Author Topic: Is a "frontier" required for a healthy nation or p (Read 1060 times)

Big Hext Finnigan · « **on:** December 16, 2003, 02:52:27 AM »

Howdy,

Not a dissertation topic, but I was just pondering the other day.
Has the loss of a frontier, a place to go when your life has turned to cr*p and start over, a place to learn the lessons of self and nature and a place of dreams and harsh reality contributed to the softening and even depressed nature of our country and out people?

Seems to me it has, but I'd like to hear the rest of y'all's thoughts.
Adios,

Capt Hamp Cox · « **Reply #1 on:** December 16, 2003, 07:43:09 AM »

I think it is more the loss of the "frontier spirit", that being the desire and ability to take care of one's needs, wants, and desires without the involvement, direction, or control of government.

HWooldridge · « **Reply #2 on:** December 16, 2003, 08:45:29 AM »

A frontier allows young energetic men or those folks who can't get along in normal society to exist and live out their lives, however short or long that might be. My wife is a teacher and believes ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) kids are almost entirely boys and blames the increase in diagnosis partly on the loss of a wilderness to conquer. People need a certain amount of free range and there will always be those souls who can't sit behind a computer and type so they will be the explorers and conquerors but the world has gotten very small.

Big Hext Finnigan · « **Reply #3 on:** December 16, 2003, 08:59:38 AM »

Right boys,

That's more of my point. The need for the spirit required to go out into the uncertainty of the world has been beaten down, drugged out or leached from us. Expecially the boys.

(side note: Wild at Heart is a pretty fair Christian book about this kinda thing)

Adios,

Holiday · « **Reply #4 on:** December 16, 2003, 11:01:18 AM »

I've often thought the same thing. I have encountered a lot of folks over the years who get into trouble, but aren't really bad folks. If they had a challenge in their life, something to occupy them, they might have turned out differant.

williamlayton · « **Reply #5 on:** December 19, 2003, 01:23:41 AM »

well now, lets see what we got here.
I'm agreeing that there are many folks who do not fit into a well regulated society, cities is what we're talkin bout here, an fare better in a place which provides them with more elbow room.
I'm thinkin that is why, from experience, ya see fewer boys in prison from small towns. Well, a small disclaimer is required here, i digress, that is for some of the offenses that will gitya in trouble in a city.
Growin up we did some stuff, i will not digress on thisun, that if thangs was turned a degree or two-well, i'm glad they didn't. If'n i had done them thangs in houston, well ya know. now i'm suspectin it was tha same for sum o'ya boys too.
It's all about culture, ya know, boys will be boys, oh heck fire he wernt hurt bad, oh let it go it'll get fixed, now son ya can't do that no more, gimme that gun boy an tell your momma to come get it, well that rock salt taught him a lesson (ouch ta that one). all them thangs we laugh about now.
IN A CITY, IT COULD BE DIFFERENT. that is one of tha reasons i got a ccl.
blessings

Capt Hamp Cox · « **Reply #6 on:** December 19, 2003, 10:47:10 AM »

"Always in America we have occupied the land as fast as it was
feasible to do so. We have survived incredible hardships on the
mining frontier, have lived through desperate social conditions
in the cow country, have fought many of our bravest battles in
the Indian country. Always it has been the frontier which has
allured many of our boldest souls. And always, just back of the
frontier, advancing, receding, crossing it this way and that,
succeeding and failing, hoping and despairing--but steadily
advancing in the net result--has come that portion of the
population which builds homes and lives in them, and which is not
content with a blanket for a bed and the sky for a roof above.

"We had a frontier once. It was our most priceless possession. It
has not been possible to eliminate from the blood of the American
West, diluted though it has been by far less worthy strains, all
the iron of the old home-bred frontiersmen. The frontier has been
a lasting and ineradicable influence for the good of the United
States. It was there we showed our fighting edge, our
unconquerable resolution, our undying faith. There, for a time at
least, we were Americans.

"We had our frontier. We shall do ill indeed if we forget and
abandon its strong lessons, its great hopes, its splendid human
dreams."

Above are the last three paragraphs of THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER, A CHRONICLE OF THE OLD WEST, BY EMERSON HOUGH, written in 1918. Thought it kinda fit in with what we've been discussing here.

Complete on-line text is at http://www.gutenberg.net/etext02/passf10.txt

Shorty · « **Reply #7 on:** December 21, 2003, 01:09:55 PM »

The "frontier" is always there, and I love it!

Take your gun into the woods or fields, alone. That land may have been cleared, tilled, grown wild again, cleared, tilled, grown wild again over the last 300 years, and it's always a new frontier. Those old stone walls, those old cellar holes, those old barbed wire fences, now on the ground, they're new territory to be explored! I can only pity those who can't visit my ever renewing "frontiers"

Holiday · « **Reply #8 on:** December 22, 2003, 06:11:23 AM »

Shorty, I like your thinking! I, too, enjoy exploring that old barn, cave or field. I really enjoy thinking about who built it, what it was like then, or just who has passed this way before!