Apartment Advertisement: "ONWARD AND WESTWARD"/"THE FUTURE IS WEST"

The other day, while walking on the lower West side of Manhattan, I passed a brand new apartment building, which had yet to be occupied. Like most of these new buildings, there was a sign in the window advertising the contact information for the building’s real estate agent. However, there was something else on those signs that I had never seen before: the phrases “ONWARD AND WESTWARD” and “THE FUTURE IS WEST”.

Both of these lines are plays on the infamous quote “Go west, young man”, originally coined by John Babsone Lane Soule, but popularized by journalist Horace Greeley in an article about soldiers returning from war and settling in western America.

While this sign may be a less direct religious artifact than some of the other ones on this blog, the religious connotations of its historical context are deeply engrained in American idealism. Motives behind westward expansion in the 1800s were similar to that of European colonialism: many American Christians believed that God had predestined them to create new settlements in the west. These people followed the philosophy of Manifest Destiny (a term created by another journalist, John O’Sullivan), which stated that American culture was superior to others, and it was God’s wish to expand it as far as possible. This is the idea that the phrase “THE FUTURE IS WEST” more directly plays into: that by migrating west, these people were not just changing their own future, but they were a part of God’s much larger plan. This implies that, by choosing to live in this building, tenets will not just be renting an apartment; they will be part of a bigger movement.

This philosophy was powerful enough to alter the course of this country’s history into what we know it as today. It forced a conversation about the future of slavery in America, eventually leading to the Civil War and slavery reform. However, this motivation was also so blind that it failed to acknowledge the large number of Native American communities that had existed in western America for centuries. After Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law in 1830, tens of thousands of Native Americans were displaced, and thousands were killed, in what we now refer to as ‘The Trail of Tears”.

Philosophies similar to these have persisted in American culture ever since. For example, Jerry Falwell’s “Listen, America!” is a call for religious community in the United States. As a fundamentalist, Falwell adheres to the belief that a reckoning will happen sooner rather than later, and that, in the meantime, mankind will continue on a downhill moral spiral. However, Falwell also believes that America is a land that God has anointed as superior and spiritually special. This alters the typical fundamentalist beliefs for him: he writes that, while the rest of the world will continue to plummet into immorality, he believes that America is destined to be a blip on that timeline, and have a brief period worthy of God’s praise.

For this to occur, though, Falwell writes that Protestant Christians of different sectors need to put aside their differences and fight against recent social movements, such as the fight to teach evolution in schools, and the gay rights movement. While most fundamentalists were receding from public life at this time, Falwell was encouraging Protestants to get involved politically: “Not only is it important to vote, but it is important to encourage others to do so as well. Never underestimate the power of your vote in a given election” (231).  

Like Manifest Destiny, while the initial motives of this philosophy are seemingly positive, its implications only serve to benefit a fraction of American society. Falwell’s belief completely rejects non-Christians, Christians who are not Protestants, persons of color, and members of the LGBTQ community. In summary, philosophies about American exceptionalism ultimately fail because they typically define ‘America’ by one culture, when in reality, America is a melting pot of a variety of cultures, no one less ‘American’ then the other. This is where “ONWARD AND WESTWARD” becomes problematic: when it is implied that everyone will just assume that a movement is headed in one direction, instead of taking the time to evaluate the real implications of that direction.

Yet, even though we have seen these theories fail time and time again, they still permeate into everyday American life, as we see on this apartment building’s sign. However, it is clear that this sign is less about cultural superiority (while acceptance of diversity in America is certainly still an issue, there is no doubt that things are a lot better than they were 200 years ago), and more so about touching the deeply imbedded need in many Americans to fulfill some kind of ‘destiny’ in life. This is a concept that any person of any religion can relate to, especially in this country, when there is so much focus on achieving the very ambiguous “American Dream”. And while this need can be positively motivating in the big picture, and make us all feel like we are a part of something bigger than ourselves, it can be problematic when it saturates into relatively basic decision-making—like, for example, choosing what apartment to rent.

Sources

Falwell, Jerry. Listen, America! New York: Bantam, 1980. 214-234. Print.

"Go West, Young Man, Go West." Encyclopedia.com. HighBeam Research, 1 Jan. 2003.

Web. 30 Apr. 2015.

"Westward Expansion." History Net. World History Group Network. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.