My favorite place to spend a day off...

Good little consumers

I was washing my face last night and it occurred to me...the endless cycle of consumerism most of us are caught in. Is it worse now because it is being disseminated by an ever more pervasive media? I definitely think so. In psychological test after test, it is shown that human beings measure their self worth and personal happiness in relation to (by comparison with) other people. Healthy? No. Human? Yes. Commercials do their job by creating a fantasy world of people who are better looking, richer and happier than we are. This creates an insecurity in us which is the life blood of marketing. I don't wear much make-up, but I do wear some and last night I wondered why. There I was using eye makeup remover and soap to wash off this stuff and then, since my skin dries out from using soap (which every dermatologist will tell you should be used sparingly) I need to use a moisturizer to put the moisture back in, and then if my skin were to break out from the moisturizer, there would be another product to deal with that too. Ayayay. So there we are: a perfect little mini-cycle of consumerism that is self reinforcing and sustaining. Sadly, even knowing this I probably won't stop because the psychological hold on me is so strong. I do want to see what other cycles of consumerism I might be able to get a handle on though...

Immigration and displacement

I read Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" a while ago and it got me thinking about that feeling of displacement that immigrants feel in their adopted country. Neither of my parents grew up in America and I know that both of them have had quite strong longings over the years to be back in their countries of birth. (Those feelings exacerbated particularly when this country is in the grip of one or another right wing agenda.) Their experiences were eased by the fact that they came from English speaking countries and are both white, but cultural differences exist nonetheless. As Zadie Smith explores, the displacement becomes even stronger when their children are born in the new country and have no connection to the countries of the parents' birth. The children feel a strong need to fit in and often try to distance themselves from their parents' culture as a way of asserting their own identity and aligning themselves with the country and culture they are a part of right now.

The immigration debate going on right now borders on the ridiculous. Here we are, a nation of immigrants and as they say about environmentalists ("an environmentalist is just a person who already bought their country house") those of us who are already safely "in" and have our citizenship are going to try and keep out anyone new? Or is this at base, just racism raising it's ugly head again? Do Americans have a problem with Eastern European immigrants or is it just Mexicans and Arabs we don't want crossing our borders? I liked Bloomberg's very practical answer to someone's question about the immigration debate. He pointed out that while there are in fact many people here illegally, we must take responsibility for turning a blind eye to the laws already in place. (Businesses have taken advantage of illegal immigrants and their vulnerability for years, to boost their bottom line.) Not to mention, that if we want social security to be there when our generation needs it, we NEED immigrant workers and the taxes they pay in order to fund the program. Birth rates in this country are getting lower and lower and there are just not enough American citizens to sustain social security if we closed the borders. On a practical level, it just makes sense. On a human level, isolationism is a recipe for ruin in my opinion. It is only through interacting with other cultures that true understanding takes place.

Pretty funny

Paula Scher's diagram of the lifecycle of a typical blog. (Click to enlarge!)

Meaning and Meaninglessness

Just finished Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" and I am left raw. I realize that this feeling of meaninglessness that she is encountering so strongly now upon her husband's death - is something I have struggled with my whole life. Yes, we do create our own meaning in life, but the narcissism that comes from being alone (the question of self-pity she addresses) is antithetical to the creation of meaning. It destroys it. Our interaction with others is where meaning lies...
What story will you tell
at the end of the day
to no one?
And ending as it does
and being told to no one
what truth was there?
Can there be meaning without others? If everyone on earth was gone, even if one believed in God, would there be any possibility of meaning? We see ourselves through other's eyes...the eyes of those who love us and those who don't. We resist this, try to see ourselves objectively, without depending on approval from others, but this is only possible to a point. Our very existence is tied so intricately to the lives around us...and yet, at core we are alone. It is a terrifying paradox. Of course this existential fact can be freeing, but only to a point. The point at which our self-created reality collides with the emotional truth of human ties.

Ordinary Things

There is a shadow figure in my brain
a non-existent someone I speak to
in a sun-lit kitchen about mundane things,
and share a meal with, and ordinary conversation,
a story perhaps of my day,
the way the sky looked as I walked home in the rain,
the spill I took on wet grass,
the smell of which evoked
a summer spent long ago in Arles–
Marie-Hélene, bicycle rides and créme de menthe sodas–
the minutiae more alive in the retelling,
the story itself imbuing meaning,
without it the day lost
in shadow play and half remembered rumor