To Stay Put Or Take On The Unknown RoadsStaying put is not American. The American Experience is about experiencing life through movement and exploring unknown lands. By doing this, one can gain knowledge and experience many life styles. America was discovered by those who travelled and explored unknown places and we are here today because of them. I do agree that Americans are meant to eventually put down roots, settle down, and start a life, however; they should first travel and see the world. One should travel as much as they can and as long as they can. Life is not meant to be lived in one place.
------------------------------------------------ In this excerpt below from “Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World”, Scott Russell Sanders responds to an essay by Salman Rushdie. Rushdie is an advocate for “mass migration” and travel, while Sanders believes in putting down roots and staying in one place.
Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World, Scott Russell Sanders (excerpt)Claims for the virtues of shifting ground are familiar and seductive to Americans, this nation of restless movers. From the beginning, our heroes have been sailors, explorers, cowboys, prospectors, 5 speculators, backwoods ramblers, rainbow-chasers, vagabonds of every stripe. Our Promised Land has always been over the next ridge or at the end of the trail, never under our feet. One hundred years after the official closing of the frontier, we have still not shaken off the romance of unlimited space. If we fish out a stream or wear out a field, or if the smoke from a neighbor’s chimney begins to crowd the sky, why, off we go to a new stream, a fresh field, a clean sky. In our national mythology, the worst fate is to be trapped on a farm, in a village, in the sticks, in some dead-end job or unglamorous marriage or played-out game. Stand still, we are warned, and you die. Americans have dug the most canals, laid the most rails, built the most roads and airports of any nation. In the newspaper I read that, even though our sprawling system of interstate highways is crumbling, the president has decided that we should triple it in size, and all without raising our taxes a nickel. Only a populace drunk on driving, a populace infatuated with the myth of the open road, could hear such a proposal without hooting.
So Americans are likely to share Rushdie’s enthusiasm for migration, for the “hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs.” Everything about us is mongrel, from race to language, and we are stronger for it. Yet we might respond more skeptically when Rushdie says that “to be a migrant is, perhaps, to be the only species of human being free of the shackles of nationalism (to say nothing of its ugly sister, patriotism).” Lord knows we could do with less nationalism (to say nothing of its ugly siblings, racism, religious sectarianism, or class snobbery). But who would pretend that a history ofmigration has immunized the United States against bigotry? And even if, by uprooting ourselves, we shed our chauvinism, is that all we lose? In this hemisphere, many of the worst abuses—of 45 land, forests, animals, and communities — have been carried out by “people who root themselves in ideas rather than places.” Rushdie claims that “migrants must, of necessity, make a new imaginative relationship with the world, because of the loss of familiar habitats.” But migrants often pack up their visions and values with the rest of their baggage and carry them along. The Spaniards devastated Central and South America by imposing on this New World the religion, economics, and politics of the Old. Colonists brought slavery with them to North America, along with smallpox and Norway rats. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was caused not by drought but by the transfer onto the Great Plains of farming methods that were suitable to wetter regions. The habit of our industry and commerce has been to force identical schemes onto differing locales, as though the mind were a cookie-cutter and the land were dough. I quarrel with Rushdie because he articulates as eloquently as anyone the orthodoxy that I wish to counter: the belief that movement is inherently good, staying put is bad; that uprooting brings tolerance, while rootedness breeds intolerance; that imaginary homelands are preferable to geographical ones; that to be modern, enlightened, fully of our time is to be displaced. Wholesale dis-placement may be inevitable; but we should not suppose that it occurs without disastrous consequences for the earth and for ourselves. People who root themselves in places are likelier to know and care for those places than are people who root themselves in ideas. When we cease to be migrants and become inhabitants, we might begin to pay enough heed and respect to where we are. By settling in, we have a chance of making a durable home for ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our descendants. |
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Scott Russell Sanders refutes Rushdie and I’s thesis by arguing against traveling the open road. Sanders argues against Rushdie for several reasons. For one, he says migration is harming our environment because if people are constantly moving, they do not care enough about the land they currently inhabit to take care of it. Russell Sanders says this affects wildlife, our lands, forests, and communities the more we move. We only have one chance with our land and if we ruin all of it we cannot simply rebuild it or move to a new planet. As Russell Sanders says, “People who root themselves in places are likelier to know and care for those places than are people who root themselves in ideas” (Sanders 1). This supports Russell Sanders statement about migration being dangerous to the environment. Sanders wraps up his point by concluding, “By settling in, we have a chance of making a durable home for ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our descendants” (1). Russell Sanders argues it is best to put down roots and stay put because by doing this we create durability.
On the other hand, Salman Rushdie argues that it is best to travel the open road. His claim qualifies my thesis because he agrees the American Experience is about new experiences and gaining knowledge through travel, but he also states one should be rooted in ideas. Rushdie claims we are a “nation of restless movers . . . [and] a populace drunk on driving, a populace infatuated with the myth of the open road” (Rushdie 1). He believes travel forces people to make a more imaginative relationship with the world and he is obsessed with the idea of migration. Rushdie defines migration as being rooted in ideas instead of places as Scott Russell Sanders suggests one should be. Rushdie argues that from migration derives “‘hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs’” (1). This shows his position that migrating expands your horizons and the mixing of cultures is good because it gives you more experience and perspective. Salman Rushdie romanticizes the idea of taking on the road and proves travel is needed to truly value putting down roots after exposing yourself to new and different places.
On the other hand, Salman Rushdie argues that it is best to travel the open road. His claim qualifies my thesis because he agrees the American Experience is about new experiences and gaining knowledge through travel, but he also states one should be rooted in ideas. Rushdie claims we are a “nation of restless movers . . . [and] a populace drunk on driving, a populace infatuated with the myth of the open road” (Rushdie 1). He believes travel forces people to make a more imaginative relationship with the world and he is obsessed with the idea of migration. Rushdie defines migration as being rooted in ideas instead of places as Scott Russell Sanders suggests one should be. Rushdie argues that from migration derives “‘hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs’” (1). This shows his position that migrating expands your horizons and the mixing of cultures is good because it gives you more experience and perspective. Salman Rushdie romanticizes the idea of taking on the road and proves travel is needed to truly value putting down roots after exposing yourself to new and different places.
Another person who is also rooted in ideas is Ralph Waldo Emerson: