The Nature of Change in NYC

Let’s look at the iconic Big Apple. Maybe once upon a time, New York City was a countrified Land Flowing with Milk and Honey, but it has since been transmuted. I will not say that the idea of change is good or bad; when creating a dichotomy in that fashion, we eliminate the delicate grey area that governs so much of human morality. I will say that change is the very essence of life: we are not who we were three years ago, three months, even three minutes. If the seasons were content to hibernate in an everlasting winter, if Demeter never fetched Persephone from the underworld, where would we be? The very idea that nothing lasts forever is both the bane and saving grace of our human tenuousness. Of perks, there are many in this cultural advancement, but we evolve, as Darwin suggested, not into superior beings, but beings that are better suited to our environment: there is no ‘final form’ we aspire to, only responsive evolution. Like all land, New York City is still a Promise Land, though no more than a husk of the pastoral one which it was born. Herein lies the essence of what comprises the city.