One of the under-appreciated British treasures that came out of the First World War was the Ordnance Survey, which created (for military purposes) the most comprehensive set of maps anywhere in the world. On the largest scale almost every field and tree is accurately recorded. These maps are a walker’s delight, especially because England, uniquely, has a vast network of country paths, rights of way, that are protected by common law and cannot be ploughed over or otherwise destroyed. Until now.
The “conservative” government decided that the Ordnance Survey, a government department, should not be in the business of selling maps, and passed the task over to the Automobile Association. The latter looked at the large number of maps and is stopping issuing them them, instead offering the public books describing a limited number of walks. So if you want to walk in Devon, for instance, there is a booklet showing only some twenty or so walks in that beautiful county, where before you could roam along scores of public rights of way.
Why is this important? Because now you have to walk where the AA wants you to walk. In due course, unused, the remaining ancient pathways will become overgrown, ploughed under and forgotten, just what the landowners have wanted since the reign of Alfred the Great! And who do the latter vote for? And what has this to do with Epicureanism? Just about everything. To paraphrase Shakespeare – the country has become “cabin’d, cribbed, confin’d, bound in”.
I remember reading in a college course that in effect, John Locke’s philosophy argued for the right to erect billboards in Grand Canyon. I can’t say if this is a close reading of Locke or not but the assumption that everything can be monetized seems to be flourishing in England these days.
John Locke was what we would now call a professor at my olde alma mater. I somehow hear him turning in his grave at the thought that he supported that interpretation of life!