Transformation, Anyone?: A Response to Gary Snyder's 'Four Changes'

In Gary Snyder’s A Place in Space, his essay “Four Changes” addresses four of the most prominent American shortcomings, as well as proposes ways to solve them. If I may speak quite frankly, after reading this, I wanted to applaud Snyder. He knows what’s up.

The “four changes” are as follows: population, pollution, consumption, and transformation. Snyder calls for a change, as implied by his essay’s title and his method of addressing these shortcomings. Each of the four changes explains the situation concerning the topic of change, outlines some sort of aspiration to go about changing this situation, and proposes a social and political action that can be taken in order to come to some sort of solution to the problem at hand.

He illustrates the human condition for mankind’s desire to reproduce, pollute, consume, and transform, as if they are all inevitable, but obvious faults of Americans. While he may be generalizing, and stereotyping Americans, what Snyder says is true. Generalizations and stereotypes exist because they are true, granted not everything can be generalized, but most can. His generalizations don’t hinder a seriousness to his essay. He addresses serious issues in today’s society, issues that should be addressed, but aren’t. Snyder should run for president. All this talk of McCain and Obama and blah blah blah… get Snyder in there, he’ll really give us all a trip and who knows, maybe he’s got the sort of mindset to start turning things around in this world. He’ll really show you transformation.

Snyder’s implications for his “four changes,” can be directly applied not just to America as a whole, but on a smaller scale, to San Francisco. San Francisco undoubtedly exceedingly reproduces, pollutes, consumes, and transforms just as the rest of Americans do. But again, as I have mentioned before, San Francisco works as an effective microcosm to the nation within and just beyond its periphery, or contado.

Within the ecological element, Snyder tackles the concept of pollution as a major fault of America. He addresses the problematic situation of pollution: “The human race in the last century has allowed its production and scattering of wastes, by-products, and various chemicals to become excessive. Pollution is directly harming life on the planet—which is to say, ruining the environment for humanity itself…GOAL: Clean air, clean clear-running rivers: the presence of pelican and osprey and gray whale in our lives: salmon and trout in our streams; unmuddied language and good dreams” (Snyder 35). Here, Snyder outlines the problems that pollution is causing to human and animal life on the planet and proposes an eventual goal to reach by the resolution to the problem of pollution. Snyder goes on further to propose the proper action needed in order to solve the pollution problem. He suggests, “effective international legislation banning DDT and other poisons—with no fooling around…DDT and such: don’t use them. Air pollution: fewer cars. Cars pollute the air and one or two people riding lonely in a huge car is an insult to intelligence and the earth. Share rides, legalize hitchhiking…walk more” (36). His writing is somewhat humorous, and perhaps we find it funny because it’s so clearly the truth: it’s-funny-‘cause-it’s-true. He may have a straightforward manner in explaining these changes, like they’re so simple, but are they really that hard in reality? Government just needs to step in, as Snyder notes. It’s as if to say, C’mon people, is it so hard? It’s not rocket science.

All the while, Snyder maintains a poetic element in his essay, and adds to it the effect of a creative re-telling of potentially important political and global issues. He takes serious issues and twists them around where he’s sort-of-kidding-but-sort-of-not; his tone is serious while he addresses it so nonchalantly. These are weighty concerns he deals with, and while he may seem his Zen-self on the outside, he has a much more serious depth to his overlying tone.

We sometimes use humor to convey a much deeper meaning, and I feel this is comparable to Snyder’s approach to identifying and proposing a change for four major issues of American society.

Is this technique of Snyder’s effective in getting across a huge concern? Should other problems be approached this way?

Vote for Snyder.