has been limited indoors and people seemed to be having no time for walking as part of culture but is limited only as part of attaining a physically fit body. As a result of suburbs, the countryside way of living had faded. It had been replaced by new ways. People tend to do things upon depending on technology; they tend to live as simple and as dependent as they could. They ride cars or motorcycles because they want to get in a place fast. It may have given positive effect, saving time, but as far as culture is concerned, as what most Solnit’s arguments are all about, it left behind culture. The measurement from a place to a place afar changed. Today it is time. The distance from a place to another is measured by only how much time you will be consuming on getting or traveling there, different from the old culture which is measured not only by “how much time”, but also the space, the landscape to see, terrain to pass by, and excitements to experience as you are traveling. This she uttered Schivelbusch’s writing: “The speed and mathematical with which the railroad proceeds through the terrain destroys the close relationship between the traveler and the traveled space. The train was experienced as a projectile, and traveling on it as being shot through the landscape--- thus losing control of one’s senses… The traveler who sat inside that projectile ceased to be a traveler and became, as noted in a popular metaphor of the century, a parcel.” Thus she wrote: “If there was a golden age of walking, it arose from a desire to travel through the open spaces of the world unarmored by vehicles, unafraid to mingle with different kinds of people.” The work, industry, and how the lifestyle of the people was lived are also covered. She mentioned: “It was in Manchester, during the industrial evolution, that the suburb came into its own. The suburb is a product of that revolution, radiating outward from Manchester and the north Midlands, which has so thoroughly fragmented modern life. Work and home had never been very separate until the factory system came of age and the poor became wage-earning employees.” Compared to the countryside life of the past, life resulted from suburbanization driven people’s lives to change. Work and family became separated. In the past, early artisans used to have shops in their houses, that is before there were factories that poor families could work and large markets that produces huge amount of goods an artisan’s shop could produce. People have to work; they will go out, drive a car or get into a train to go to work far from their families to earn money to provide their family something to eat. Home in the 19th century, for workers, is not a place for family but more like a place to rest, a place to prepare for another day’s work. Wanting to earn, workers have to spend money to ride along to get to factories, it made them even poorer than they were before as common countryside or neighborhood shop artisans. People in the early centuries as living countryside, was healthier than they are the time factory systems arose. Factories and industrial plants polluted almost all of the wide green plains and blue seas. Children who use to play outside in the gardens with a smile on their faces tend to stay inside and watch television than to go outside and breathe polluted air. Healthy fishes, which used to provide fishermen food and living, now floats in the seas for their habitats are covered with dirt and oil from factories and industrial power plants. Suburbanization and technology influenced, as well as changed, our culture. Several inventions and discoveries led to the creation of machinery and toys that reduces human efforts. One very descriptive example of today’s used product of technology and suburbanization is a telephone, where instead of going far distance from where you are to where the person you are going to talk to, reduces human effort and time spent to communicate with one another. It may save your time, yet fades the moment for you to cherish, the moment where you explore, the moment you experience space, the moment where you enjoy nature. This work of Rebecca Solnit reminds you, in living with technology and enjoying the qualities it is giving, you are still loosing something and keep setting aside, you will loose the freedom and experience of your body to be with nature, that you will loose your ability to use your body as a tool to knowing of things around, to move free, to work and not work out, to walk. Read More