Filed under: Culture
The following thoughts were originally sent in an email to a few friends and former coworkers. I was encouraged to share them, so I shall.
Sitting on the Amtrak Regional train to Philadelphia on my way home for Thanksgiving, I stare out the window at graffiti covered landmarks and the rest of urban sprawl’s slow, benign destruction of my country and wonder why things are the way they are. Having deemed the replacement of the Mona Lisa with modern slop and William Shakespeare with Nicolas Sparks insufficient, we now look to the amber waves of grain. purple mountains majesty, and the fruited plains as impediments to mini malls and Wal-Marts. Formerly the world’s greatest producer, we are poised to abandoned American industry and its millions of jobs and priceless history in favor of trillion dollar care packages for multinational corporations. What was formerly cliché spitting-into-the-wind about America’s long descent has become reality. Parents can’t take care of their kids anymore; it takes a village. Yet small towns are sacrificed to this urban and suburban mess.
I am aware of the irony. I type this on a laptop. I am a passenger on a train system abhorred by my anti-modernity predecessors such as President Martin Van Buren. I have an ipod and a fairly sophisticated cell phone. But to argue that the advent of technological progress has not in any way dumbed-down our society is nearly impossible, especially if you find yourself–as I recently did–in front of the idiot box trying to figure out how we got from Dickens’s packed-house reading of A Christmas Carol in Boston to “The Hills” and “Gossip Girl.” Or even, over a relatively shorter period of time, Fugazi to Good Charlotte, Bruce Springsteen to Jack Johnson or Dave Matthews. The only question more frightening than “How did we get here?” is “Where are we going?”
