Shawn wrote about the cult of the modern and designer dog breeds in a recent blog post. I´d like to tack on some similar thoughts. I would call this a counter-post, but ¨contra¨ is more daring.
Everything that´s new is also shallow. Some shallow things become complex things through evolution, but most don´t. We have appetites for both the new/shallow and the old/complex, but too much of one or the other is bad. In the cases of the US and Korea, it´s safe to say that the perceived value of the new/shallow is unsustainably high.
An affinity for the new is coincident with the impulse for differentiation. The more my tastes diverge from the tastes of the past or of my family, the more different I feel as a person. The sense of freedom and independence that comes along with this is good.
But there´s also the fact that human nature doesn´t change. If we get to the point where our consumer choices and personal tastes define us -- and where it becomes impossible to understand people at historical or geographical distance -- then we´re just deluding ourselves into thinking we´re more different than we are. This mindset doesn´t lead to liberation. It leads to atomization and isolation, which are the most un-human of human conditions.
Luana and I were in a 500-year-old town over the weekend. When we arrived on Friday, we didn´t know how to get to the beach, so we started walking. Within five minutes, a couple on the road stopped to offer a ride -- luckily for us, it turned out the beach was 5 kilometers away. The couple showed us around and found us a place to stay. The next night, a lady who worked at the place we were staying found us in town and introduced us to her family, which was everyone. We ran into both of them at the bar in town on Sunday afternoon, where the old folks were playing samba. Sometime in the late afternoon, the young people took over. They played the same music, but without the rust and fog of their predecessors.
I guess my lesson was that people who connect with the past are also naturally more inclined to extend their sympathy in the present. In any event, it´s about overcoming those superficial differences and connecting with the truth, which is that all people are more or less the same.
As for the US, I have to imagine that consumerism and the false idea that every new generation is essentially different will subside. In an honest and transparent system, such ideas have to lose in favor of ones that correspond better to the ways humans behave and feel. We just have to hope that when things change it´ll be in the context of a natural correction rather than a crisis.
2 comments:
I like the synergy almost as much as:
bosozoku
and
mukokuseki.
But, more seriously, though, if consumer tastes and demands are not our main definers, what are they? Our location in geography and history?
Or is your point that we are so similar on fundamental levels that any different "taste" or "preference" for a product is merely one snow flake in a storm: different but inconsequently so when viewed in grander terms.
Also, I agree that many new things may be shallow, but do they not need to be granted this high level of de facto value in order for those ones that are complex and valuable to also get supported? People, I think are naturally fearful of genuinely new things, which is why I believe that so many perceived as new things are so shallow, because they are really not new and they are shallow. For instance, tight jeans, or bellbottoms, or any "new" thing in fashion. The new is merely a retelling of the old, which is in part why it's so readily embraced.
contraband contraposting.
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