"This degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation"

In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802),a sort of Manifesto for the Romantic period, Wordsworth warned against the numbing effects of the fruits of the Industrial Revolution: "For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor." How extraordinary that more than 200 years ago he was able to forecast our disconnect from Nature, and our modern obsession with things. In her inimitable ability to cast 19th century ideas in a contemporary light, Carolyn Hares-Stryker (my wonderful Brit Lit professor) observed that the reason people like cell phones is because the quiet spaces of their lives scare the hell out of them. Thanks to Wordsworth for redirecting us to those profoundly beautiful quiet spaces, without which a moral life, and a desire for a better world, is not possible.