A Pilgrim’s Quest?

Innate in the American psyche is the pioneering spirit to pull up stakes and find a new frontier. As Lewis Lapham eloquently described is his 1992 Harper's magazine article “Who and What is an American?”

“[The American psyche] is about the invention of self. Because we have little use for history, and because we refuse the comforts of a society established on the blueprint of class privilege, we find ourselves set adrift at birth in an existential void, inheriting nothing except a plausible self. Who else is the American hero if not a wandering pilgrim who goes forth on a perpetual quest?”

By the late nineties, the constant drumbeat for flexibility and self-invention had gone too far, not only because it blotted out the merits of place, but because it failed to addresses how few Americans could really invent themselves and to what degree their mobility and flexibility had nothing to do with their own free will but had been imposed on them by others.

This centrifugal force of “finding a new frontier” has, in many ways, permeated the business mindset, churning out an endless supply of executives and aspiring corporate climbers who are ready to jump at a moment’s notice and relocate to wherever their company decides. As a result, this undermines a sense of obligation to one’s neighborhood and any affinity to a “place” to call home has been considered antithetical to success.

Based on the book “Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life” by William R. Leach Fair Use Notice

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