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America nonstop game of charades
Attitudes in country need to change
By Nathan Johnson
I’m glad it takes so much nervous energy to live American; it is a sign that Americans might shake their alienation yet, once the dots are connected.
Growing up, we learn to deal with disenchantment, when our constructs fail us. Back when I had long hair this woman whom I never talked to before approached me and said she’d give me a quarter for a strand of my hair. She could have had it for free if she had just asked me straight up.
So I raked my hair with my hand once and freely gave her some four strands. Prize in hand, she promptly sneered “not!” referring to the promised twenty-five cents, and then deftly ran away. Because of that experience, almost needless to say, I didn’t know what was real anymore.
That surreal experience occurred, appropriately enough, in high school, the time when people are most likely to shed preconceived notions and develop their own identities. Yet how quickly this window of opportunity seems to close upon graduation, when suddenly confronted with the reality of needing to find a job or go to college or both.
Immediately there is the feeling that there is “no time,” not even for those important eight hours of sleep which we hold so close to our hearts. If the hippies and flower-children of the 60’s settled down to office jobs, Roth IRAs and instant coffee, what chance does our generation have?
I’m glad it takes so much nervous energy to live American; it is a sign that Americans might shake their alienation yet, once the dots are connected. I am glad it takes no less than billions of targeted advertising dollars, millions of artificial chemicals, thousands of government lies and as many hours in front of the television to turn children into herd-adults.
I’m glad alcohol tastes bitter and smoke makes people cough so that people have to force themselves to learn to drink and smoke. I’m glad people can’t sit still through a college lecture, but would rather be out in the fresh air. I’m glad SUVs have large blind spots and bikes are more fun to ride.
I caddied at the Milwaukee Country Club for five years and I’m glad to say rich people in general are out of touch with reality. For example, I once caddied for a woman while Air Force One flew over the course, back when Bush stopped in Milwaukee. Her exclamation, “George Bush just waved at me!” caught me off guard, making it twice as hard not to puke. The poor woman probably STILL thinks the president waved to her.
She nearly lost her mind; she was so floored at the thought that the commander-in-chief of her patriotic yet Grinch-sized-heart (by default, rich people have diminutive hearts by virtue of that fact that they hoard more money than they know what to do with, while every seven seconds a child starves to death) would take the time away from fighting terrorism to wave to his own (it’s almost reason enough not to vote for whoever rich people vote for, regardless of what party they fall under).
I see a lot of college students acting like they’re adults, and I’m glad there’s no real age at which kids become adults. All-too-many American adults appear world-weary, hardened, stuck in their ways and overwhelmingly lacking all the qualities which make children incredible. Many, if not most adults become generic and live out taken-for-granted lives, wasting time on television, the Internet, and technology; that is, all things impersonal.
They say children learn faster than adults, but I don’t think that has to be the case. It’s only the case if adults succumb to culture, namely the materialist, apathetic, defeatist American culture. There has yet to be made a culture worthy of children, because we have yet to surmount the “predatory phase” of human development, as Thorstein Veblen termed it.
These adults are guilty of not letting the culture rot away of itself as fast as it would, but rather of carrying it on with their reactionary lives, as hosts to a virus. These adults represent spent choices and failure to change. Life, however, is change. Accordingly, they appear as negations of life, in contrast to full-of-life children.
To bypass the impending disenchantment and gaping emptiness which awaits all who cannot adapt, when the change inevitably arrives, we must immunize ourselves ahead of time by exposing ourselves to the stress of alternative viewpoints. The exact words escape me, but there was a recent Republican banner in the Union that read, “Mainstream always wins out in the end.” Let’s prove that wrong.
> Comments
Nicole on Oct 15, 2007 at 03:18 PM:
Very well put! Brilliant insights into topics that others barely notice exist.
Hippie Dude on Oct 19, 2007 at 11:26 AM:
lightenup, stop looking at everything with a microscope. the so called "rich people" are usually the people that educated themselves, work hard to make a better life for all of us. What are you so angry about? Find Peace+Love!