The Historical Landscape

Article 17.05.2010 17:59

A note to students of cultural and historical geography

Personal knowledge of an actual landscape is essential for interpreting its past. On another level, there are countless reasons that are both gratifying to the thirst for knowledge, and to serve personal development, for having a more visceral appreciation of a place in time. For all the joys that antibacterial soap and microwavable entrees have provided, we labor under the specter of an unacceptable future beyond the most outlandish Victorian fantasy. The present is defined outside time and space by the anonymous shadow gods of Wall Street and wrought with uncertainty. Venturing onto an unfamiliar landscape exercises those innate spatial skills that modern life encourages most of us to ignore. Ours is not a virtual world, but an actual world. The feeling of nostalgia is a safeguard that the mind has devised to protect itself by questioning almighty now, and tether it to those events that shaped its being.

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