Tuesday, 4 November 2014

CIVILIZATION IS SHEER DEGENERATION: A ROMANTIC APPROACH


Civilization? Having carefully considered the ways
of men: sacred, profane, suckling, and the aged; a
look into the activities of men: the endless strife,
the toil for fame amid the joyless daylight,
worthless sleepless nights, the hopeless hopes
high above the sky, the topsy-turvy of the hurly
burly of life. Civilization is nothing but a catalogue
of irony; we seem to be deluded by the scary
scores of skyscrapers in our cities. The life here is
so dreary and jejune. Civilization has turned every
human being into glorified Robot. Toiling from
dawn to dusk, here where the sun sets at noon.
One of the major heartbeats of Romantic writers is
to reconcile humanity back to their mother, Nature.
It is believed that man, like the prodigal son has
journeyed far away from nature, hence, the major
cause of the miseries, woes, and endless strife and
sorrows of humanity. It is a strong belief prevailing
among Romantics that to be closer to nature is
joy, peace, happiness, love, and ease but to be
away from nature is solitude, agony , and pain.
The role of nature in human lives cannot be
jettisoned because humanity depends on nature
both for survival and sustenance. It is also popular
among them that nature should be appreciated for
its alluring beauty and splendor. Nature is seen as
a great healer and a supplier of food and an
attempt to destroy nature is a proclamation of an
imminent blooming doom on humanity.
These explain why the Romantics celebrate
Primitivism: the belief that primitive people are
pristine, nobler, honest-hearted, and almost
perfect, because they are closer to nature; their
hearts and minds are blessed from the ready
wealthy world of nature with spontaneous wisdom
breathed by health and truth breathed by
cheerfulness. Though the citified people scornfully
call them savages, Romantics opine that they are
noble savages with pure hearts. Highly revered
Romantic writers term civilization and urbanization
as nothing but degeneration: Sigmund Freud, the
great Psychoanalytic theorist opines that
"civilization is a disease; 'dis-ease'', the primary
cause of pain and grief, Jean Jaques Rosseau, the
great father of Romanticism, sees humans as
naturally good but it is the civilized society drunk
with evil that depraves humanity.
Lord Byron, (the prototypical romantic hero, the
envy and scandal of the age, notable for his
creation of a deviant character known as the
Byronic hero) says, 'To be among humans is
solitary, harsh, and hellish'. He justifies this
position in one of his collections of poems (Childe
Harold's pilgrimage). In a poem, titled 'Converse
with Nature', he recounts his marvelous
experience and sweet sensation with nature:
To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scenes,
To climb the trackless mountains all unseen,
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold converse with
nature's charms,
And view her store unrolled
Byron's interaction with nature gives him joy,
peace of mind, and untainted happiness.
Conversely related to this savoury experience is
the citified life overburdened with unexplainable
viciousness from bazillion fiends feigning as folks:
But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
And roam world's tired denizens,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless,
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
This is to be alone; this is solitude'
It is an obvious fact that the cities are plagued by
the world's deadliest diseases and infirmities; the
residents of the smoking cities are slaves to
weariness. The cities nurse and nurture heinous
crimes, fruitless toil and moil. Their dwellers do
not have access to the fresh fruits that will
maintain their health. They feed daily on
preservatives that reduce their days every hour.
William Wordsworth opines that Industrialization
has turned humans to robots. We have no liberty
to act according to the impulse of our hearts;
confined are we to the dungeon of rules. William
Wordsworth through his poetry tries to enlighten
the eyes of understanding of the world; to see the
beauty and incomparable goodness in nature.
Nature to William Wordsworth is, 'all in all'; he is
an ardent worshipper of nature. W. Wordsworth in
his poem, 'Lines Written a Few Miles above
Tintern Abbey', talks about how he often leaves
the fears and fancies in the city and goes to the
bank of the River Wye to take spiritual food that
will sustain him for some years; he separates
himself from the endless strife, the weary hours
and troubles of the world. The beauteous forms
within the wye river lighten and ease the heavy and
the weary weight of the unintelligible world:
I repose here with the sense of present pleasure
But with pleasing thoughts that there is food and
life for future years
His journey to the bank of the Wye River shuts
behind him the fretful stir and the fever of the
world that have hung upon the beatings of his
heart. He believes that all we behold in nature is
full of blessings. The lines below further prove the
grim adverse effect of industrialization on nature.
The various vicious forms of pollution endanger
human lives and nature. William Wordsworth's
stern stance towards civilization is better
communicated in his poem 'The World is Too
Much with Us', which condemns humans'
incessant disheartening pursuit of material wealth;
this mad endless fruitless pursuit that has made
us blind to the beauty, goodness, and the zillion
possibilities nature offers. He scathes the folly of
the people, and their myopic quest for ephemeral
material things that shift their attention from the
eternal blessings that nature breathes:
Once I could meet them one every side,
But they dwindled with slow decay
(Resolution and Independence)
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers,
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away; a sordid boon!
(The World is Too Much with Us)
John Keats in one of his Spring Odes, 'Ode to a
Nightingale', perceives the world as a land barren
of peace, love, joy, and hope. The poem unveils
the suffering, solitude, and the ever increasing ills
in the society; a place where 'beauty dies' and
love fades'. Keats sees the world of humans as
void of mirth. He sees the world of the bird as
symbolizing freedom while humans are stuck on
the earth where but to think is full of sorrows. He
sees the human world as inhabitable; hence, he
craves to join the world of the Nightingale where
there is tranquility:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget,
What though among the leaves has never known,
The weariness, the fever, fret,
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan,
Where but to think is full of sorrows,
Where youth grows pale, specter thin and dies
Keats uses the theory of escapism: the
psychological desire to escape from the
unpleasant realities of this world and considers
Imagination the greatest tool.
In conclusion, having x-rayed the city life, it is far
from gain saying or spite, to assert that civilization
has pierced us with its 'venomous blade' with the
irritating sore left with little hope of healing. Here,
where life is lifeless, we toil and moil with our bow
bent in the sultry sun. The eager endless thirst for
fame and fortune all end faster than we ever
imagined in the bowels of the ever famished
sepulcher. Vices becoming unbecomingly horrific,
plaques shrinking our days, with Trust sent on
exile, where love is an eternal fiend; nature sulkily
breathing pestilence on humanity, where beer has
lost the power to relieve our sorrows. Civilization
is nothing but an empty shell! Civilization is doing
nothing than dragging men into the murky moors
of slavery. Modernity has placed before us;
sophisticated weapons for our destruction. The
maddening pursuit of power, fame, and fortune is
the fertilizer for the evil bean in human beings.

By Oluwole Busayo

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