9/10/08
Great Losses of the Twenty-First Century
We're in an age where it seems as if anything could be possible. We have gently swushing sidewalks that move us in airports, instant communication across miles at the touch of a button or slight voice prompt, gadgets in our kitchens that replace hours of manual labor, and roaring vehicles that dash from one point to the next with reliability and comfort. We have a seemingly limitless supply of information at our whim and wish- on everything from underwater microbiology to the worship practices of ancient cultures we'll never need to know about. This is truly a Golden Age of progress, technology, and learning. We have medical advances that people never dreamed of, and the medicine goes far beyond mere bodily function and crosses into matters of the mind and soul, it seems.
Yet somehow, in the midst of all of this, mankind is regressing. Not all, of course, but I look at the progresses we've made in learning and education and wonder where things went wrong for many industrialized nations, especially the USA and UK. I've compiled a list of the things that I feel our society is losing grip of, abstract things that need to be found and tagged and set on a museum shelf for future generations to ponder...
1) We're losing our ability to focus.
Skilled trades are disappearing in the US, many people just cannot focus long enough to learn a hand trade.
I sat on the couch next to my husband the other day, watching Penelope (which is an excellent movie, look for a review soon!) and attempting to play Civilization III on my laptop while I watched the movie. Michael gets irritated with this habit, he would love to just snuggle and be still, but I feel a need to keep my hands busy. I check my email addresses, blog, StumbleUpon account, and icanhascheezburger.com way too often. One email at work can send me frantically running about the store, forgetting whatever project I had going on. I'm not the only one like this, I know. We're bombarded by such a constant influx of information, suggestion, demand, pressure, and appeal that we often do not know which way to turn. This fractures whatever concentration we could get in between soundbytes and drivel, and we're left with no focus and a whopping migraine.
2) We're losing the art of conversation.
This picture doesn't have much to do with conversation, but it's cute.
I recently ate at a pleasant little restaurant in Grand Rapids. At a table near us there was a very young couple sitting nearby. Typical 'Abercrombie' style teenagers, the boy looked disinterestedly around the restaurant while the girl sat and texted on her jeweled phone. She had a tight tee shirt on that read: 'All I need is love... and jewelry!' paired with a miniskirt. Please let my kids become nuns before they hit that age...
When we left the establishment, he was still staring vacantly into space while she texted. This isn't the first time I've seen things like this, and I've noticed that people's conversations are more fractured, more shallow, less meaningful. People are more apt to stick to their opinion, you don't see as much real give and take in conversation as could be comfortable, and many people seem disinclined to really, really engage in a stimulating intellectual conversation that isn't about themselves. Maybe the science fiction books were right when they predicted a culture that merely grunts and squeals at each other, while communicating on giant holographic screens. Or did I even read that...?
3) We're losing our ability to entertain ourselves.
My husband Michael always finds entertainment and inspiration. He is an example to me.
I remember being a kid in rural Michigan. We were poor, dirt poor. I had very few toys, and my dad was bipolar and would often send us out of the house for hours on end. Although it seemed rather cruel, this was excellent for me. I learned to plant things (they occasionally grew, I figured out the whole growing seasons/watering gig a decade later) from seeds I found in the fields. I learned to dig clay out of the ground, separate it from the sand, and sculpt tiny earthen bowls, dolls, and play food. Most things cracked and crumbled, but it was great fun, and completely free. I found bricks of some forgotten project of my dad's and drew a fairy tale scene on every last one, I picked whatever wild fruit was in season and ate it until my belly ached. My sisters and I mad mudpies and picked flowers and wove grasses and ate snow and jumped in fallen leaves and made elaborate structures from pine needle beds. We didn't know the meaning of the word 'bored'.
Many of the privileged kids nowadays have one gadget after another. Even low-income kids have plenty of stuff to do and buttons to press and boopy sounds to hear and creepy disembodied voices to tell them what button to press next. They are surrounded by so much stimuli that their brains kind of melt into a pile of goo, I think. Take a kid out of this constant bombardment of bullcrap, and they get the fidgets.
Even us grown-ups have an almost chemical dependency on 'fun'. We spend a great deal of our income on vacations, gaming equipment, gambling, porn, food, reading material... you name it. You stick most of us (me included) into a bare room with no electricity or screen of some sort, and you'll soon have a screaming nutcase on your hands, whereas many people of old would whittle wood or stitch fine embroidery, or build something out of matchsticks, or write memoirs (on paper, with a pen) or engage their brain in something other than mindless reality shows.
Sure, we're making leaps and bounds in technology and medicine. We have smart cars and programmable microwaves and intricate scheduling tools. But has any of this made us any smarter? I think that we're actually losing our ability to innovate. Having less things made people more resourceful in older days, still does in third world countries. I am still astounded by people who just cannot manage to assemble a healthy meal for their families out of what's in the fridge or pantry. If you've grown up having every single need accomodated, you will never have a reason to invent, say, a fork that heats a bite of lasanga as you pick it up (please tell me someone is inventing this).
Our loss of ability to create is somehow connected with my next point:
5) We're losing art.
Natural History Museum in London. This building is covered in detail, sculpture, and ornate artwork. The Age of Beauty died with the Industrial Revolution and hasn't come back since.
Quick, think of a great, original graphic artist of today.
Did you say Banksy? Audrey Kawasaki? Those were two of the very few that came to my mind. But if I cast my mind back to older times, dozens, if not hundreds of names, styles, and art forms come flooding to my brain. Sure, there's the compounded years to account for, but I really believe (and so do many artsy people I've spoken to) that we are in an artistic dry period. Very little beautiful or really unique has come out of the past several decades. I cannot blame it on computers- I have seen some utterly gorgeous things come off Photoshop tutorials- but I think I can blame it on easy access to cheap art supplies, limited attention span, a need for mass-production, and an arrogant refusal to embrace anything of old.
I'm not complaining about any modern artist, I just think that our learning approaches and schools are structuring so much method and technique into an art class that the essence of beauty and creativity is lost.
6) We've lost our innocence.
A child devoid of innocence is part of a society bereft of its soul.
This is not something ongoing. It has happened, and it is, I fear, permanent. We have been bombarded with racism, war, sex, violence, cruelty, disaster, human conflict, injustice, and everything in between or that is a combination of any of those. We laugh at coarse humor, we mock people who try to live a good life, we believe nothing right and everything tawdry and wrong. There is an internet forum (or twelve) for any deviancy known to mankind, with rabid supporters and detractors.
Children are not allowed to be innocent. If they are kept from knowledge of things adult for a while, they are instead pasted with corporate merchandising, slogans, and drivel. It is nearly impossible these days for me to find an affordable pair of shoes for my little girls without Dora, Nemo, Tinkerbell, Barbie, or those most hideous Bratz affixed to multiple surfaces of the vinyl. Why do our kids need this? They don't, but some corporating somewhere feels that they need the 'brand recognition' from infancy.
No Dora the Explorer shoes for this tot. She doesn't seem to mind. Hopefully she'll grow up with her own identity instead of a mass-assigned corporate philosophy.
... so what is it going to take to win back our innocence, our attention spans, our true cultural identity? I'm not exactly sure, but I do know that it requires a severance of some ties. We cancelled our cable months ago and haven't missed it. We instituted a 'no licensed character' rule for clothing and acessories (not all grandparents adhere to this, but we're getting there). We bake our own bread, churn our own butter, and sew our own curtains. It's just a beginning, just a very bit of the surface, the brown part of the onion. Eventually, hopefully, we will have a patch of land somewhere with an off-the-grid straw bale house and multiple inventions working inside, a pantry stocked with home-grown preserves, and a cellar lined with homebrew. There will be a loom in place of a television, and out-loud stories in place of an expensive sound system. There will be herbs growing on the roof and mushrooms in the basement. Goats will nibble on our flowers and fruit trees will shower white petals on the gravel drive, hopefully. A huge kitchen will invite people in to sit and chat, argue, pray, read or draw. We hope for a hub of human activity, a source of learning and inspiration, a refuge from the storms of unrest outside.
Morning glories lazily taking over a fence, sunshine streaming through the leaves. That's home. That's comfort. Who needs whirring engines and shrieking cell phones when you have nature and beauty?
It's a dream. We'd like to re-discover some of the roots of our human civilization and re-establish traditions of comfort and family.
Yet somehow, in the midst of all of this, mankind is regressing. Not all, of course, but I look at the progresses we've made in learning and education and wonder where things went wrong for many industrialized nations, especially the USA and UK. I've compiled a list of the things that I feel our society is losing grip of, abstract things that need to be found and tagged and set on a museum shelf for future generations to ponder...
1) We're losing our ability to focus.
Skilled trades are disappearing in the US, many people just cannot focus long enough to learn a hand trade.I sat on the couch next to my husband the other day, watching Penelope (which is an excellent movie, look for a review soon!) and attempting to play Civilization III on my laptop while I watched the movie. Michael gets irritated with this habit, he would love to just snuggle and be still, but I feel a need to keep my hands busy. I check my email addresses, blog, StumbleUpon account, and icanhascheezburger.com way too often. One email at work can send me frantically running about the store, forgetting whatever project I had going on. I'm not the only one like this, I know. We're bombarded by such a constant influx of information, suggestion, demand, pressure, and appeal that we often do not know which way to turn. This fractures whatever concentration we could get in between soundbytes and drivel, and we're left with no focus and a whopping migraine.
2) We're losing the art of conversation.
This picture doesn't have much to do with conversation, but it's cute.I recently ate at a pleasant little restaurant in Grand Rapids. At a table near us there was a very young couple sitting nearby. Typical 'Abercrombie' style teenagers, the boy looked disinterestedly around the restaurant while the girl sat and texted on her jeweled phone. She had a tight tee shirt on that read: 'All I need is love... and jewelry!' paired with a miniskirt. Please let my kids become nuns before they hit that age...
When we left the establishment, he was still staring vacantly into space while she texted. This isn't the first time I've seen things like this, and I've noticed that people's conversations are more fractured, more shallow, less meaningful. People are more apt to stick to their opinion, you don't see as much real give and take in conversation as could be comfortable, and many people seem disinclined to really, really engage in a stimulating intellectual conversation that isn't about themselves. Maybe the science fiction books were right when they predicted a culture that merely grunts and squeals at each other, while communicating on giant holographic screens. Or did I even read that...?
3) We're losing our ability to entertain ourselves.
My husband Michael always finds entertainment and inspiration. He is an example to me.I remember being a kid in rural Michigan. We were poor, dirt poor. I had very few toys, and my dad was bipolar and would often send us out of the house for hours on end. Although it seemed rather cruel, this was excellent for me. I learned to plant things (they occasionally grew, I figured out the whole growing seasons/watering gig a decade later) from seeds I found in the fields. I learned to dig clay out of the ground, separate it from the sand, and sculpt tiny earthen bowls, dolls, and play food. Most things cracked and crumbled, but it was great fun, and completely free. I found bricks of some forgotten project of my dad's and drew a fairy tale scene on every last one, I picked whatever wild fruit was in season and ate it until my belly ached. My sisters and I mad mudpies and picked flowers and wove grasses and ate snow and jumped in fallen leaves and made elaborate structures from pine needle beds. We didn't know the meaning of the word 'bored'.
Many of the privileged kids nowadays have one gadget after another. Even low-income kids have plenty of stuff to do and buttons to press and boopy sounds to hear and creepy disembodied voices to tell them what button to press next. They are surrounded by so much stimuli that their brains kind of melt into a pile of goo, I think. Take a kid out of this constant bombardment of bullcrap, and they get the fidgets.
Even us grown-ups have an almost chemical dependency on 'fun'. We spend a great deal of our income on vacations, gaming equipment, gambling, porn, food, reading material... you name it. You stick most of us (me included) into a bare room with no electricity or screen of some sort, and you'll soon have a screaming nutcase on your hands, whereas many people of old would whittle wood or stitch fine embroidery, or build something out of matchsticks, or write memoirs (on paper, with a pen) or engage their brain in something other than mindless reality shows.
4) We're losing innovation.
An innovative man in Niles, MI, rigged his bicycle with a motor, saving him hundreds of dollars on a car and allowing him an easier commute to work. Why don't more people today figure things out for themselves like this? Lack of ambition and education?
An innovative man in Niles, MI, rigged his bicycle with a motor, saving him hundreds of dollars on a car and allowing him an easier commute to work. Why don't more people today figure things out for themselves like this? Lack of ambition and education?Sure, we're making leaps and bounds in technology and medicine. We have smart cars and programmable microwaves and intricate scheduling tools. But has any of this made us any smarter? I think that we're actually losing our ability to innovate. Having less things made people more resourceful in older days, still does in third world countries. I am still astounded by people who just cannot manage to assemble a healthy meal for their families out of what's in the fridge or pantry. If you've grown up having every single need accomodated, you will never have a reason to invent, say, a fork that heats a bite of lasanga as you pick it up (please tell me someone is inventing this).
Our loss of ability to create is somehow connected with my next point:
5) We're losing art.
Natural History Museum in London. This building is covered in detail, sculpture, and ornate artwork. The Age of Beauty died with the Industrial Revolution and hasn't come back since.Quick, think of a great, original graphic artist of today.
Did you say Banksy? Audrey Kawasaki? Those were two of the very few that came to my mind. But if I cast my mind back to older times, dozens, if not hundreds of names, styles, and art forms come flooding to my brain. Sure, there's the compounded years to account for, but I really believe (and so do many artsy people I've spoken to) that we are in an artistic dry period. Very little beautiful or really unique has come out of the past several decades. I cannot blame it on computers- I have seen some utterly gorgeous things come off Photoshop tutorials- but I think I can blame it on easy access to cheap art supplies, limited attention span, a need for mass-production, and an arrogant refusal to embrace anything of old.
I'm not complaining about any modern artist, I just think that our learning approaches and schools are structuring so much method and technique into an art class that the essence of beauty and creativity is lost.
6) We've lost our innocence.
A child devoid of innocence is part of a society bereft of its soul.This is not something ongoing. It has happened, and it is, I fear, permanent. We have been bombarded with racism, war, sex, violence, cruelty, disaster, human conflict, injustice, and everything in between or that is a combination of any of those. We laugh at coarse humor, we mock people who try to live a good life, we believe nothing right and everything tawdry and wrong. There is an internet forum (or twelve) for any deviancy known to mankind, with rabid supporters and detractors.
Children are not allowed to be innocent. If they are kept from knowledge of things adult for a while, they are instead pasted with corporate merchandising, slogans, and drivel. It is nearly impossible these days for me to find an affordable pair of shoes for my little girls without Dora, Nemo, Tinkerbell, Barbie, or those most hideous Bratz affixed to multiple surfaces of the vinyl. Why do our kids need this? They don't, but some corporating somewhere feels that they need the 'brand recognition' from infancy.
No Dora the Explorer shoes for this tot. She doesn't seem to mind. Hopefully she'll grow up with her own identity instead of a mass-assigned corporate philosophy. ... so what is it going to take to win back our innocence, our attention spans, our true cultural identity? I'm not exactly sure, but I do know that it requires a severance of some ties. We cancelled our cable months ago and haven't missed it. We instituted a 'no licensed character' rule for clothing and acessories (not all grandparents adhere to this, but we're getting there). We bake our own bread, churn our own butter, and sew our own curtains. It's just a beginning, just a very bit of the surface, the brown part of the onion. Eventually, hopefully, we will have a patch of land somewhere with an off-the-grid straw bale house and multiple inventions working inside, a pantry stocked with home-grown preserves, and a cellar lined with homebrew. There will be a loom in place of a television, and out-loud stories in place of an expensive sound system. There will be herbs growing on the roof and mushrooms in the basement. Goats will nibble on our flowers and fruit trees will shower white petals on the gravel drive, hopefully. A huge kitchen will invite people in to sit and chat, argue, pray, read or draw. We hope for a hub of human activity, a source of learning and inspiration, a refuge from the storms of unrest outside.
Morning glories lazily taking over a fence, sunshine streaming through the leaves. That's home. That's comfort. Who needs whirring engines and shrieking cell phones when you have nature and beauty? It's what The Urban Rebellion is all about, after all.
Labels: art, conversation, culture, innocence, knowledge, learning, losses, modern, rebellion, society
56 Comments:
At September 13, 2008 2:51 PM ,
yail bloor said...
At September 13, 2008 3:01 PM ,
sierra sue said...
At September 13, 2008 3:39 PM ,
w3bsmith said...
This is not really art in my mind. It's very confused, it doesn't have a common goal, and the point of the imagery is lost due to lack of ability of the artist. It's not a matter of "Oh I can do that!" Because frankly I can't. I don't have the technical expertise to do any of that in that particular media. But I understand the concepts as I apply them to my own media.
It's also not about the fact that it's different. Different does not art make. Art conveys a message. If the message is not conveyed the artist has failed. A lack of message is not a form of art either, because in trying not to convey a message you inevitably convey at least one.
So I would stand by Sarah's general stance that we are losing art. There are exceptions, but they are fewer each passing year.
At September 13, 2008 5:16 PM ,
sarah jane said...
@sierra: have i ever learned a studio art? yes, i am trained as a jewelry designer and have successfully designed and sold for well over a decade now! tiny details of jewelry, confined to the spaces of hand, ear, and neck- that has been challenging but highly rewarding. there's a link to my commercial site somewhere on this urban rebellion blog...
anyhow- i have the classical training, not just in sculpture, but in sketching as well. years of discipline have honed my craft as well as my contribution to the art world, but i am still nowhere near my full potential!
i know about Picasso's history- he has been one of the contributors to our 'modern' art- although dead now and i see copies of his work but not much as original as his.
that is my basic point- i am not saying that not one single good or original artist exists, but that the beauty is dwindling and ebing replaces with half-complete works, technique over art, and forced design rather than original creativity.
hope is not lost, but i think our culture stifles art right now by over-encouraging it!
At September 13, 2008 6:25 PM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 13, 2008 6:55 PM ,
w3bsmith said...
Waldorf Education sounds great. The only aspect I would disagree with is the no computer exposure. That is a vital part of education these days. That is unless you want people set back like the generation before us when they hit the work world. Or maybe I'm just a biassed programmer ;)
At September 13, 2008 11:44 PM ,
Jessica said...
At September 14, 2008 11:53 AM ,
Anonymous said...
The Industrial revolution is what inspired, financed and indeed constructed this magnificent building Plus many others (Eifel Tower, Chrysler Building, and any of a huge number of bridges).
The industrial revolution has enabled and empowered us and to this day we are still surfing a wave of technological progress. The lack of art is not a reality. Great art is still being created, but the stuff we see promoted as art is a result, not of creativity and beauty, but marketability, profit, greed. This is non-art pushed by a cynical circle to a wealthy elite with a jaded, materialist outlook.
I happen to think that the much vaulted Picasso's work is a fine example of this 'exploit the rich sucker' art.
Look and you will find ordinary people enjoying fulfilling and valuable lives. They won't be on TV. They won't be in the films, and they won't be buying expensive art. They are out there getting on with life, raising families and limiting their consumption of rubbish TV and rubbish food.
At September 14, 2008 12:40 PM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 14, 2008 2:21 PM ,
Adam said...
At September 14, 2008 3:22 PM ,
Corey said...
At September 14, 2008 11:35 PM ,
Anonymous said...
For example:
'We're losing the ability to "TRADITIONALLY focus." You have a point, but it's a broken one. There are lots of shiny things for all of us to get distracted by, and forget what we had initially begun, but all that really needs is self control. I use the technology that usually distracts me, to remind me. I get email alerts, alarms, reminders and other such things to keep me on track every day.
"We're losing the art of TRADITIONAL conversation." A lot of people are just plain nervous to talk to someone face to face. It's much easier for shy people to express their feelings and thoughts through a computer, or phone. These people don't have to worry about facing rejection when they are not facing the person they are talking to. They become more relaxed, and even open up more. We are not losing conversation, just the means on which we communicate.
"We are losing the ability to TRADITIONALLY entertain ourselves." By no stretch of the imagination is that even possible in today’s day and age. There are countless ways of being self-entertained. There are countless games, toys, activities, hobbies, movies, etc to keep all of us entertained. Technology has made most things affordable for most people. Others usually find ways of invention and adaptation. Sure, not everyone likes to plants gardens or explore a forest, but that doesn't mean they can't entertain themselves in some fashion to befit their means.
"We're losing innovation" really sounded like "We are becoming lazier". The way you weaved the paragraph, it seemed like you were trying to make two points in one. Yeah, we place a lot of faith into technology that makes life easier for us. It takes all the miniscule tasks that take our time away from other tasks we need more time for. But the time one is done reading this paragraph, it just seems like a rant about how we are letting our lives slip away as we allow technology take care of our every need, and as a result we can't form a creative thought. But that simply isn't true. We are innovative. We are thinking up more and more awesome ways of doing things but if people begin to take advantage and become dependent on certain time saving technologies, then that's just laziness.
"We're losing TRADITIONAL art". What really is going on, and your absolutely correct is, the majority of people will look at a Jackson Pollock, or a Picasso, and not understand it at all. It's not because we are losing art. We are just evolving into a new era. Architecture for example is just one way how our interests change. Looking at an ancient roman cathedral, you'll see styles popular with the time. Same thing with buildings built in our time. Technology has given us the ability to work outside TRADITIONAL methods. We can create smoother lines and more abrupt shapes. I may not be able to hand draw a bowl of fruit, but give me several hours in Photoshop, and I can produce a print that rivals Van Gogh. Sure it wasn't drawn with a pencil and paper, but I'll use my brain in the same manner as Da Vinci, or Michelangelo. What is the difference?
"We are losing our Innocence". Really, you can't even put "Traditional" in that statement. Sadly, I blame parents for today’s children growing up to quick. All the tools to prevent your child from being exposed to certain things are in your own home. We can't change what is being broadcast on TV, but we can limit how much and what is being exposed to our precious snowflakes. V-Chips are installed in EVERY TV now, and that began several years ago. Even cable boxes, DVD’s players, and video game consoles are supplied with parental controls. They did that much for you, now all you have to do is apply. It. If you don't like certain toys, don't buy em. If your kid is screaming for em, grow a back bone, be the adult, and deal with them. So really, it's your choice what your child is exposed to. Sure, they will eventually get into something that you will disagree with, but you need to do your best with what you got. And just because certain technologies are cheaper, doesn't mean they are necessary. And does it really matter if your snowflake wants to wear shoes with a cartoon character on them? I bet your mom bought you some shoes with rainbow bright and care bears or some crap, and you probably LOVED them. But having fun with fashion isn't "losing innocence".
I see your point in all of this, but really it seems like your longing for the past. We are not losing anything; we are just reinventing ways to get things accomplished.
At September 15, 2008 7:03 PM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 15, 2008 11:12 PM ,
justin said...
At September 16, 2008 10:08 AM ,
Tim Wright said...
At September 16, 2008 10:48 AM ,
Shad said...
At September 20, 2008 8:16 PM ,
Sol Smith said...
I blog about the same sort of stuff, from time to time, and I can't stand Dora.
Keep up the good work. I hope there are more of us out there.
At September 20, 2008 9:34 PM ,
sarah jane said...
to people (stumblers, mostly) who felt the need to personally attack me because i shared a few thoughts & opinions: chill. the. heck. out! dang.
to people who think i'm old and out of touch: i'm 30, have 3 gorgeous non-fidgety well-behaved kids of my own, and have managed to escape corporatism about as much as i possibly can. i'm not some grumpy old fart sitting on a porch regaling people with tales of yesteryear. although i do love talking to those guys...
to the art snobs who think i'm a retarded uneducated person incapable of seeing beauty in anything modern- i didn't say that there is nothing good in todaY's art! i said there is not much, and i stick to it.
i absolutely loved the feedback i got from this article, i intend to write some more like this again soon. meanwhile, we'll return you to your regularly scheduled drivel;)
At September 20, 2008 10:13 PM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 22, 2008 8:11 AM ,
Corey said...
At September 22, 2008 8:29 PM ,
Erik said...
At September 22, 2008 9:31 PM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 23, 2008 1:05 AM ,
Anonymous said...
in mankind.
I have seen evidence of all of this, just open your eyes.
At September 23, 2008 1:48 PM ,
inyourstory said...
At September 23, 2008 1:58 PM ,
w3bsmith said...
Getting in touch with that is kind of what we are about.
At September 23, 2008 5:52 PM ,
Andrew said...
I think you have a legitimate point here; a lot of aspects of human life have really deteriorated over the years, but that's not to say that we need to revert to our neolithic roots or anything. I'm not trying to say that loss of innocence is actually a good thing (though it could be), or some of the things that others have already mentioned. I only want to address your proposed solution.
I'm glad that you brought up the problems you saw, and I am glad you are taking matters into your own hands to solve these problems, but I honestly think your solution is counterproductive, escapist, and selfish. By going "off the grid" I believe you are isolating your children and putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to surviving in the world. Because remember, no matter how much you want to return to a simpler life, the other 6 billion people may not see things the same way.
I don't mean to tell you how to raise your children or anything, I just think that making them churn butter and not letting them watch Spongebob is not the right answer. I believe you are too enamored with the way you grew up to realize that that is not necessarily the best way for your kids to grow up.
I believe the real answer is much more difficult because you do need to protect your children from negative influences without denying their existence or value. Running away and hiding, however, is not protecting. I don't think that a child's identity is so flimsy--Dora the Explorer doesn't have to be the mark of a "mass-assigned corporate philosophy" taking over a child's soul--she can just be a pair of really cool shoes.
I apologize if I seemed harsh, condescending, or presumptuous. I didn't mean to attack you or anything. Just trying to make some honest conversation.
At September 23, 2008 7:50 PM ,
toonmonk said...
At September 23, 2008 8:04 PM ,
Maryanne said...
Much of what is valued as art in the gallery/museum area is part of the consumer culture, or has to do with fashion, advertising, or the hugely cynical "studios" of factory "artists" like Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons.
(remember that Koons' was a stockbroker before he started selling his work, I have heard it was a result of a bet with someone that he could make more money in the art world than in stockselling)
What has been devalued is the ability of the individual to make their own stuff. This should be part of education, doing things well, writing, drawing, making music, constructing items for yourself.
At September 25, 2008 2:19 AM ,
Me, Myself, and my Echo said...
At September 26, 2008 3:34 AM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 26, 2008 7:14 AM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 26, 2008 7:23 AM ,
w3bsmith said...
While true to the attitude of these times, this is a horrible thing to say. My children are too dear to me to throw under the grinding wheels of war.
At September 26, 2008 4:57 PM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 27, 2008 2:11 PM ,
emily said...
At September 27, 2008 4:20 PM ,
w3bsmith said...
We are well aware of the jewelry industry. Just look at the banner to the right if you want to see what some of us make for a living.
The picture of the jeweler working is another jeweler at the store; one who didn't want their face "on the internet" ;).
I spent many years slinging pewter, learning wax carving, and how to set stones and finish off rings. There's rarely a watch battery I can change; no matter what my wife says ;).
Also we have a jeweler named Emily at our store. She's spent years at the trade as well and is our head jeweler.
Coincidence?
At September 27, 2008 4:26 PM ,
sarah jane said...
i'm surprised you only make 50K after that many years in the industry! i took that photo at our shop, and we pay our jewelers better than the median 26K! i myself am the designer for the company, fifteen years experience, making a decent enough wage, with benefits, and we are all treated wonderfully. what city do you work in?
@inyourstory-
i would absolutely have to agree about nature! i have lived in columbus, oh, and the urban sprawl there is rather nauseating. i wish cities would rebuild bad areas before moving outward, but i guess its just a few of us, overruled by whoever has more money and pull.
@andrew-
you have a point that some of these things are not detrimental. but i think of things like the electricity used by the egyptains, complicated astrolabes, and the legend of Atlantis, and i wonder what happened that those civilizations lost important things? are we heading down the same path? certainly. is it a bad thing? possibly not, i don't think our own generation will have the answers to that.
i did sound somewhat escapist, its probably because i am exhausted by the noise and clatter and superficiality of the world.
@maryanne-
absolutely.
@me, myself, echo-
silence is a prized commodity in our household! i have to agree completely with that!
At September 27, 2008 4:28 PM ,
w3bsmith said...
I forgot to note, when recently trying to gauge jeweler wages for something we were thinking a year back, I was appalled at the lack of value placed on a jewelers detailed job.
I'm a programmer by trade, and although I know it's looked at as an engineering job, I have only accepted wages that low for charity work. I forged my own way, with a lot of divine guidance, and general stumbling and stupidity, to bring in the wages I can occasion. I did spend my time down at the lowest paying jobs in order to gain the tools I needed to strike out on my own, and I have had desperate times between contracts.
As a general rule I think that most people should not accept low wages for complex work even if it's what they love. A Jewelers job is in many ways a very complex job; as is a mechanics or a plumbers job.
Rather than sit back and say you should appreciate them, they should sit back and say I'm worth x amount and if you don't respect that then you don't need me. Wage prices set the level of respect, like it or not, that a person has for another persons work. That goes for anything of value. The more you pay, the more you respect something; and if that something is an item the more you take care of it - it would be far too costly to not do so.
At September 27, 2008 10:02 PM ,
Me, Myself, and my Echo said...
Their life is not so great and trust me, they cannot afford to say that. You may not know, but the city of Surat in Gujarat is the biggest destination for raw diamonds - for polishing. Now, even acity close by called Ahmedabad has a little bit of the trade flowing in. I grew up in ahmedabad, and walked around the city quite a bit. The shops were ACTUALLY Sweat shops. The ceiling used to be maybe about 7 feet high, 2-3 bulbs, one huge grinding thing (the thing like a potters wheel, on which they grind?) and 5-6 people sitting around it. The whole affair was covered by flat corrugated iron roofing sheets. Now Ahmedabad is very close to the line of Tropic of Cancer. The average summer temperature is 45 degrees Celsius (no idea about Fahrenheit). These guys used to sit there woking 5-6 hours. and used to get (at that time) about 3000 INR/Month.
The Idea? they wanted to all, to a man, start a jewelery shop of their own. with conditions like these, one cannot actually afford to have a sense of dignity. That happens only after one gets to do what one wants and becomes secure in the knowledge that his plan will work. In America it possible that production has reached a peak, and the rarest commodity is human labor. This (India) is a market with a lot of Labor available. So, it's not in every circumstance that your opinion works.
Yes, on the other hand, there are artists who can sell their works at a high price (by Indian standards) like MF Hussain, who can quote what they want and get away with it, but well... to be honest, it's not easy to do it. At least not here.
At September 28, 2008 4:19 AM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 28, 2008 5:17 AM ,
Angela said...
The world needs parents like you!
At September 28, 2008 11:13 AM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 29, 2008 3:02 PM ,
Anonymous said...
I honestly thought you'd focus on concrete "evils"..you know, the big ones. Like capitalism/global inequality/the World Bank/WTO and all that.
This just sounded like my angry old neighbour who's pissed off at technology.
At September 29, 2008 10:00 PM ,
Cathy said...
A suggestion for you as far as your dream life goes: look into draft horses for use on your farm. Take a look at the Work Horse Handbook, or any of the other works by Lynn Miller. My uncle uses draft horses on his farm, and when he was younger he used to be nearly self sufficient with them.
At September 29, 2008 11:32 PM ,
Bill Vincent said...
Open your minds, people. Open them. Consider - always - the possibility that what you "know" may be wrong. If you fail to do this, you will be stuck in time, while time itself passes you by unheeded.
At September 30, 2008 9:04 AM ,
Jayman said...
Very nice post!!
At September 30, 2008 1:16 PM ,
Anonymous said...
At September 30, 2008 1:33 PM ,
w3bsmith said...
At September 30, 2008 3:51 PM ,
vic said...
At September 30, 2008 11:07 PM ,
Anonymous said...
At October 5, 2008 12:26 AM ,
Anonymous said...
Think about that, and live your life.
Seriously.
At October 6, 2008 8:54 AM ,
w3bsmith said...
Depressed now? Read this and it might cheer you up:
http://blog.theurbanrebellion.com/2008/10/addiction.html
At October 8, 2008 4:51 PM ,
behnnie said...
At October 8, 2008 9:16 PM ,
Nathan wilks said...
You'd think from your soapbox your view wouldn't be so narrow.
I wonder if this comment will be let through.
At October 8, 2008 9:53 PM ,
w3bsmith said...
First of all, we let any comment through unless it's spam. The only reason this is moderated is because someone got ticked off and started spamming like crazy one day.
Secondly, I'm a coder. I believe my code is art in itself. But I see coding becoming less of an art as more people simply treat it as something done in a factory.
A recipe for this, another code module for this. Piece everything together and hope that it sticks. The beauty of creation in code, of anything being possible, gone ... That's the type of losing art that we are talking about. Not that people aren't interested in art. But that people are too sloppy or industry driven.
Almost anyone in the design business can tell you this. Great art is completely ignored and not even created because of time, pressure, or ease of financial gain. I'm not against financial gain, but it does tend to override real art. I've had to sacrifice art for money before; more often than I'd like to admit. Raising a family tends to drive a person to that.
I'm not sure I have much more to say about that. And by all means, let's not have this be a narrow soapbox. Speak away. I've left the comments open for conversation. I might even pull countering views and make a post solely on them. Please feel free to contribute. In fact we are alway looking for bright bloggers who have something to contribute; wether we agree with them or not.
At October 11, 2008 8:07 PM ,
Anonymous said...
At October 12, 2008 12:24 AM ,
Kimberly said...
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