From the beginning of the book Affluenza I knew that the prognosis of America would not be good. We’ve been sick for a while now and our fervor with Capitalism has turned into a fever and guttural death howl. The problem is partially attributed to a subject that Marx feared and wrote about in his Manifesto. The bourgeois are perpetrating a feeling where “all that is solid melts into air”. To put it bluntly, instead of the small towns and hamlets that our fathers and grandfathers grew up with we have the large cities and megalith suburban areas of impartiality. We do not, as the book says have anywhere to go for that warmth of connection and camaraderie with those like us. We are living increasingly isolated lives. This impartiality also comes from a practice called chaining. When the small stores run by families get bought out, the town becomes less of a town and more of a large congregation of stores that people live around for convenience. In our drive to acquire and live more privileged lives we also cocoon ourselves in the ubiquitous gated community. It’s a good thought on paper, a safe area with like-minded individuals and perfect lawns that children can play in and community events can be held without fear. Sadly suburbia isn’t like this idyllic picture. The swathing of your family unit in a small content group, save for the most basic social cues seems to be the number of the day. “Gain the world and lose the soul” the reading intones. I think they are entirely correct, there is an emptiness in our possessions, and no matter what we buy on some level we lie to ourselves that this will be the thing that makes us happy and not the human contact that we so crave. It’s not even those simply seeking to be alone, rather I think it’s those that seek the addiction of diversion, this endless diversion is a rose-colored lens in which to view your depleted existence. To want and desire is not a bad thing, for that is what built people from the animals we evolved from. We didn’t want to just survive, we wanted to excel, and from that drive we now stand upon the mountain of our discarded previous ‘needs’ in order to reach the next unattainable thing. Were should the line be drawn, those that have a lot might be truly content, but where is the place where most would decide to stop if they were offered an almost endless well of free compensation? Would they get enough to live a modest life with their family in a representation of the American Dream? Or would they claw for as much as they could muster, driving competition in their ranks and alienating each other until we see factions sitting upon their piles of hard-won things guarding and compiling so as to only brag to others. I think we are reaching for the former.
The big chains really are changing our towns and the closeness you have with the smaller stores. In my town we had a pharmacy for over 20 years which was a small place that helped serve so many people. Then walgreens bought them out. So man stores like this are slowly being bought out or going bankrupt. When you drive through my town now you see more and more chains and more empty storefronts. How could this be anything good when 1/4 of the town is an empty space and good people are out of work?
ReplyDeleteI believe we are reaching for the latter rather than the former. As is mentioned in the Affluenza book, "we Americans now spend six hours a week shopping and only forty minutes playing with our kids" (14). This shows that Americans have set their priorities on shopping for useless material things over family. If offered this free compensation, I would not doubt it that the latter would be the situation that would arise.
ReplyDeleteI am from Flemington, NJ and used to work in an independent pharmacy. She has been there for nearly 20 years (and still is) but we always used to talk about major corporations and big business coming into town, resulting in her losing sales and trying to find new ways to compete. My town has a Walgreens and a Rite Aid LITERALLY across the street from each other. We also have a Shoprite and Wal-Mart, both with pharmacies (as well as other departments detrimental to all local businesses). Places like those put local farms, hardware stores and pretty much everyone else in jeopardy of bankruptcy. It’s not only sad, but should be condemned. Sometimes too much choice is a dangerous thing (call me a communist/socialist/what you will). It’s ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteChain stores such as Wal-Mart and Shop-rite have made consumption easy, cheap, and efficient. The result has been the loss of many small businesses and merchants in small towns and cities. This is the ultimate result of our craving to consume goods ever more cheaply and easily. The cost of consumption has become selling out one’s neighbors and the local merchants that a consumer may have known and given patronage to all his/her life. It is no different with other blue-collar and white-collar jobs, which are being shipped over seas to lower production costs and, in turn, prices. The cost of cheap and easy consumption for Americans has become the selling out of our jobs and businesses, and it is a price that we have thus far been willing to pay.
ReplyDeleteTom Reilly, Section 01
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ReplyDeleteI believe that most people would not choose to simply stop once they have obtained their representation of the American Dream. Our history clearly shows that we are a culture based on consumption, we can never have enough of anything. We all have closets full of perfectly good clothing, yet we still crave more. When you drive passed gated communities, you see mansions with expensive cars parked in the driveways. The people who live in these houses have amassed a ridiculous amount of possessions that are completely unnecessary. They hide behind gates,"alienating each other... sitting upon their piles of hard-won things guarding and compiling so as to only brag to others."
ReplyDeleteThis reminded me of "The Paradox of our Time in History"
http://www.xdude.com/paradox.htm
I've actually seen small stores go out of business because of these mega stores which contain everything from food to house supplies. These companies such as Walmart and Target have eliminated these small privately owned stores. We are part of the reason why these small stores go out of business. We have Walmart and Target to shop all the things that we need. We don't need to go to store to store to find the things we need. Instead Walmart and Target gives us an abundant of goods for our convenience.
ReplyDeleteIts tough living in this type of society where you want goods at a cheap price at the expense of small business owners trying to stay afloat. If I wasn't a broke college student I would gladly support these business owners, but unfortunately we can't all manage our expenses well enough when theres temptation for lower prices. I just moved out of my parents' house into a new apartment and I find myself having to budget my expenses every minute of every day. Its not so much that we can never have enough of anything, its just that in this day and age we need a good low price for every day things.
ReplyDeleteMelissa Tampan Section 01
Spend, spend, spend. It’s all we know how to do. Our lives are centered so much around the ideas and facts presented in the book “Affluenza.” Like Alexa said, she pretty much knew what the prognosis of affluenza was going to be before she started reading it. I think most of us knew what it was going to be in some way. It’s a harsh reality that we have to accept. We overdevelop our lands and consume our resources at ridiculous rates.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Walgreens’ and Rite Aid’s and CVS’s, on a stretch of Rt. 33 between Freehold and Hightstown there is a Walgreens and a CVS pharmacy across the road of one another. That stretch of highway, for the longest time, has been farms and very small businesses. Over the past 10 years of me driving up and down that road, new places keep springing up and farm land slowly diminishing. Without a doubt, in another 20 years or so there will be no more farmland and that highway will look like Rt 1 or Rt 18 near Rutgers.
Like it or not superstores are profitable and exist for a reason. They provide a community with lower prices because they can buy in bulk and also offer many jobs that smaller businesses could not. If you say they put small stores out of business and turn people unemployed how do you account for the amount pf people who are given jobs by these stores. Also they provide the community with products that they would not be able to get without a large retailer. Perhaps it has gotten too crazy with many Walmarts and Targets across the street from one another, but if there was not enough business in the area one of them would not be profitable. It is an endless cycle of people complaining about the cons of a superstore, but wanting to have the pros. How many people that complain about Shoprite or Walmart actually shop at an independent farm or whatever you need?
ReplyDeleteI find that with our hyper individualism and a marketingindustry that has us figured out down to basic Freudian psychology, it willtake a worldwide miracle or disaster to create a powerful enough social meme toend our Affluenza. There can be no happy Middle American Dream with a mediaindustry so concentrated by the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. As muchas I detest television shows like "Real Housewives of... (wherever)"I do not fail to understand that their is an attraction to watching these wealthyindividuals who have nothing better to do than be unnecessarily extravagant andin my opinion, sad human beings. Whether you watch a show like that andunderstand the absurdity or not, I see it as a direct representation of thetroubling value system America has been building on for decades.
ReplyDeleteThe whole “chaining” process is pretty sad when you really think about it, but most of us don’t. We like the convenience of choosing between four grocery stores, Wal-Mart and target ect. for where we are going to shop. I agree that in a way this helps add to the isolation that many people are now living in. We don’t know the checker behind the counter or our pharmacist any more. It’s so impersonal. We are social creatures, but are becoming less dependent on those social interactions. Chaining has happened everywhere, there are still a few mom and pop shops around but I know that they are suffering with one foot out the door because of these big stores that come in and push them out. I commented on another person’s blog about the rural farming town in North Jersey where my Parents live. They are constantly petitioning against the Wal-Mart coming, shopping centers, or cell phone towers being built, their town is full heartily against any big corporations coming in and interfering with the town’s pristine condition. This helps to preserve and support the family owned shops and restaurants, which keeps the town very entwined with one another and personally attached.
ReplyDeleteI believe we reaching the latter, it seems more and more people are just about excess, even in an economy that has been scaled back from recession. We flaunt our items through our vanity and hold them in an esteem equivalent to friendships. As we keep becoming more interconnected the more we become socially detached physically. I agree with the concept that as communities become heavily populated, the glue that ties them together (close physical relations to one another) seem to seperate, only to be stitched back together by large corporation that brings in chains. What your left with is homes imbedded around faceless corporation for the sake of ease, efficiency, and applicability. We are definitely seeing the transition before us, that we as a whole, are changing our definitions of what it is to know someone or what it is to belong to a specific community. Hopefully more people will begin to realize the importance that close relationships with other people are better then trying to maximize their importance of physical objects to define themselves. As stated before the latter is more realistic.
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