Conservationists Not Allowed
The Statue of Liberty should be fitted with a sign instead of a torch. That sign should inform new arrivals that conservationists are not allowed in this country. America’s love affair with burning up fuel supplies like there’s an infinite amount is nothing new. In fact, it goes way back:
“A typical New England household probably consumed as much as thirty or forty cords of firewood per year, which can best be visualized as a stack of wood four feet wide, four feet high, and three hundred feet long; obtaining such a woodpile meant cutting more than an acre of forest each year.”
The Weird Illusion of Commodity Culture
Another aspect of America that has been essential and integral for much longer than many think is its commodity culture. Really, right from the start, America has been seen as primarily as a place to sell things to the rest of the world. The strangeness of how this started is that even when it made no economic sense to try shipping things to England, supply and demand there somehow still managed to impact the concept of valuation here:
“What was a “merchantable commodity” in America was what was scarce in Europe. Only if this was true would it make sense to pay the cost of transporting it across the ocean. Beaver cod, and sassafras all satisfied this economic requirement and so were often the chief goals of an exploring expedition. But even some- thing like firewood, which was too bulky to justify trans-Atlantic shipment and could thus only be used by settlers in America itself might be perceived as a commodity because of its scarcity value in England.”
Culture Clash
Imagery throughout the book draws a distinctive difference between not just the clash of cultures of British and Indians, but of a basic philosophical divide. Such is the gulf of this philosophical division that most British writers describing the Indian societies only saw the effect and bypassed the cause. Perhaps because things seemed to work backwards from their point of view and what they saw as effect was really the cause of Indian behavior. A precious few, however, took the time to try reversing the process and came up with a completely different view, such as Pierre Biard:
“for their days are nothing but pastime. They are never in a hurry. Quite different from us, who can never do anything without hurry and worry; worry, I say, because our desires tyrannizes over us and banishes peace from our actions.”
Immigrants, Go Home
Immigration has been a problem for America since long before there was America. The very first immigrants brought problems to the land that make the complaints against immigrants today look even more foolish and whiny. The remarkable thing is how much damage the newcomers did in so little time according to a speech given by Narragansett sachem Miantonomo in 1642, not yet centuries after Columbus started all the immigration problems:
“our fathers had plenty of deer and skins, our plains were full of deer, as also our woods, and of turkies, and our coves full of fish and fowl. But these English having gotten our land, they with scythes cut down the grass, and with axes fell the trees; their cows and horses eat the grass, and their hogs spoil our clam banks, and we shall all be starved.”
