Spurning the Haflagah

Never again does G-d want to destroy all mankind [as He did in the Mabul]. Rather, He wants to educate humanity, through its experiences, to self-knowledge and knowledge of G-d. Nevermore will mankind as a whole be allowed to sink to the ultimate depths of degradation reached by the generation that had perished. Therefore, mankind must be dispersed, lest the human species, gradually spreading over the earth, constitute but one single family, in which corruption festering at one end would quickly infect the whole.
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As a result, even though man deems himself master of the soil, it is the soil itself that everywhere dictates his way of life and occupation, and its specific conditions and the climate shape his very nature, his body, his ideas, his thoughts, his desires and even his language, through which everything is expressed. Thus man is assured of many-sided experiences. These should lead him to knowledge of G-d and of his own self and teach him that it is one and the same G-d Who rules over nature and human life, and that man's mission is higher than merely to accumulate wealth and indulge in pleasures.
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[W]hen a nation has finally reached the heights of materialism and luxury, it crashes down into ruin, despite its greatness, and indeed through it, making way for a new generation to make the same attempt.

From Samson Raphael Hirsch's Nineteen Letters. Letter Six: History.

Today we see a "Western" international superculture becoming increasingly unified via the propagation of pop culture, and now even more so, via the Internet. Indeed it is one of the ultimate tools for pursuit of pleasure. We are also farther removed than perhaps ever before from the soil, the effects of land and climate. When is the last time I've spent a day outdoors? Much of my life is spent in a totally man-made structure: an office, automobile, or train. I see not the outside for some eight hours a day, and even if I would, all I would see around me is buildings and other products of civilization. Concrete, not soil; the sky obscured; a chatzitzah of humanity totally obliterating the mark of G-d on that island [Manhattan].

I am pained by how I have necessarily lost touch with G-d's natural world since coming to metro New York from my childhood in suburban Connecticut and college years in the small-town Midwest. How is one to remain tapped in to that vital relation point to G-d, His natural world, when America's working-man access to hardcore Torah is concentrated in the mighty metropolises? Or is this in itself a misconception? Read full post