intellectual properties

recession wishlist for 11/11/11

i heard today was a lucky day, 11/11/11. so in the spirit of making wishes on lucky days, let us itemize the list of crazy plans i have in mind in over the next 10 months (after November Austerity is over, of course!):

• visit family in Michigan sometime before it snows too much (=in the next 30 days?)
• New York City + Puerto Rico for Christmas +NYE 2011
• Phish @ Madison Square Garden New Year’s Run (not NYE but one of the other nights?) tried, did not get tickets
• Utah – January? SLC or Zion?
• weeklong yoga retreat in Mexico – February
• Montana/Glacier NP – April?
• Cruise from Seattle to Alaska, May 2012, with both of our families (not only a crazy plan – actually booked)
• Iceland, June/July 2012 to chase the midnight sun
• August 2012: fly in/out of burning man 2012 for a 72-hour stay
• Fall 2012: NYC School of Visual Arts: Critical Theory and the Arts (MA) . for this, i need to get my shit together. a lot.

**
apparently the way my mind works is that while we are suffering a major Recession and i don’t have a full-time job, i should spend a lot of time and money traveling and apply to an expensive private art school in the one of the most expensive cities in the world.

anyone want to suggest anything else awesome and totally impractical i should consider adding?

#ows: the point (#5)

i just spent the afternoon downtown at Occupy Oakland, and while i did not join the ride/march out to close down the Port, that wasn’t why i was there.  i was there to try to figure out how i feel about what is going on, and to gauge the mood of the movement. and i am glad to report that i feel a lot better about the whole thing after today.

I.

so everyone wants to know: what is the point? what are the goals? what are the demands? i think the wide, broadview goal is an end to corruption of our government by allowing capitalist institutions – who are focused soley on making money, whether someone gets hurt in the process or not – to buy our politicians.  so for me, my personal #1 reason for supporting this movement is that i want campaign finance reform and more rules about lobbying.  bank regulation, i think, falls in line under that, eventually, but if not, it is a parallel primary concern.  but most of us don’t understand more specifically how to get that done. we’re not economic experts.  but campaign finance reform is NOT THAT HARD.

anyway, “what do they want?” contains a whole universe of  macro and micro issues ranging from those above to home foreclosures to racial injustice in the prison system to whatever other issues exist in people’s lives to be unpacked and addressed. lots of them.  and so on a grand scale this needs to be thought about less as ISSUES but more about INTERESTS.

so what is the point? the point is that this is America, and for a long time people have been apathetic to the point that they have allowed themselves to be bought.  there was a dream, a haze, that a large majority walked into. the American Dream got sold out.  and i for one am glad that if nothing else, this is a sign that people Woke Up.  i mean, my god, i thought 9/11 was going to wake people up, but somehow it really didn’t. it only entrenched people more into the dream. and so color me happy that people are talking about this and doing things and organizing events for long enough that there has been discernable impact. i admit that i can’t really tell how much of this is going to “stick”, but the longer this goes on, the more chance there is for things to stick. and i guess how far this movement gets remains to be seen, one year from now, in the 2012 election.

II.

that’s on the domestic side. or is it?  no matter how you cut it, the U.S. financial and consumer culture affects the rest of the world, and the greed and corruption here does not end at our borders.  it gets exported. and hopefully these conversations about injustice and inequality here at home lead to some more understanding about how that affects the rest of the world. a friend of a friend recently said:

“ He was hoping that #ows would help people understand how they were part of a global system and those who are facing the cruelty of structural inequality in the US should also recognize how they are a part of a system that reinforces inequality globally.  He was hoping that this would be a wakeup call not just about privilege in America, but American privilege writ large.”

my highest hope in my heart of hearts is that this is what eventually happens.

III.

recently, this article went around:  http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/10/28/attention-protestors-youre-probably-part-of-the-1-.aspx

 ”In America, the top 1% earn more than $380,000 per year. We are, however, among the richest nations on Earth. How much do you need to earn to be among the top 1% of the world?

$34,000.”

jist:  all you Occupiers are part of the 1% globally.  you’re not starving in the Sudan or living under a facist regime.  the fact that you can even PROTEST means you have nothing to protest about.  so shut up!

yes, we are blessed in America, but that does not mean that we should continue to allow corruption under the flag of capitalism? absolutely not, because, as noted above, it’s not just about us – it does have a global impact. so to those who like to say that the white americans with iPhones can’t/have nothing to protest…..i understand that perspective – that from a certain viewpoint this whole thing is just a flaunt of entitlement - there is a lot of that feeling in Oakland, that protesting is something that only the rich(er) white people do – but IMO, if you flip that around, if rich(er) white people are the only ones willing and able (able to protest in the streets, able to get arrested without dire consequence, able to not be at work, able to leave their families for hours/days), then THEY ARE THE ONES WHO SHOULD.

IV.

yes, the Colbert Report segment on OWS was really funny.  yes, the young people with their ideas are amusing and yes, their systems are very odd and maybe not the most effective.  i’m not into physical occupation myself, and the GAs are way too tedious for my temperament. BUT that does not mean i think THEY should quit, and in fact i am SUPER EXCITED that so many people who have never participated in consensus-based community organizing are now getting to have that experience and i do believe that if nothing else, that is going to shift a lot of people’s lives.

V.

so what is the point?  the point is that people are thinking about and doing things, and whether you think that we have the RIGHT or PRIVILEGE, to me it is more important that people are OUT THERE exercising those rights and privileges than what their specific demands are. the demands will eventually evolve. but right now, the most important thing is for people to pay attention, stay awake, and contribute however, whenever, wherever works for them so that the overarching INTEREST of getting corruption out of our political and financial systems happens before America gets deeper into shit. THAT is the point.

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?

privilege can be paralyzing

2 interesting generational tidbits:

snarkyninja posted on the subject of paralyzation, referencing this NYT op-ed in which Gen Y is being referred to as Gen Q – Generation Quiet – as in: apathetic and self-absorbed.

…the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed. I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be…Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good.

but is it apathy? a fine retort: Generation Overwhelmed:

We are not quiet. Molly, the passionate environmentalist, Daniel, the bourgeoning theologian, Ben, the political communicator — all of these kids have big mouths and lots of ideas. We don’t hesitate to assert opinions. We are often outraged — outraged, in fact, to the point of tears about the war in Iraq. I have lived this outrage since March 20, 2003. And I have had countless conversations with my friends, my mentors, my family, and my own pained conscience about what can possibly be done.

We are not apathetic. What we are, and perhaps this is what Friedman was picking up on, is totally and completely overwhelmed.

oh, how i relate to that.

similarly, electrolicious and others have been posting/discussing this bit about how Gen Y is all just a bunch of narcissists with Peter Pan syndrome who will never grow up and get “real jobs” because they are all riding on their baby boomer parents’ trusts funds, and instead of working 9-5 corporate jobs spend their younger years doing things like ART and VOLUNTEERING – gasp!

it’s interesting that this is seen so negatively in the U.S., where by the age of 30 you’re expected to have gone to college and grad school and gotten married and bought a house and started having babies and living completely independently from the rest of your family. in other cultures, offspring stay at home for so much longer, and living with your parents doesn’t have this horrid cultural stigma attached to it because hey – it makes sense. my younger sister (who is 28) lives with my parents because where they live, it makes sense.

aside: Gen X=born btw 1960-1978(ish) (Curt Cobain), Gen Y=born 1978-2000(ish) (Britney Spears), although the exact ranges vary, and many see those like myself born between 1975-1985 as their own “cusp” generation – several years younger than the oldest Gen Xers, and several years older than the youngest Gen Yers. in earlier times, a few years might not have made a big difference, but i think that the cultural difference between me – who is 31 – and someone who is 21 right now is pretty huge. i think people are sort of tired of talking about Gen X, and i see a lot more articles now focused on Gen Y – you know, “those crazy kids“.

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.