I hate Richard Louv

May his conservative, manipulative ass roast in hell. I just ranted about him for 8 pages in my journal for class, so I don't feel particularly inclined to rant about him any more, but I needed one final shout of rage. Hmmm... or maybe I could just put my log up on my blog. It's in table format. I wonder if blogger can handle that. Well I'll give it a try.

Ok, I can't get a table, but it's mostly readable. It's only two columns: the first one is the author's important ideas which is usually a quote followed by a page number in parentheses and the second column is me ranting my ass off.

Here is me ranting my ass off about Last Child in the Woods, a book about how children need more time playing out in nature. To give you a little background, I'm not opposed to the idea. I spent a lot of my childhood roaming around outdoors freely and I think I turned out ok. But then I also enjoy video games and don't think they're damaging our children. So this is my log that I'm turning in to my teacher tomorrow word for word except there were a few more paragraphs in my original table (they didn't copy and damned if I'm going through this whole thing pressing enter every time I think it's needed).

Enjoy.


First impression (1) I suppose the first question I have to ask (and hope will be addressed) is what about people who don’t have the money to be near nature?

Anecdote about son (1) A personal anecdote seems to be the inspiration for this book. I wonder if this is a common experience shared by many people. I, myself, explored a lot as a kid, but I also really enjoyed video games and other indoor activities. Perhaps only the author’s son feels this way about outdoor activities. I would like more evidence.

Summer camp stories (2) The change in summer activities could be interpreted as a move from outdoor to indoor activities, but it could also be interpreted as a move from play to work (camp is much more an expression of play than weight loss camp). Both I think are valid interpretations that lead to a similar conclusion.

Nature (4) I know it’s a pretty commonly accepted term, but I think the use of nature is itself ambiguous. Technically, everything on Earth is natural. Humans evolved the way they did naturally, so all human creations must be natural. I have to wonder at what point man became unnatural.

“On its face, New York City may not appear natural, but it does contain all manner of hidden, self-organizing wild places” (8) I’m pleased to see this point here. It addresses the concern I had earlier about not being able to afford being near nature.

“when I use the word ‘nature’ in a general way, I mean natural wilderness: biodiversity, abundance – related loose parts in a backyard or a rugged mountain ridge” (8-9) Almost as soon as he addresses my concerns, he un-addresses them. Not everyone can live near a rugged mountain ridge or have their own backyard. Though I do appreciate a specific definition of nature.

“The woods were my Ritalin” (10) I have some issues with this. I can be patient and wait for the book to later substantiate its claim about lack of nature causing ADD, but the truth of the matter is, I don’t really believe in ADD. There may be some cases of it, but in general, I think it’s just kids acting their age. Their age just happens to have a lot of energy. If lack of nature really causes ADD, then there should be a lot of people with ADD, but I don’t think there really are.

“ ‘I like to play indoors better, ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are’” (10) I have to wonder where child preference comes into play in this book. Can you or should you force a child to play outdoors if that’s not what they want to do?

“But for many others, playing in nature seemed so… Unproductive. Off-limits. Alien. Cute. Dangerous. Televised” (10) I can just hear the disdain in his voice, after spending several paragraphs on the majesty of nature to refer to it with this string of irreverent adjectives. He certainly chooses his words well to arouse that same sense of disdain in the reader.

“Though several [parents] lived on the same block, this was the first time that some of these parents had met each other” (11) This book is lined with sentences like this, and I think it’s worthwhile to stop and analyze one of them in depth. The whole structure of the sentence seems to imply that people should know their neighbors as that is the assumed, natural way of things. Then it points to the fact that even though these parents are in a situation where they should know their neighbors, some of them have never met. It offers this sentence like some strange, lamentable fact, but this “fact” contains many tacit assumptions and premises that are inaccurate. It’s as though the author hopes to convince us of his point by bombarding us with manufactured truisms about the changing face of the new society. Let’s question his assumptions. Should we know our neighbors? I don’t see any reason why we should. Perhaps to build a better community, though the whole idea sounds a little forced to me. You can’t really choose your neighbors. Now is this a new state of affairs? My parents don’t know their neighbors. My grandparents didn’t know theirs. Perhaps I’m anomalous, but I doubt I’m that out of the ordinary. Over and over again in this book, the reader is offered tidbits of the good way things used to be contrasted with the sad and pitiable way that things are now. The framing of the facts is impeccable, but I notice it (this is partly because of all the cognitive linguistics classes I’ve taken where we take texts like this and analyze word by word all the metaphors and assumptions inherent in each sentence) and it makes me very resistant to what the author is saying. I feel like he’s trying to manipulate me. Why can’t he just lay down the facts without manipulative language? Is he too worried that people will reject his opinion if he lets the facts speak for themselves? I suppose this is the point where I just stopped trusting what the author was trying to say. I have a biased text, and even if nature may be helpful to people, I just don’t want to hear it at this point. If his tone changes, I might change my mind, but from here on out, I feel like I’m going to be trudging through something that tries to change my mind illegitimately. I’m honestly a little sick that I have to keep reading and giving this author more chances to infect me with his bias.

“Beard epitomizes a time when a young person’s experience of nature was inseparable from the romantic view of the American frontier” (15) After the quote on page 11 when I sat down and really thought about what was going on, I was really trying to gloss over the text and give it less of a chance to piss me off, but this sentence stood out so much I could help but go off on a tirade. Before I thought the book was classist. Now I thin it’s racist too. How can you call the American frontier romantic? The only people who can say that are white. The race of the author is painfully apparent. He paints this ideal, suburban 50s society where everyone gets to know their new neighbor by bringing them a jello mold as soon as they move in to the neighborhood where, of course, everyone is white. It is extremely obvious to me that this book is targeted directly at white people. I just can’t imagine these words coming out of the mouth of anyone else. He sits here and talks about his love of nature, but that love of nature comes at a price. He says on page 14 that we have a mixed message about valuing nature and then tearing it down and gives a precious little picture of a would-be poet girl whose inspiration was destroyed when her favorite forest was torn down. Awwww. Just makes you weep. What he doesn’t mention is what was put in place of that forest. I’m going to take a wild guess and say it was housing. There’s always new housing going up. It’s immensely profitable. Everyone wants to live the American dream and have a house in the suburbs, especially since the suburbs bring us closer to nature, which is obviously so good for our children, according to this book. Then they can play in our quaint backyard next to the rocky ridge! Oh the ridge was torn down? What a shame. Let’s make a jello mold! There isn’t enough space, money, or equity to give everyone the dream this author is selling. This book is destroying nature by its very existence! He may criticize suburbs for not being natury enough, but that’s not the take home message here. The take home message is “have a nice little backyard and force your children to play in it.” And here he romanticizes the American frontier (and later goes on to say all the good that came of it and how it improved our psyche and made us hearty and better than every other country in the world) which was one long history of injustice and removal of people (primarily Indians) from nature. There was the great dividing and partitioning of the land, folklore about how many trees Paul Bunyan can cut down, importing Chinese laborers to do the work you don’t want to do (building a railroad) that allows even more people to come to the west and mess with the land even more. He talks about a mixed message and doesn’t even realize what he’s doing!

“ ‘the existence of an area of free land…’ explained the development of the American nation, history and character” (17) He takes this big bucket of American patriotism and justifies our arrogance by the existence of a frontier and our relation to (conquering of) nature. So that’s why we’re so much better than all those other countries that never had that experience.

“an increased intellectual understanding of our relationship with other animals” (19) and “more young people may be vegetarians or consume foods from the health food store, but fewer are likely to raise their own food – especially if the food is an animal” (21) He uses the qualifier “intellectual” so that it’s clear we don’t really understand nature and animals. He looks down on vegetarians as not really knowing what they’re doing. It’s like he’s saying “sure it sounds like they’re doing the right thing, but since they have no idea what an animal is, it’s for all the wrong reasons.” Grrrr… I hate this author. There are constant, subtle jibes at so many things that don’t deserve it.

“even the definition of life itself is up for grabs” (21) He keeps talking about how the world is changing and all the awful new things he sees in it, but most of this stuff isn’t even new. Roe v Wade was big milestone in the debate on life, and that’s not terribly new (it’s from his venerable generation that knew the value of nature, after all). I’m sure there are many other examples as well.

“For baby boomers, such news is fascinating, strange, disturbing” (23) Every word and scenario is described in such a way as to make it seem disturbing (what exactly does he have against genetic, anyway? I’m guessing he dislikes making progress toward curing genetic diseases). He is clearly disturbed by the news and expects us to be too. And again we see him emphasizing the irreconcilable difference between our generations: there’s the righteous older generation who knows that this newfangled stuff is wrong and there’s the new generation, robbed of its morals by lack of a communion with nature. At this point, I almost just put the book down and stopped reading. I did have to stop for a while, but I really didn’t want to pick it back up. Every few sentences something was making me angry. I didn’t see the point in continuing. It didn’t serve any purpose. I really wanted it to get better and start offering some substance to its claims (I had yet to see any convincing evidence), but I had given up hope of it actually doing so. Just giving me some news blurbs with his particular, negative spin on it was not exactly convincing. And I still had another 15 pages of this conservative trash to read. I trudged on and tried to skim, but every time I glossed over something without picking it apart and getting irate, I worried that his words would sink in, so I found myself stopping almost as much as I had. This is hardly even a science text. This is rhetorical garbage (though I will admit it is insidiously well done). Sigh.

“the march of the nanorobots or the advance of the chimera” (26) Nanorobots (or nanomachines to be more accurate) don’t march. So why use the word “march”? The only things that march are armies or some other type of threatening military force. The nanorobots (machines don’t march, but unfeeling, unthinking robots do, so perhaps there’s a reason to his misnaming and mislabeling) and the chimera (genetics is not used to create mythical Greek monsters like the chimera, but why not phrase it that way and offer one example that might fit the phrasing so you can use a word with the appropriately monstrous connotations) are advancing, but who are they advancing on? Us of course. The whole writing style is designed to create a sense of fear through a few well placed, well chosen words. Disgusting.

“verboten” “constricted” “growing obsession with order” (28) “Verboten” has the special connotation that not only is something forbidden (the English translation), but it is unnecessarily so, or perhaps that the restriction is excessive and unreasonable. And “constriction” sounds like children are suffocating painfully under the regime. “Growing obsession with order” speaks for itself. He chooses his words so carefully. It’s sick.

Community associations are “private government” (28) There’s an unfair, rigid, group of draconian disciplinarians who are running their own anti-democratic private government and worst of all, they’re presiding over your own front yard! The manipulation has just gotten rampant at this point. It was bad before, but now it can barely contain itself.

“the criminalization of natural play is more suggestive than read” (29) So if you try to look for laws that actually support what he’s saying, you’re not going to find them, but trust him – they’re “suggestive.”

Touching story about a grandfather who can no longer fly his kite with his grandson after generations of kit flying (29) The kite flying scares away an endangered bird (probably endangered because it’s been scared away by kite flyers for generations). It has consequences. And just because kite flying has happened for so long and seems so harmless, he’s trying to suggest that that’s justification for continuing. We can’t right the wrongs of the past, but if we notice that something is damaging the environment, we have a duty to stop it. Unfortunately, our friend of nature here does not feel the same way.

“decapitated hills” “artificial landscaping” “yards the size of gravesites” (30) Are you kidding me? How can this guy even write with a straight face? This goes beyond being “poetic;” this is simply manipulative.

“how could something so timeless change in such a short time?” (32) I hardly know where to begin with this one. Timeless? Timeless how? Justify what you mean instead of throwing around sappy, loaded words to pull on our heartstrings. Timeless as in, since America’s founding? Timeless as in, from Europe in medieval times (since your ancestors were clearly European)? Timeless as in ancient Greeks? Timeless as in the dawn of man? I don’t know how universal this communion with nature is supposed to be, but I can’t believe it’s as eternal and universal as he’s pretending it is. And on another note, look how perfectly this phrase appeals to conservatives. It suggests how our way of life is being fenced out and systematically destroyed within the blink of an eye and how we have to fight to stop it. The only person I’ll fight is this scummy author.

“indoor, sedentary lifestyle linked to mental health problems” (32) This quote is from a study done by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Finally some actual evidence instead of a stream of manipulative rhetoric. Well it had to happen eventually. I have to give credit where credit is due. I’m curious to know what these mental health problems are though.

“For almost two decades, the well known Japanese photographer Keiki Haganoya photographed children’s play in the cities of Japan. In recent years, “children have disappeared so rapidly from his viewfinder that he has had to bring that chapter of his work to an end,” Moore [a professor of landscape architecture at North Carolina State] reports” (33) And we all know what problems with ADHD Japanese kids have. I noticed how crazy they were in that TIMMS study. I guess he’s finally convinced me that lack of nature and ADHD are related. As long as he has evidence of some sort, there’s no need to follow up with a critical eye, right? I’m sorry, I’m rarely this sarcastic, but it’s hard to contain myself with this guy.

There’s no money in natural play (I forget the page number) Is that really true? A video game console with a few games costs $500. A house costs anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands depending on what part of the country you’re in. The type of living he’s describing does not come cheap. Yes, he speaks poorly of suburban housing (some of the most expensive natural environment), but only because of its restrictions on natural play. This book makes a tacit assumption about free time and money that shows how restrictive and limited it is in its audience.