The American Frontier Continues to Shape Us (2018)
I ran into this sort of heavily individualistic attitude a lot when I was traveling around places in remote nature-y states like Utah, New Mexico, Arkansas, etc.<p>And I can empathize. Many people feel aggrieved that they work much harder for much less than people who live in coastal cities, and under much worse conditions. Honestly, I think that perspective is pretty accurate.<p>But there&#x27;s also a refusal to see that people in those areas make enormous demands on the government to subsidize their preferred lifestyle in such remote areas. Roads, telecoms, and food&#x2F;water&#x2F;gas services cost money and make major impacts on the environment, but the same people complaining about big government will often use their next breath to grouse about bumpy roads and brag about how they abuse BLM lands as if they were their own private property. Sometimes it feels like you&#x27;re trying to explain the tragedy of the commons to a locust.<p>Still, most people have a lot of respect and admiration for the land that they live and rely on. I was once talking to someone about the USFS&#x27; forest road system, and they said something like: &quot;I know, isn&#x27;t it terrific? I can just drive or bike out to where the trees and fish and deer are. But could you imagine if they tried to do that today? The environmentalists would shut &#x27;em down and the conservatives would say it&#x27;s too expensive!&quot;<p>We really need fewer absolutists in our governance; there are plenty of things that most people agree on, but which are vetoed by the extreme wings of our two exclusive political parties.<p>Also, there really is something special about the remote wilderness, and whatever that something is, the American West exemplifies it. Some people seem to viscerally <i>need</i> wild spaces; they&#x27;re part of what make us human, and they remind everyone that you are more of a guest than a landlord on Earth.