They believed an individual was more important than society; this really relates to me because I have learned to be more selfish in my life. In the poem A Psalm of life, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, “Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day.”(Longfellow 9-12) Basically this is saying that our lives aren’t predestined to be good or bad, therefore we should live life to the fullest. Society has a huge impact on how someone lives their life because of the different influences. These people can be the reason why you might think your life is predestined to be good or bad. In this case, rejecting society is a gain in the culture to actually live life the way you want to, without anyone else’s input.
Romanticizing the past is all about forgetting about what happened before and thinking about the future. If there was anything important, significant, or worth remembering, it would be overlooked. I think that this becomes a lost in a culture especially since there will be no honor given to anyone who gave their life for any cause that happened in the past. It will create a single story of an overview of the past, without any detail. On the other hand, forgetting about what happened before and focusing about the present and future could be a gain. A Psalm of Life it states, “Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o’erhead!” (Longfellow 21-24). This is basically telling me not to dwell in the past, to live in the present because the future is uncertain.
Romanticizing overall has its gains and lost. Being able to live life to the fullest without any regrets from the past is a great thing. In modern American culture we call this YOLO (you only live once) a phrase used by myself and many other 21st century Americans; very similar to how the 19th century American culture lived. While we have these gains there is a loss of honor, and excepting the past for what it is. This is what I believe a culture gains or losses by romanticizing its past.
by
mszkay96 (student)
