intellectual properties

peel off the layers

speaking of europe: i do know that i have not written up anything more about our European Vacation, and i admit that now a lot of the details are fuzzy, and maybe i won’t. in summary: Amsterdam is a dream + i <3 bicycle culture, Berlin has taken proper advantage of the years since WWII and The Wall and become a fantastic city full of art and culture and music and i hear the only real complaint is re: WINTER, Prague is a fairytale, IMHO Vienna took the years since WWII/Communism and became overzealously Westernized and boring and i suggest maybe going to the mountains of Austria instead, Buda-Pest is funky and cool with lots of great bars and nightlife; the economy (and therefore local disposition) is slightly depressed, but i could imagine living there. what more can i say? we went to a lot of insanely beautiful churches (in two of which i was moved to light prayer candles) and walked as far as our legs would take us (i think we walked for almost 10 straight hours on my birthday in prague. oh yeah, i celebrated my 33rd birthday in prague!) and made sure to get up into the highest point possible in each city. we ate at approx 60-90 cafes/restaurants across europe and only in Vienna was ordering a problem wrt language barriers. we went to at least 20 bars and 7 music venues. we rode all kinds of trains and never for a minute did we wish we had a car.

i will go back again, maybe to revisit some of these places, but more for all the places we didn’t go, but before then i would like to visit South America and Africa (gotta get to the southern hemisphere to complete!). in my wanderlust dreams for 2010 there is: Puerto Rico (w/RBM), Cuba (with jayeesha), Chile/Peru/Argentina (helen!), as well as trips to see the family in Michigan, weddings here and there, and also the pilgrimages to Las Vegas and Burning Man. can i fit all this in while keeping a job? i think maybe.

my mom posted something to Facebook about my travels and one of her friends (possibly a relative) commented something to the effect of “i don’t understand this crazy wanderlust kids these days have”.  i also recently had a conversation with another friend about how “entitled” many of us feel about travel, and all i can say is that for me, it’s not about not being happy at home or wanting to flaunt my American wealth in some poorer country by taking advantage of the exchange rates and renting a yacht. i think in this the 21st century, where the things you eat and clothes you wear often come from the other side of the planet, it is not just fickle entitlement to want to travel; it is super important for the affluent who consume most of the world’s resources to see how the rest of the world is living and where their things are coming from.  for the amount of money most affluent Americans spend on unnecessary consumer goods, they could travel to a different place at least once a year, and that’s a trade i’m happy to make.

Lust for comfort suffocates the soul
Relentless restlessness liberates me
I feel at home whenever the unknown surrounds me
I receive its embrace aboard my floating house
Wanderlust! relentlessly craving
Wanderlust! peel off the layers
Until we get to the core

.::.

quarterlife crisis aka the last 7 years of my life

http://www.eyeweekly.com/print/article/55882

He bikes to work at an advertising agency, where he uses his master’s in English to proofread ad copy, and spends several hours reading music blogs and watching movie trailers, periodically Twittering updates about his workday to his 74 followers. He doesn’t really hate his job, but feels as if his skin is crawling with vermin most of the time that he’s there, so he has a plan to move to Thailand, or to maybe write a book. Or go to law school.

At her government job, she instant messages her friends and mostly ignores the report she’s drafting because she’s planning on quitting anyway — and has been planning to quit for about a year now. She spends her lunch hour buying boots that cost slightly more than her rent, then immediately regrets it.

He listlessly works through lunch, then goes to the bar after work to meet up with some university friends, where they talk about their jobs and make ironic jokes about other people. Back at home, he wonders why he feels so gross and empty after spending time with them, but it’s mostly better than being alone.

She walks to the house that she shares with three friends and spends a few more hours on celebrity gossip websites, then clicking through the Facebook photos of girls she knew in high school posing with their husbands and babies, simultaneously judging them and feeling a deep pit of jealousy, and a strange kind of loss. “When did this happen for them?” she wonders.

They both eventually fall asleep, late and alone, each of them wondering what it is that’s wrong with them that they can’t quite seem to understand.

This phenomenon, known as the “Quarterlife Crisis,” is as ubiquitous as it is intangible. Unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction is reported by people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated; those who should be able to capitalize on their youth, unparalleled freedom and free-for-all individuation. They can’t make any decisions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who they are because they’re allowed to be anyone they want.

When a contemporary 25-year-old’s parents were 25, they weren’t concerned with keeping their options open: they were purposefully buying houses, making babies and making partner. Now, who we are and what we do is up to us, unbound to existing communities, families and class structures that offer leisure and self-determination to just a few. Boomer and post-boom parents with more money and autonomy than their predecessors has resulted in benignly self-indulgent children who were sold on their own uniqueness, place in the world and right to fulfillment in a way no previous generation has felt entitled to, and an increasingly entrepreneurial, self-driven creation myth based on personal branding, social networking and untethered lifestyle spending is now responsible for our identities.

file under: 1st world problem #1. and i’ve been suffering from it for years.

the article goes on, and it’s interesting.

who am i? what am i doing? WHY?

why so bored, jaded, listless when the world is in the palm of your hand?

the article suggests a number of things but none of them seem particularly relevant to me. i’m not in debt. i have plenty of friends. i don’t have a drug or alcohol problem. i am not looking for a career. being grateful is the only thing that relieves, but it feels like a meditative medicine i have to remember take every day to fight a persistent disease. what is my cure?

this weekend, i’m going camping.  that always seems to help.  maybe it’s urbanity that’s the problem?

To go walking down a country road at sunset
And see colors I could almost touch right over head
To hear the gentle breeze a blowing at the treetops
No out in the country there is no talk that God is dead

i feel so special.

to my work email address:

Hello,

You have been invited by [person I don't know] to join Affluence.org. Affluence.org is an exclusive community of affluent people dedicated to making life better for both themselves and others.

As a member of Affluence.org you will have the ability to find and interact with other affluent people from around the world, evaluate and contribute to your favorite charities, and gain access to exclusive lifestyle guides to luxury living, travel and the latest trends.Within this elite community you will be provided with access to a dedicated Affluence Concierge, receive priority access to the world’s most exclusive premieres, nightclubs, parties, hotels, events and much more.

To accept the invitation to our exclusive network, please follow the link below.

as a fan of affluenza.org, i think i’ll have to pass.

related: If Everyone Is Broke, Is There Still A Class System?:

Class reacts to economic crisis like magnets of the same polarity, it adjusts automatically.The only to do to is adjust. Cruises move down-market and “having it all” becomes being able to buy a big-screen at Wal-Mart and watch Netflix with the whole family. The affectations of affluence don’t disappear when the money does, they simply get redefined.

danger v. opportunity

a much better piece on the subject of moving to a post-consumer america than what i wrote:

I grew up in Seattle, WA and was raised with the idea that money is equal to life energy and time and that it is important to spend less and wisely unless I wished to be constantly on the job and enslaved to a salary….

…To me it is seems exciting and inspiring to rely on our local communities, know our neighbors, grow our own food, barter/trade, craft our own clothes, fix our favorite pair of shoes, and enjoy each others company instead of passing the night away in front of cable TV with a frozen pizza made and packaged in Wisconsin and numbed thoughts. It gives us a positive creative way to utilize and conserve resources, combats isolation, gives us the chance to express skills that few jobs would allow, and lends to a more holistic sense of self that even folds art and spirituality back into our daily lives. It’s a revival of what I imagine my grandparents experienced growing up in rural farm towns, infused with urban DIY culture, activism, and spiritual consciousness. I know “hold on there you idealist hippie” you might be thinking, but I really think the time is ripe for it now more than ever.

It is a huge paradigm shift to think of spending less, needing less, and relying on one another more and I think this tends to comes across more like DEPRIVATION than FULFILLMENT to most Americans. Give up a Lexus and fancy French dinners before going to see “Les Miserables” to ride a bike thru the rain and play board games over home-made apple strudel? I think that living in a way that is not so strapped to the now-not-so-mighty-dollar, the ballooned American Dream, oil, and consumer materialism in general takes a lot of work, awareness, education, and commitment to alternatives. This lifestyle shift takes time to cultivate and also requires privilege to think about it in the first place and the right environment.

–from Surviving the Economic Meltdown: DANGER or OPPORTUNITY?

related: America’s New Year’s Resolution: Stop Being Stupid

and FYI: the chinese character for “crisis” does not equal “danger + opportunity”

YAWN ??

in my line of work, there are a lot of acronyms. acronyms for projects, for agencies and organizations, for species, for work tools, for groups, for research, everything. in the social world there are also a lot of acronyms, and now with people writing in txt shorthand all over the place sometimes it’s impossible to tell what’s an acronym and what’s just a word without vowels.

there are a lot of words in general use out there that most people don’t even realize are acronyms, like “SCUBA”. and YUPPIE. oh, the yuppie. how much i try to avoid fitting into that acronym. here in SF we also have “yippies” = yuppie hippies, or white collar hippies (they’re richer and smell better. they own hybrids and spend thousands on solar electricity for their houses and yoga retreats and eco-vacations, etc.) i think most of my friends (and many of my coworkers) almost qualify as yippies. afterall, we’re young, urban, often-professional with disposable incomes, and semi-hippie in that most of us have a sustainability bent. but for some people, the connotation/connection to the word yuppie is too strong, and many of us are artists, not “professionals”.

so, avoiding the “yuppie” link and focusing explicitly on Gens X and Y and dot-com era 30somethings, a new acronym has been created for this group of young wealthy people who care about the environment: YAWNs - Young and Wealthy but Normal:

They drive hybrid cars, if they drive at all, shop at local stores, if they shop at all, and pay off their credit cards every month, if they use them at all.

They may have disposable income, but whatever they make, they live below their means in a conscious effort to tread lightly on the earth.

They are a new breed of Gen Xers and Y’s, Young and Wealthy but Normal, or Yawns.

this acronym has a lot of issues. first, obvi, is the phonetic. YAWN!? secondly, what does “normal’ mean here? not paris hilton? because “normal” in most parts of the country does not = eco-conscious and living below your means. even in SF, where many of these YAWN types live, the young and wealthy are often concentrated in the Marina district, which although it does have a lot of yoga studios and organic coffee shops, is not what i would call a hotbed of sustainable living philosophies and is what is normal there is what is normal elsewhere: affluenza. my point is that sustainable living isn’t “normal” almost anywhere - although it’s on the rise among affluent types, yes (and greenwashing has made some people think they’re living sustainably when they’re NOT), it’s not “normal” in a general population context - and i’m finding this “wealthy BUT normal” phrasing really odd.

i love sociology, and i love demographics and statistics (which is why my current internship @ american environics has been very interesting), but i hate that the tendency is to recognize loose patterns as definitive categories instead of as points on a spectrum. the YAWN label is ill-fitted, and i don’t think going to stick.

arduous sustainability blog agrees and offers an alternative acronym: Apples! APLS: Affluent Persons Living Sustainably (nothing that affluence is relative).

buzzfeed has more links.

the modernity factor

related to previous posts about affluenza and anxiety and the paralysis of too many choices:

i was reading recently a study that correlated lack of choice in certain cultures with greater happiness - that “simplicity of life” correlates to calmer, happier citizens as opposed to cultures such as ours full of angsty citizens who have too much to choose from (similar to ideas behind communism, the Amish, and other minimalist cultures) - and then yesterday read in the news that people of Bhutan were resisting their new democracy. they don’t want democracy; they want a king. their bucolic mountain nation has been very successful under the monarchy, their king has put “gross national happiness” above all else, and many fear that democracy will only bring strife and the western problems that comes with it. so is there a correlation, then - do the Bhutanese correlate fewer choices with happiness, or do they just not trust democracy? i wonder.

the question National Geographic currently asks about Bhutan and also Iceland (another small, sheltered nation), and many others have asked about the general course of modernity is this: can you be part of the modern world without losing your soul?

mountain escapism pt. 2

(this is related to part I: the yosemite trip report, but is separate enough in content to be its own post.)

“nothing is more bourgeois than being afraid to look bourgeois.”
-andy warhol.

comment in response to a long and very involved thread (see below) about some of the (sub)cultural issues in my little community. thread probably not interesting to much of the general public, but that quote is fabulous and pretty much dead on.

it also dovetails nicely from the recap of my weekend, as one of the things that was incredibly obvious, sitting on a patio of a campground where “tent cabins” are $100 a night in Yosemite valley, is that being “outdoorsy” is a hobby only afforded by the Affluent.

part of the reason we chose to do this trip now was not only because it was my birthday, because i’ve wanted to climb Half Dome for a while, and it was a less-crowded time to go to Yosemite, but also because jay and i needed to get the fuck out and spend a weekend doing something else, something outside, something away from internets and cities and parties and work and the world we live in most days.

the discussion that references the Warhol quote centers around cliquish behavior in this small community that is more or less based on fashion choices, some of which are only attainable with ample amounts of disposable income, and what that means or represents about the community’s values as a whole (valuing “hotness” over “goodness”, valuing doing something “artsy” over doing something “real”, etc.). this is, of course, a subject close to home for me, as someone who thinks a lot about what clothing means to our culture, it’s hard to get my head out of that specific thing and into what the greater issue is, because honestly: it’s not the fashion that the problem.

as my friend stephen pointed out, and with a lot of community comment, and as i have written before, particularly after burning man 2006, there is a lot of tension in my community (in simplest terms: the burning man community) as we all struggle against classism, white privilege, affluenza, and, i guess, one of the great weights of privilege, existential angst. i think this weighs heavily on all of us. what do we do with all this opportunity? all this time, all this money, all this freedom that we have as members of the American upper middle class, most of us without children? year after year it’s discussed in the burning man community: what is the best use of this context we were so lucky to have been born into?

while it is a privilege and a gift to be born into this and i’m sure many question “how can you worry about this when there is so much else to worry about in the world?”, as we’ve seen with many a celebrity who has lost it all via excess and has been culturally documented in hundreds of Great Gatsby/Less Than Zero type pieces of modern art and literature, wealth does not mean happiness, and often, it brings a great amount of stress and weight (which often also leads to apathy/ennui) to those who are conflicted about what to do with it. many a rich kid has gone down the path of excess to the point of no return, and many a person of disposable income in my community is severly conflicted about what to do with it. do you spend your hard earned dollars on hedonistic adventures like burning man, fancy clothing and travel because you deserve it? or should you be doing something else for the world, and if so, OMG - WHAT?

it’s a heavy question, and we then start to quibble and judge each other on the choices made in this context: judging those who choose to spend all this time and money on their own personal art and leisure (calling them vain and hedonistic) vs. spending it on, say, working for or developing a non-profit that services those outside of your own circle of artists/dancers/musicians. and then those who invest in art and leisure and not public service defend themselves with the (valid) argument that art is important to humanity and if it were not for art, life would be incredibly utilitarian and boring and so much beauty would be lost - and beauty does indeed have great value in this world.

these tensions start to show up in the sort of conversations that happened there - many pointed out, and on some levels i agree, that even HAVING such a lengthy discussion about such a subject as “the cool kids aren’t being nice to the not-as-cool kids on the dancefloor” is sort of silly on the surface, but stephen’s point was that the way we are treating each other within our community is symptomatic of how we treat those outside our community, outside our class, outside our culture, and that it is not good.

i’m gonna leave the discussion of that subject at that right now, but how this all ties back into our trip to yosemite is that when we were looking at photos of Half Dome earlier this summer, it looked like a frickin’ REI convention. everyone is dressed the same in the ubiquitous hiker uniform: khaki shorts, North Face fleece, hiking boots, sun hat….and often with lots of hiking-specific gear and gadgets attached to them. i realize that much of that is due to functionality, but does it have to be so predictable? isn’t there just as much of a wardrobe cult among the outdoor-gear heads as there is among the trustafarian peacocks? sitting in Yosemite Valley on Saturday afternoon watching the crowds of mostly white families herd through the campgrounds, i was hard pressed to find ANYONE who wasn’t wearing the Hiker Uniform and everyone looked Upper Middle Class. before we left, jay and i had repeatedly half-joked that we were going to wear some of our more outrageous but still entirely functional disco-camping gear to the top of half dome out of rebellion against this conformity and throw a little mini-rave when we got to the top. because the weather was so cold when we did the ascent, i wasn’t able to fully put on the outfit i had packed for that occasion, but was wearing my furry fleece hat and the bottom part of an outfit by Bad Unkl Sista. on the hike down that afternoon, i was able to wear more of a non-traditional hiking outfit, but due to wearing my backpack wasn’t able to fully buck the Hiker Uniform then either.

why so much resistance to this? why so much resistance to the “mainstream”? as i get older, as many other people can also attest, you get more and more pressure to “conform”. maintain a regular job. buy a house. get married. have kids. look normal. i guess i’m feeling that pressure more and more, not from any particular source, but just….from society…and the more i feel the pressure and am not conforming to it, the harder it is to make choices about things without feeling conflicted, especially when it ties back into this idea of the privilege/responsibility of my class. is spending our time,energy and money doing the things we’re doing just a juvenile sort of rebellion without any real impact on the real problems of the world, or is being part of a counterculture contributing to the world in a meaningful sort of way? (interesting side-link: The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can’t be jammed)

when i got back and read that quote by warhol it really struck me: is my fear of appearing to be one of the American Bourgeois - whether it’s the version that is the hikers on Half Dome or version that is the Feathered Hat Mafia at burning man - just a huge sign that i AM part of the bourgeois, and that brings so much weight i can’t deal? (this reminds me: after having a similar discussion to all of this at a campout with this subculture earlier this summer (Raindance), we had (jokingly) assigned two complementary essay topics to some of our campmates: Part I: “What is Real?” and Part II: “What’s Your Damage?”)

being out in the wilderness did nothing to resolve this for me, by the way, as i more or less opted not to think about anything much while i was out there except how beautiful it was. ah, the luxury of escapism. something else the white and privileged are really good at.

art: consumption: fashion

as i mentioned, my friends’ house burned down in tahoe earlier this week. i’ve been getting emails from them, and they’re being very zen about it. both R and J are very utilitarian and almost minimalist - not incredibly attached to possessions. they got a couple of car loads of stuff out before they had to evacuate. they didn’t take their wardrobes.
what do most people grab when their house is on fire?
photos, keepsakes, family heirlooms, pets.
i bet hardly anyone takes anything from the kitchen.
the only thing (besides the cats, obvi) i would take is my wardrobe.
i am very attached to my clothes. i have almost nothing else of value.

in this PBS series, art:21 (get from netflix. note: unless you’re really into art and the methods/thinking behind why people create what they create, this is probably really boring), which gives 15-20 minute glimpses into the lives of various 21st-century artists and categorizes them into themes by the way their art addresses modern life (”place”, “spirituality”, “identity”, “power”), one of the artists in the “consumption” theme (along with Matthew Barney) is Andrea Zittel, aka “A-Z Administrative Services”. during this filming, the thing she is working on is called a “pocket property” - a small floating island one could anchor offshore, sort of like a houseboat, but with the aesthetic of an island. in her interview she explained why she resorted to wearing only 2 outfits a year, which she makes herself:

“I’ve been doing this uniform project since 1991. It started because I had an office job and I was supposed to wear something respectable to work. But I didn’t have that much money and so I was thinking about how most of the time we can afford one fabulous outfit that you really love to wear. But there’s some sort of social stigma against wearing the same thing two days in a row. So I decided that, in my case, variety seemed more oppressive or restrictive than continuity. So for each season I’ll make one garment. That’s my fantasy garment or my favorite thing that I can imagine at that period in time, and then I’ll wear it every day for for six months.”

she then went on to talk about how some modern freedoms after a while begin feeling constrictive - too much choice, and the cultural expectation that you take advantage of as many of those choices as possible (particularly with fashion: if you wear the same thing every day, you’re considered fashionless) is, for some people (and some would argue for everyone), oppressive. this has been discussed at length in the press recently regarding electronic gadgets and other consumer goods — it could also be labelled affluenza.

i, of course, what with my previous statement that the only non-living thing i would save if my house were on fire would be my wardrobe, found this quite interesting - not so much that the idea was so surprising - of course fashion is oppressive - we all know that - but that she’d not only chosen to downright ignore it but to make such an extremely committed anti-fashion statement. in other cultures, this would mean almost nothing; the concept of a “wardrobe” itself is almost totally foreign, and people own only one or two changes of clothing. in our culture, however, it’s pretty powerful to say “i’m not going to buy into this.”

i’ll admit i have a consumption habit in terms of clothing. i don’t buy furniture. i don’t buy books. i don’t buy home decorations or kitchenware or anything you might find at Williams Sonoma until i absolutely need it, and then i’ll usually try to find it used a the Goodwill first. i also buy most of my clothing used, but that doesn’t mean i don’t spend more than i should on it. i spend 98% of my excess income on clothing (after debt, food and shelter). “thrifting” can be just as much a shopaholic problem as hitting the mall every payday - perhaps even moreso, because if you’re a thrifter you have to search a lot more/harder for things that that fit and that you like. i regularly hit up my favorite thrift stores by popping in for 5-10 minutes to check the racks. my wardrobe rotates rather constantly. i wouldn’t say i am necessarily “proud” of it, but given the amount of time/energy invested into it, my wardrobe is worth more than anything else i own, certainly.

i recognize that this is often a source of cognitive dissonance for me, and there are definitely moments when i FEEL what she means by it being oppressive. i certainly KNOW what she means: pressure to look good is at a ridiculous level in our culture right now, and we’ve seen the negative impacts of the fashion-consumer industry on our society in various hideous ways. i do not deny that, but for myself i’m fairly anti-consumerism when it comes to everything BUT wardrobe, and then with wardrobe i have a set of rules for what i think it’s ok for *me* to buy, and as long as i follow those rules i am ok with *my* consumption. but the thing is that for me, it’s not just consumption: it’s also expression of self. i recognize that this is not true for everyone, and i don’t expect it to be true for everyone, but it’s true for a lot of people, and i’m of the opinion that it’s sort of innate and healthy, the desire to make oneself attractive physically, or at least represent oneself in some manner or another. and with this belief and since it IS true for me, and because of my particular shopping rules/habits, it somehow seems less “bad” and more ….artistic?….than if i were just blowing money on clothes from Macy’s every month. it then becomes sort of a philosophical question: is consuming “consciously” any better than consuming mindlessly? am i just making excuses?

werk and maturity

remember the thing about G’rups, which determined that Gen X/Yers are refusing to grow up due to various changes in cultural expectations and influences? and then there was the conversation i had about how adolescent the club scene is, despite the majority of clubbers being well into adulthood, and THEN there was the article on memory that concluded “wasted youth” is no longer such a bad thing because regret is held onto long after indulgence guilt has long faded away in your mind.

so now there’s this: “…to so many peers I encounter, work is worse than a four-letter word: it is psychologically troubling, a squirming emotional sore spot they live in denial of and avoid discussing. With unsettling frequency, I find that my generation can only identify and embrace success if it stems from self-expression, to such an extent that people are numbing and abusing themselves through drink and drugs to suppress frustration and a crushing sense of failure for having a job.” — full (~via)

his theory is that the baby boomer generation was the last to have to work real hard for a living, and they were on the cusp of seeing that the World 2.0 was going to offer opportunities to NOT WORK - IF you were smart enough and had the right opportunities. formerly a privilige only for “old money” and royalty, now anyone who did the right things could work for themselves or not really work at all. think the rise of pyramid schemes and Amway in the 80s. they themselves were born a little to early to take advantage of this globalization benefit, and so from the time our generation was born, we were taught to believe that if you’re special enough and smart enough, you can find a way to get out of having a job. and, of course, all parents believe their children are special. so now that Gen X is nearing middle age, there’s this expectation that if you’re still working for The Man, you missed a turn or something. you should be working for yourself by now, either as a proprieter or an artist or by playing the stock market on the internet. working a 9-2-5 is for suckers!

in many ways, i agree. i just had a conversation the other day about how so many of our friends are self-employed, and how amazing it is. and inspiring. and, if you’re not one of them, a little depressing.

in addition to this theory of baby boomers rearing their children with these expectations, along with every American’s feeling of entitlement, i think there are definitely other factors in play in determining how the younger generations feel about working. for example, on NPR yesterday they were talking about Ford buying out over half their US workers in order to become profitable. like many blue collar union workers, these employees began working for Ford with the expectation that they’d be working there for 30 years, and then taken care of for the rest of their LIVES with big fat pensions. now, many of them, middle aged and with limited skills sets, are out of jobs and have to find new careers. my uncle worked for a factory in indiana for the past 20 some years and was recently forced into early retirement. now, despite a bad back, he’s painting houses to help pay the bills as his pension doesn’t cover his costs of living.

so, in yesteryear, going to work for The Man paid off. it meant a solid future. it meant healthcare and not having to worry about what to do when you got too old or sick to work. now, no one has that security anymore. US employers are outsourcing to asia and laying off people all the time. no one i know goes into a job thinking it’s going to be their lifelong gig. so why should we be expected to commit to working for corporations when really there’s not a whole lot of reason to anymore? why not see if you can work for yourself? if you can’t depend on a corporation to pay your pension when you’re old, why give them your youth?

so many of my friends are making their living as independent photographers, clothiers, web designers, hoopers, jewelers, massage therapists, writers, and all other kinds of trades. while i agree with a lot of what mr. ott wrote on his blog there about a shift in how we view work, and perhaps i also agree somewhat with why, i have to disagree that it’s taking the easy way out or some kind of spoiled-brat, trust-fund, bobo privilege. most of my friends work their asses off, and while i technically work for someone else, i help to run a small business, and it’s no easy feat keeping it afloat. i have to disagree with his statement that says “Ultimately, our parents’ drive to deliver a better childhood is proving a mistake, if a well-intentioned one. We are a generation embarrassed to have day jobs, embarrassed to work for a living. Embarrassed not to be kings and queens.” i think it’s just the opposite. seeing all the long years our parents and grandparents put in at factories and offices and in fields so that one day we could work less than 40 hours a week for a living, and then seeing how that turned out for them has made us realize it’s not worth it. it’s not that we are “embarassed to work for a living”. we’re embarassed to work for companies and employers that don’t care about us, that don’t care about our futures. instead, we’re taking that into our own hands, and to me, that seems pretty damned grown up.

consumer disorder

The trade group anticipates an increase of 5 percent in sales to $457 billion during the holidays, compared with a 6.1 percent increase last year. — sfgate

$457 billion.
BILLION.

in toxic, disposable, unnecessary consumer crap, while at the same time citizens decry the government for not providing health care, education, and other necessary social services. sure, that $457B will produce a significant amount of sales tax which will hopefully (not) be (mis)used on these things that need funding, but what if that money were funneled directly to schools and hospitals and libraries and community projects instead of into Playstations and flat screen TVs and overpriced goods made in 3rd world countries? what kind of world would this be? and, dare i even say it? what would jesus think of that staggering figure? would he applaud the celebration of his birthday with reckless consumer spending, or storm into Wal-Mart and start throwing shit around, a la the moneychanger incident?

this annual consumer madness is almost like a sickness. not almost - it is: affluenza. it defies logic to spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need while basic cultural and human services are struggling every day. while people are starving in our backyards, schools are shutting down, and the sick can’t afford their medications, the privileged are standing outside in line at 4:00am so they can buy a new cheap television. the fact that citizens have been taught to value commercial goods over improving their communities, that consumer culture is “the american way”, that one is entitled to these things despite their inherent toxicity and maleficence is killing us. it’s killing our planet and our society and our humanity. it’s absolutely debauched and sickening, and it makes me ill to see it celebrated on the front page of the paper like these people accomplished some kind of commendable feat.

way to go, america. stay the course.

i, on the otherhand, like last year, won’t be buying gifts and will instead make charitable contributions to local organizations that do good work. any gifts i receive i’ll just give to the goodwill, and i convinced my mom to give me cash instead of goods to a) enable me to visit my family for the holidays and b) pay off my debts, and i encourage others to do the same. if people insist on giving you things, ask them to give you cash, and then use that to do something good. who needs more crap, anyway?