An Endless Romantic Opportunity

 What is romanticism? To boil things down a little, romanticism is a style and mindset that seeks to celebrate emotion, individuality, and rejects established ideals and systems for nature and its guidance.

Romantic artists would look almost solely to nature as their muse, finding that they are able to find the most beauty and individuality with the trees, grass, breeze, flowers, and sun. Why was this? Would they feel the same way today? Much of the romantic movement was focused on moving away from the way society existed as it was, returning to a natural perspective, free from judgement, able to live the way one saw fit. Nature was infinite beauty, and once entered, no one told you who to be or how to do what you liked except yourself. Romantic writers would take this idea and run with it, escaping from many of the previous writing conventions for poetry, even believing that their writing would change the world. Their movement evokes freedom at its core. Uninhibited freedom.

So what else do we know that is nearly infinite, allows for strong emotion, individuality, free thinking, and change? If it takes you more than like five seconds to come up with the answer I have in mind, let me ask what you're reading this post on. The internet. Beautiful, dangerous, ugly, safe, and unimaginably vast. The internet itself embodies humanity. It is a record of the collective consciousness of our entire species. Even those who are not directly online are reflected in one way or another. This echo chamber that we love so much is the new romantic landscape. Introspection and individuality come rising to the top for people as soon as they hit social media. Anonymity lets people be themselves, regardless of how ugly or beautiful that self may be. People can try to tell others how to be or what they should do, but all one has to do is look the other way. Romantic artists were judged for sure. People who chose to live in the woods all day and write long winded poetry for a living are going to get looked at funny. They chose to look away and stay true to themselves and carry on. The same goes online. Even those who do cave to peer pressure can learn a ton about themselves and further understand who they are and how they fit into the landscape of the universe. What about nature itself? The trees, the sun, the rain, and the flowers? Just google it. Just typing in nature is more than enough to conjure images of decades of travel. While it may only appeal to sight, and maybe sound if you watch a video, nature can be largely captured still. If you need the complete experience, congratulations, the internet will follow along in your pocket.

The internet is the second coming of nature. Our second teacher who just learns more and more, and learns to teach even better about ourselves. Hunching over our cell phones in our own little bubbles may seem closed off, but what is a screen other than a window to the knowledge and experiences of centuries of people? So is romanticism dead? What would the old romantics think of today? For some final context, the romantic movement took place before humans even had radios. Television did not exist. People were limited to the thoughts and ideas of those immediately surrounding them. If you did not fit in there, you were alone. There really weren't many other people, and it would be hard to see other perspectives like we can today. How would people not look to free themselves from that kind of system? I think romantics would find the internet just as liberating as we do, even with all of the problems it brings.