Americanism and wilderness

...has captured the intellectual imaginary because it presents a question of national identity in a fairly unique manner. america lacks simple ethnic identity and hence must define itself through actions, events, and the unity found in shared events, without anything resembling a stable and vibrant ethnic core of ritual, culture, etc.

it must also position itself in relation to the world, politically but also in a deeper sense. american identity is tied up with a certain idea of wilderness, barbarous freedom in communion with elemental forces, etc. it has fueled rich poetry and the deepest altruism, and animated the most satanic simulations of the divine and sublime in military labs and civil engineering monstrosities and nuclear holocausts-in-waiting. always this theme, always this refrain, the american between city and wilderness. cowboys and farmers and mountain men and luddites and earth firsters and hippies and urban gardeners and ecologists and rangers and ranchers and loggers and fishers and miners and explorers and all those who trace ethological conduits in the seam between organic and artifice.

the american traces an ontological relationship between determination and a field of indeterminacy, city and country, artifice and nature. the democratic american cultivates and accomodates fields of indeterminacy within and without, forgoes control in favor of dialog and event, reveres difference for its splendor. the imperial american harnesses a field of indeterminacy and bleeds it dry, creates a homogenous and pliable abstraction, representation of the thing-itself and forces the thing-itself towards that representation by guile and force. democratic america builds wilderness within, making gardens and parks and free city streets. imperial america glazes over the desert with a highway and covers sunsets with strip malls to hide the Glory of them with low-grade steel, reams of plastic and stucco, as though the pride of the sky is cowed by these tin-star lucifers and their parlor tricks of dissimulation and distraction.

the american can cultivate a wild space and show the connection between fields of indeterminacy, fields of generative chaos and vibrant living democracy. they can. or they can buy plastic molded into various shapes and attributes. respect and love or egotism and neurotic pleasure, the choice must be made. trees or oil refineries.