Gary Snyder's essay, "Walt Whitman's Old 'New World'", is a look back on the ideal and liberal (now present) future America as predicted by Whitman, and how Snyder wishes it to be in the (actual) future. Snyder finds Whitman to be very constrained in his predictions, with a few very notable flaws:
Whitman never mentioned equality of races and cultures.
"[Whitman] assumed a kind of melting-pot futurein which the other races and ethnic groups would eventually become one with the liberal Protestant metaphysic that lurks behind his dream." (216)
He also never considered the impact the expanding society would have on the land and animals.
"... it troubles [Snyder] that the years during which Whitman wrote "Democratic Vistas" (1868-70) were years of defeat and misery of Native Americans, and were the very years when the commercial destruction of the North American bison herd was fully underway." (217)
Snyder finds these two points to be incredibly important, but does give credit to Whitman for including such modern liberal ideas as gender equality and open, instant communication. Beyond a reflection on Walt Whitman, Snyder is also calling upon the modern world to take his opinions into account. People must begin changing the way they treat wildlife and nature, and give it a likelihood of survival at least equal to mankind. Mankind must also start accepting itself, in all forms and variants, including different religions, races, and cultural backgrounds.
We, as humans, can only start bringing about equality of peoples once we have equality of class. As long as there are financial and social spearations, there can be no cultural equality. As for the equality of nature, we are working to achieve greater pieces of naturally reserved lands, and we watch after endangered species. We are at least trying to bring about an improved status of nature, though it is currently close to impossible to bring about social equality.
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It's so true that while we have begun to accept humankind's need to pay some attention and respect to our world, we still for the most part completely ignore major societal problems that effect us every day. Whitman does seem to have an almost idealistic, not to mention unrealistic, view of society's integration into one big blob of something, and I think Snyder has the right idea when he points us in the direction of looking at our world and how we interact with it. One of the main messages that I took away from reading not only Snyder's writing on Whitman but also form the book in general is that humankind has a great tendency to only focus either on nature on society, but we need to start looking at the interactions between the two in order to get anywhere with either entity. Also, while reading your response, I thought of something else: it seems like Snyder is experiencing a conflicted relationships with one of his heroes in writing criticisms of Whitman's ideas. It kind of shows how even though someone's ideas were perfectly reasonable at one time, they sometimes don't fit in so perfectly with the modern world. Great analysis!
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