Latest news with #Transcendentalists
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- General
- Boston Globe
Basho was an elitist, Thoreau a codependent
I'm a baby boomer. My students were Gen Z. We had different views on things. I expected our classroom discussions to be lively. But still. I heard their thoughts on the reading with outright admiration and stunned incredulity. The whiplash could be unnerving. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Consider poor Basho! The 17th-century Japanese poet walking in the cold rain wearing his sandals and paper coat was apparently an elitist. Wendell Berry — poet, farmer, agrarian essayist, and activist — is crystal clear on his practice of Christian faith, but my students argued that he was actually a Buddhist. And certainly it was jarring to think of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists as imperialist oppressors. Henry Thoreau (no filter!) didn't have a chance. While rapturous in considerations of solitude, he socialized and dined with friends — often! Obviously, a codependent. And could we read Norman Maclean's classic 'A River Runs Through It' — a story about two brothers, family, God, and trout fishing — from an eco-feminist perspective? Advertisement These reactions to the literature startled me, to put it mildly. But it was hard not to see a certain imagination at work here. For all his humility and deficient outerwear, Basho was an educated man, which likely did qualify him as an elitist of his time. Berry himself identifies as a marginal Christian, and his thinking is not exactly conventional; and perhaps there are beliefs in which these two spheres of faith converge. And of course Thoreau infuriates all of us, especially those of us who most admire him. As with so many original thinkers, he contradicts himself constantly and with endless enthusiasm. 'He is such a geek. A total nerd. But I still love him,' one student concluded. Mark Twain had an admiration for new technologies of the time yet lamented the loss of river life, conflicting sensibilities familiar to us today. Advertisement My students learned about human inconsistencies in belief and temperament. Discovering the ambiguities and minor hypocrisies of those we hold in high regard is part of education. Theirs and mine. Facing up to our own partialities and discriminations comes into it as well. Maybe more to the point, their lack of interest in dogma allowed for unconstrained and broad interpretation. A contempt for established doctrine led them to evaluate the reading in ways that were — needless to say — new to me. Which is probably as it should be. Confounding questions and alternative perspectives have a rightful place in environmental thinking today. How we think and what we do in the natural world now is often confused, complex, contradictory. Beliefs and behaviors defy one another constantly. Knowledge and experience are often at odds. Our ideals and practices are often freakishly out of alignment. Advertisement So what's a college professor to do? Meet our students where they are, as the saying goes today. Although we may all still be in the woods, it helps if we can partner up to learn the names of the trees, the shapes of the leaves. And as a new academic year begins, I'd like to think my own abiding regard for the canon can find a convergence with the unorthodox perspectives offered by my students. Actually, it could even make for the kind of thinking that comes close to what Thoreau advocated more than 150 years ago: not knowledge so much as a 'sympathy with intelligence.' He elaborates only by suggesting 'that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,' an inclusiveness in sensibility that my students and I might even agree on.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Yahoo
A millennial engineer dreamed of a walkable small town with big-city vibrancy. So, she's building it herself.
Devon Zuegel, a San Francisco tech worker, longed to live in more of a community. She is building Esmeralda, a small city in Sonoma Wine Country. She hosts Edge Esmeralda, a pop-up event to give people an idea of what Esmeralda could look like. Devon Zuegel graduated from Stanford and moved to San Francisco in 2016 for her software engineering career. Then, the pandemic hit. Zuegel and her husband temporarily relocated to Chautauqua, the New York lake resort town where her grandmother lived, and Zuegel visited as a child. In the summer, the tiny village blossoms into a kind of utopia — walkable, family-friendly, and brimming with culture. Up to 7,500 people flock to spend their days hopping between plays, symphony performances, and lectures. One night, Zuegel's husband wondered aloud: "Why aren't there more places like this?" That moment is "burned into my retinas," Zuegel told Business Insider. That was the start of Esmeralda, a small town Zuegel is building in the Sonoma Wine Country, about 90 minutes north of San Francisco. Zuegel drew inspiration from Chautauqua and similar walkable communities, such as Vail in Colorado, Charleston in South Carolina, and Arizona's new car-free neighborhood. The goal, Zuegel told BI, is to build a primarily walkable and bikeable town within the city of Cloverdale, revitalizing an existing community rather than building one from scratch. At the same time, Esmeralda would offer something new: regular opportunities for residents to connect. Esmeralda speaks to a larger trend of millennials seeking more variety in where they live, whether they'releaving larger cities — or building their own. Zuegel wants to build Esmeralda incrementally, inviting prospective town members to come together to share their visions and hopes for a new way of life. A key lesson she learned from Chautauqua's town archivist was its slow-growth model. The summer camp, founded in 1874 as a retreat for teachers, took time to grow into a full-fledged town. After several years of people pitching up tents, participants started to bring their families and upgraded to more permanent shacks. America has a long history of intentional communities, where like-minded individuals band together, believing they've cracked the code for a better life. In most cases, the community grows organically, shaped by the people who join. In the 18th century, the Shakers, a Christian sect dedicated to pacifism and celibacy, established "utopias" throughout New England, emphasizing shared property. In the 19th century, the Transcendentalists, a philosophical movement, flocked to Brook Farm in Massachusetts, where famous writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller dabbled in "plain living." Intentional communities surged in the 1960s and 1970s as counterculture movements fueled new communes of young people intent on "dropping out" of traditional society. Vermont, in particular, saw over 75 new communes, expert Yvonne Daley told Forbes, which changed the political spirit of the state. Today, an estimated 3,500 intentional communities dot the US, according to the nonprofit Foundation for Intentional Community, with a broad definition spanning student co-ops, eco-living communities, and religious groups. To shape her new town, Zuegel launched Edge Esmeralda, a monthlong pop-up event designed to give attendees a taste of what the real Esmeralda could be. In 2024, the retreat hosted over 1,300 people through 25 different program tracks on topics like AI and longevity. Attendees, who could stay for a day, a week, or a whole month, enjoyed various activities such as building a solar-powered A-frame house, joining a "neurotech" workshop, a hackathon, or taking in an art exhibit. Zuegel plans to host another Edge Esmeralda in 2025. Canadian college student Anson Yu, who attended Edge Esmeralda as an energy fellow, told BI that the experience gave her hope that Zuegel's team could deliver on their vision. Days spent building the A-frame house, followed by nights of swing-dancing in the town square, made her feel like a special community was coming together. "I felt like there could be spaces that exist like this, outside of the couple of city centers that already exist, and outside of college campuses," Yu said. Edge Esmeralda attendees represent many millennials who yearn for a greater sense of community. In many ways, a community like Esmerelda is a natural response from members of the "job-hopping generation" who pioneered remote work. What if that dream of flexible living could include a stronger sense of community? When millennials came into the workforce around the 2008 recession, we saw a shift in how young people viewed life and work, Dr. Katherine Loflin, a sociologist known as "The City Doctor," told Business Insider. Appetite for jobs in manufacturing and utilities — ones that required a worker to live nearby — declined significantly between 1990 and 2015, according to the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, demand for desk jobs swung up. Loflin, who studies the characteristics that draw people to different places, said job seekers told her they craved flexibility and work-life balance. They didn't want to follow the conveyor belt into an industry that could crumble at any minute. They were more interested in developing transferable "soft skills" that could lead to bigger salary jumps and the option of remote work. The pandemic turbocharged that trend: Suddenly, the fantasy of working from anywhere became a reality. But there was something missing. Big city life often felt lonely, with fewer opportunities to make easy connections, especially aswork became more remote. Some missed campus life, when they could easily befriend people they saw in class or on the quad. "So many people refer to college as the best years of their lives," Zuegel said. Because of the more effortless sense of community, Loflin said campus-like towns "harken back to a time where people felt alive, they felt in it together." The isolation of the pandemic prompted Zuegel to think about cities and the ways they create or restrict access to community. "The pandemic kept people apart, but that actually showed us how much we need friends and family," she said. So far, some fellow tech workers are excited about Esmeralda and even see themselves living there. However, some online commenters have expressed skepticism toward Esmeralda, particularly concerning affordable housing, transportation, or if locals really want to share a home with wealthy VCs. Loflin said it's common for city developers to overly focus on aesthetics, forgetting to consider other logistics, like long-term community building or accessible infrastructure. Zuegel is aware of the issues that may come up, hence the slower timeline. "A lot of real estate developers' approach is they build it and then hope people will be a part of it," Zuegel said. "We want to take a much more incremental and gradual path." She said the project is still in "phase 0," with hopes of involving the local Cloverdale community as much as possible. Local residents are excited about the project, Cloverdale city manager Kevin Thompson told BI. For two decades, real estate developers have swept in and out of town with big ideas for the plot of land that Zuegel's team has contracted, only to burn out quickly. Thompson said no group in recent years has gone this far in the due diligence process as Esmeralda's, which gives the locals hope that progress is happening. "There's been a lot of tire kickers over the years," Thompson said. "We've never gotten to this point of anyone actually submitting any paperwork to change it." Zuegel said the exact logistics of Esmeralda are subject to change as she continues to learn from Edge Esmeralda. Her vision involves a pedestrian-friendly community, safe for young kids to play outside on their own, and accessible enough for older adults. She also wants a mix of locals and visitors, as full-time residents will be the soul of Esmeralda. Ultimately, the guiding light is for her to feel as she did in all her Chautauqua summers as a child. "The idea is the culture from a big city, but with sort of the small town charm." Read the original article on Business Insider
