Discuss: The Consolations of Extinction

Steve,

I’d say the only real difference between us is a degree of hope, yours is a bit higher than mine. I don’t believe our species is completely doomed, I just wonder if we hit rock bottom some day.

My chief concern of human action is nuclear war which could still happen under several circumstances, the most probable being a “misunderstanding” as to oil as the world (the largest national economies) begins to covet the waning supplies. Will oil wars get out of hand? Yet, even under the worst case scenario, humans will probably survive in some fashion.

Global warming is in a sense secondary to a future oil crisis. Global warming’s impact on the Earth would certainly change the way we live in some ways, but we could adjust. We’d move from the coasts, grow more crops in the north, etc….if of course global warming doesn’t send us into an ice age, a flip, as some have predicted.

I wonder about human reaction as change happens. People both individually and as groups such as nations will probably react mostly out of desperation and anger. Oil production shortages will cause higher energy costs and economic problems. These continuous wars the US fights causes more economic problems nationally…we actually pay more for gasoline because of funding a military in the Middle East, via our taxes…although some of that cost is simple added to our deficit which in turn is funded by other countries, China being a major bond purchaser.

I believe some day it’s going to catch up with the US economically. As the saying goes, when the US economy catches a cold the rest of the world gets the flu. I figure the US is going to get the flu and the rest of the world is going to get pneumonia. But sometimes a flu can be fatal and people recover from pneumonia.

I figure that America’s superpower status is heading for a decline. Not that that is a bad thing as empires historically have rises and falls. If I could somehow be around 100 years from now, I’d probably be talking about some other world entity as the top dog.

Jerry,

We already have communal festivals. We are inundated with them. Where I live (in the Detroit metro area) we have festivals, fairs, sporting events, concerts, on and on. I’d say we are very good at having parties.

It’s hard to draw the line at which parties are consumer culture or which are simply having fun. Although some are certainly easily labeled consumerist, such as our Woodward Dream Cruise. This event celebrates car culture as something like a million people in the Detroit area show off their classic cars by driving at 5 mph, four lanes of bumper to bumper gas guzzling in a 20 mile stretch of boulevard.

At any rate, Americans have no problem having fun and a good time. The consumer culture is all about making oneself happy. Nearly every product I see advertised is supposed to make me happy. And since the ads are for everyone, everyone should be happy because we consume.

Even in the depths of the depression, people sang and danced and consumed. The difference is that our economy wasn’t based on being “never fully satisfied” as our current consumer society is.

jon b,
I don’t think consumer culture can make us happy. What I’m thinking about are festivals that are participatory rather than spectator-oriented. The former, when accompanied by music and dance, tend to break down barriers of race and class. My wife and I recently went to a Zydeco Festival (Long Beach, CA). It was multi-race, class, age, and ethnicity. The music and dance literally transformed the people present. Boundaries and walls melted.

Americans don’t know how to have fun. So they do what they’re told to have fun. They buy their way to “fun.” But they’re always left wanting. True fun, letting go of oneself, losing one’s self in the magic of the moment with others—that’s so 60’s, almost against the law.

Jerry…

You’re just stating your preference of dance and music as your entertainment choice. Plenty of people don’t like to dance and don’t care much for music. Some people like to watch cars race around an oval repeatedly. Some people like watching a baseball game. Some people like to go to state fairs. Why should you decide what other people are supposed to enjoy?

Perhaps what bothers you is that our consumer culture likes to tell us what we should enjoy, I don’t argue with that. But I bet if you looked closely at the surroundings of that Zydeco festival you would have seen corporate sponsors and/or business advertising all promoting the singing and dancing but hoping their advertising would catch your eye.

I’m 50 years old. I don’t play baseball anymore, but I like to watch talented baseball players perform, what’s wrong with that? I’ve never been a ballet dancer, but if I attend the ballet to watch the beauty of it, is that wrong? I never became great at any musical instrument, does that mean since I don’t play one I can’t listen to a good band or orchestra?

The only way for me to enjoy life is to dance to Zydeco music or whatever music you deem fun? Come on! If I love to do logic problems and play chess I’m nothing but a bastard of consumer culture and I’m flawed in some way?

Everyone has different interests and dancing and music might not be among those interests. If dancing is your way to have fun or to forget about the serious parts of society, then enjoy. I see people having fun in all sorts of ways. Do I approve of all those ways or even understand them? No. But for the most part I don’t judge too much.

I can disapprove of auto racing as being dangerous, consumerist and a waste of an energy source, oil. Yet, if we were to run out of oil (and oil is being wasted in so many other ways besides auto racing) I’m sure people who like to participate and watch racing will find another form, electric cars maybe or a return to chariots, whatever.

I’m not a fan of blockbuster Hollywood movies, but I enjoy a good thought provoking movie. Am I a consumerist? Of course, because the Indie film is trying to turn a profit in our consumer society. Those movies need paying viewers in their own way as a blockbuster needs consumers.

I won’t argue that plenty of our entertainment is consumer culture out of control and would be glad to put in it the category of useless (monster truck shows and ultimate fighting are a couple that come to mind), but there are plenty of things I enjoy that aren’t dancing, (although I used to dance up a storm), I’ve changed my enjoyment preferences over the years.

You keep mentioning a ‘60s attitude, didn’t the enjoyment involve drugs in that decade? Plenty of the fun back then was actually obtained by mind altering drugs. Now, I’m not saying that’s evil or something, but if it took drugs to be able to have fun, I’m not so sure that the fun was all that positive. And drugs by the way are consumed, purchased in a market economy (albeit a black market). Nowadays, we can purchase legal drugs from doctors that make us feel good too.

The ‘60s attitude is here in the 21st century, it’s just become corporatized, advertised, and cosumerised. The ‘60s was the baby boomers having fun as 20-somethings, right? Well, who do you think is running our consumer culture today? Boomers! What goes around, comes around.

So, I’m not saying don’t dance, but as well don’t think that dancing is the only thing that makes people happy or is good for society. But dancing isn’t going to change our consumer society, not by a long shot. And you can’t force people to do something that doesn’t interest them and expect them to have fun.

Well, I’m off to have fun. I won’t be dancing, but I will enjoy what I’m planning.

jon b,
I didn’t mean to prescribe dance as the main way for people to have fun. It’s one way. The other ways you mention are surely fine and just as legitimate. Whatever gets people talking to one another, whatever works to break down some of the boundaries that separate people—that’s what I’m keen on. State fairs are an excellent example of that. And, as you point out, they’re imbued with consumer overtones, yet they still function as fun festivals. Good point.

Jerry, sorry, I guess I misunderstood you. Too often in the past I’ve heard viewpoints that seem to imagine some type of Utopian dancing that will make everything great, coming from New Agers I suppose.

Our culture creates this anxiety toward the future, and pointing our finger at consumerism is easy to do (I do it). Not all consumerism is bad though, but we certainly we can cite plenty of examples that are over the top.

You know consuming used to mean simply putting something into our mouth for sustenance. Then consuming meant buying things for ourselves to use and/or use up. Now it nearly means anything we come in contact with and that there is some sort of monetary exchange somewhere in the process.

We consume music for our ears, we consume reading material for our eyes, we wear fragrances for our nose, we still consume for our taste buds and we wear certain clothes for the feel. Consuming uses all of our sense and as well is aimed at all of our senses.

Heck, we buy and sell laws of physics. A parking deck is nothing but the purchase of time and space and bungee jumping and skiing are examples of the sale of gravity.

In America, the champion of consumer culture, it becomes almost impossible to avoid consuming. I suppose the Amish are close to avoidance, yet they sell their wears to the culture. Very few people are totally self sufficient in our country any more.

For most of us, it’s the onslaught of advertising that gets to us or what seems to be the most ridiculous objects being sold, for instance I heard that Paris Hilton’s trash is for sale on e-bay.

TV, so central in our society now, is another place to get riled at consumerism. I could write long diatribes about the absurdities of consumerism that I’ve seen on the boob tube. That medium (and radio as well) has now become almost entirely a place to produce entertainment for only one purpose, advertiser dollars. But despite all the drivel there are good programs embedded in the medium.

Little things irk me about consumerism. For instance corporate logo clothing, people pay money to purchase the clothing in order to be walking advertisements. It should be the other way around, corporations should pay us to advertise their name on the clothes.

Or the local news teases on TV. “News at eleven coming up, learn how you can be safer in your own home…blah, blah, blah.” They take the time to advertise something that instead they could have easily just informed right then and there.

Here’s a recent one I noticed. I attended a Detroit Tigers game last week and about midway I had forgotten the score and looked around for a scoreboard. Oh, they have plenty of scoreboards, all running advertisements at the time I wanted the score.

The Tigers play in a corporate named venue, Comerica Park, I call it Tiger’s Park…just because a corporation paid millions to name it doesn’t mean we have to use the name. I began that practice when I saw how in Houston the Astros had named their home field Enron Field and then of course changed the name when Enron tanked. A corporate name is only good as long as it’s money is good, apparently. I think they have a new corporate name for the stadium, but I’ll not use it, “Astro’s Park” works for me.

I read in the paper today that my city has changed a sign ordinance. Now electric signs can flash a new message every 30 seconds instead of a minute. I wish I had known about the proposal, I would have voiced the opposite…remove them entirely. Of course, I would have been nearly a lone voice in the consumer wilderness.

These are only little irks of mine in a sea of consumerist anarchy. The irks are everywhere, the whole system is annoying but what bothers me most is that all these little aspects are considered so important to so many people. People’s incomes might depend on those flashing signs, somebody makes them, somebody sells them and the buyer attracts business with them.

Logo clothes…how many people need those clothes sold so that they have a job? The original company’s workers, the wholesalers, the retailers, the advertising creators, the medium where the advertising is located (TV, newspaper, etc.), it goes on and on.

We are embedded in a consumerist system, trapped even. And then even worse, it all depends on oil and natural resources that are beginning to dwindle. There will be a day that we will look back and think, “our society is less consumerist than back then.” Consumerism will trend down whether it’s forced on us (lack of oil?) or whether we decide to reject it more or whether advertising starts becoming just plain ineffective. At least that’s my opinion…long as it is.

Despite what my brain tells me and my eyes show me, I believe with every “fiber of my being” that there is no way God intended for a species, gifted as Homo sapiens is, to inadvertently destroy itself and likely much of the world as we know it…...by its own ‘clay’ Hand.

nan wrote:...‘I live in the county and so don’t have as much political influence as city folks, but seems like NO ONE can stop developers.’...

That’s how I’m feeling too…It seems that has been happening to a lot of people for awhile…The developer’s have been allowed to build like crazy here too…And it’s always been a developers city - the city allows this…it’s the growth as god mentality, eventhough we have already been in serious water conservation mode for yrs. now…It’s about money…And the city people don’t have that much power either…It seems it’s only the one’s with money…People can change things…but they must be organized, and consistent to challenge and change city hall…

On the edge of suburbia…My beautiful open space that I walked in, that fed me, and helped heal me is being all paved over…And will eventually look even more grey, dull and ugly than it is now…I am grief stricken…The beautiful greens, and goldens I could gaze upon and walked into are not there…and I do not recognize the place I once loved…It is uncomfortably surreal and heartwrenching…I don’t know what to do…But I am angry that, green driveways, and more beautiful eco-friendly buildings are not put up…Much of the development is wall to wall…like rats in a cage…I don’t know how the people live like that…I can’t…There is some decent design…but for the wonderful ideas out there that already exist…not enough in my book…

At this point, I want to see codes changed, so at least when people do build, they will build something beautiful, and not so darn boring and ugly like they have been…and take into consideration, that it’s not just about extinction of species…It’s about being in, having awe and space, designing and living with beauty…and gazing upon the beauty and variety of the nature that feeds us…both physically, and soulfully…

A community should have much more of a say in these developments that impact them so much…That is part of the change that needs to happen in city halls…