In today’s society, people tend to let the beauty of nature go unnoticed. We are so busy worried about the technological world around us that we take nature for granted. Some people cannot even function without WI-FI and their cellular devices and the time spent on social media is gradually increasing. “The average person spends about five year and four months of their life on social media.” When you break this down, it will equate to about two hours per day at minimum. In younger generations, the time spent on social media is almost three times that amount. In the story “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson talks about how the true beauty of nature can only be recognized by man through solidarity. This feeds into the plot of “Mending Walls” by Robert Frost due to the focus on the narrator and his neigbor building their wall. The nature plays a major role in this story due to the fact that the neighbor seeks isolation by using nature to build a wall that separates him from his community. The combination of both isolation and nature play a vital role in both stories and also tie into the societal issues today. These issues focus on how today’s generation tend stray away from embracing nature as Emerson describes in his story and dwells more into how technology and social media isolate us from the world we live in as technology advances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson describes nature as being composed of soul and nature in his essay called “Nature”. Emerson was very fond of nature and its different creations and would often escape his day to day life to find solitude in nature. “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars” During Ralph Waldo Emerson’s time frame, it was a lot easier to escape and find solitude in things such as nature. He classified the world into four different categories; “WHOEVER considers the final cause of the world, will discern a multitude of uses that result. They all admit of being thrown into one of the following classes; Commodity; Beauty; Language; and Discipline.” Each category has a different meaning and represents something that nature provides us with. Commodity is defined as something of use or of value. The mention of commodity is used by Emerson to describe nature as top value or possession to the world and the universe than many people take for granted. The meaning of beauty to Emerson is to describe how nature has its own sense of attraction that draws in the naked eye. From the different colors to the smells, and the different motions that nature brings to the universe, it is truly a canvas of mother nature. Language to Emerson represents how humans can verbally express how they feel toward nature. Emerson states, “All words represent facts of nature or things in nature,”. This meaning how language has connected us with nature in all forms of life by allowing humans to express and admire the true essence of nature. Emerson explains how all words represent something in nature, and how humans use natural metaphors to communicate. Essentially, everything is interconnected with nature. The meaning of discipline is understanding that everything has a truth. The discipline of nature educate humans on both understanding and reasoning. Everything has a purpose when it comes to climate, plants, animals etc. For example, the seasons are discipline and as a society we know when the leaves start to fall from the tree, it is no longer summer and fall has arrived. In conclusion, Emerson tries to display how man needs nature for commodity, beauty, communication, and understanding of this universe that we live in.
The poem “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost perfectly describes isolationism and why some people feel the need to be isolated in society today. This is displayed in the poem by the two characters working to repair a wall that the narrator does not see the need for it to be fixed. “There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.” The neighbor only replied with “Good fences make good neighbours.” This in turn leaves the narrator perplexed, trying to figure out what neighbor’s meaning was behind his words. Even when repairing the wall, the neighbor made sure that the wall separated them as they moved along with the repairs. This could remind one of the Berlin Wall, which was a 12 feet tall and 4 feet wide concrete wall built in Germany in 1961 and demolished in the early 1990s as the Cold War ended. Its purpose was to divide the East city from the West to keep the two cities separate from each other. It was nearly impossible to sneak over the wall, since there were several checkpoints built along the wall to monitor people trying to climb over the wall. This is similar to how the neighbor wants to maintain the wall to keep him and the narrator isolated from each other, even though the wall was very easy to breach. The narrator continues to try to convince the neighbor that there is no need for the wall by conversing about how there are no animals to keep confined in the pasteur. “If I could put a notion in his head: Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it. Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.” The neighbor says again that “Good fences make good neighbours.”
In today’s society, there are so many different distractions that deviates a person away from nature and other important things like family and friends. Emerson claims that the only way for people to truly understand nature is for them to be in solitude. Technology distracts us in ways that we barely even noticed because we are so accustomed to it now. With technology growing at an immense rate, social interaction at dinner tables, school and work functions, and other outings is declining. People are not even taking the time to notice what is going on in the constantly changing environment around them with things like global warming and climate change. Some of the most beautiful things can be found in nature, like an eclipse. There is nothing like seeing a total solar eclipse with the naked eye. Yes, a picture can be worth one thousand words but nothing compares to seeing something so unique it with your own two eyes. Many people were so busy trying to capture the moment on camera and video, that since they were so busy looking at it through a phone they did not actually see it happening. Some of the best moments in life are never captured by cameras. Society is taking the beauty of nature for granted and could really benefit from the peace that nature provides one with. Like Emerson was explaining, if one takes a moment from technology, distraction, or whatever and acknowledge the environment around them.
The nature of man also comes into question to where one will go out of their way to seek isolation and separation from others, instead of escaping into nature like Emerson suggested. People would rather disrupt nature by using it to create a wall to seclude them from others. In comparison with technology and social media, the wall in the story “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost represents social media and how people use that as a barrier to physically not interact with people. In today’s society there is not a lot of face to face interaction. According to an article written by Amy Gahran from CNN, “31% of American Adults prefer text messages to phone calls.” It is crazy just to think that 30 years ago, half of the technology that exists today was not even thought of. If you wanted to communicate or see someone, you had to physically go talk to them. This is also affecting social skills, and making people more socially awkward. Not many people know how to interact with others when they are in the same room with one another. At most parties, you see people on their phones, not really interacting with anyone because all of the interaction they want to have is on their phone. Humans create self-imposed barriers to prevent them from having to interact with others. This life is the complete opposite of Emerson’s. During his time frame, there were was no Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, etc. to use to escape from everyone. His escape was nature and he was able to find the beauty in it by doing so.
Both “Nature” and “Mending Wall” can be used to teach society how to interact with one another and how to not isolate yourself from the world. It is scary to think that we waste a total of five years of our lives on social media and technology, five years that we can not get back. What if we changed how we used technology and not use it as a curtain or shield when we do not want to interact with someone on a more personable level. Since the use of technology is only going to increase from here, it is imperative that we utilize it the correct way because soon, people are not going to have to talk to one another at all.