I tell my students: you
are in a box. You came from another
box this morning, and rode to this box in a smaller box-on-wheels. But the world, the universe is OUTSIDE the box!
If you spend all your time in boxes, you're missing it!
Before this century, most of us had a more intimate, if
usually prosaic, familiarity with the great outdoors. Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book on Abraham
Lincoln, reports that among the presidential contenders for the 1860 election,
Seward loved to spend time in the gardens around his New York mansion, and then
discuss their progress around the breakfast table and in his journal. Lincoln, from the other end of the economic
spectrum, and after a youth spent in unending toil for his ne'er-do-well father
on frontier farms, had no use for gardens or plantings around his home in
Springfield. However, I have no doubt Lincoln
knew where the sun rose and set.
What has changed?
The consumer electronics revolution, that began late last
century and seems still to be accelerating, bears some part of the blame. Another share is belongs to media-generated
fear. More of which later.
