Friday, June 02, 2006

My response to Andy



Andy (and all),

I now know why I am considering becoming Amish...

Whatever happened to just the old "family camping trip?" Or going fishing? Or talking with a group of friends? Or going hunting? Why is our vast prosperity leading us into more and more need for elaborate escapes from the realities of life?

I say this as I personally struggle with engaging in and understanding our current American culture so I might win some. I struggle with this. I own a larger home than my parents ever did, enjoy perks of living in the 21C (like the personal computer I am typing on now - and it's fast too, God forbid I would have to wait 1 extra second per web page...) and am remodeling my basement for a place for family and friend hangouts. I take a swing at our consumerism culture and find my self hitting myself square in the nose... I hate and love our American choices.

I think this is why I have fallen in love with fly fishing as of late. Its me, a river, a trout, and deciding who is smarter (I won't tell you who normally wins...) However, even as I went to a midwest fly fishing expo this spring, you can spend literally thousands of dollars on gear, trips, training, etc. Sigh... I thought this was to escape all of this, and yet there it is again.

I think part of it is that we are so stressed out living the incredibly fast paced life we live (mostly due to our consumerism and technology) that we will pay ANYTHING just for some rest (or what we percieve to be rest.) For instance, I bought a really nice chair to put in my bedroom a year ago SO THAT I would have a niche in the corner to read my Bible and pray. Not that this is wrong - I think it was a good decision - but it highlights the whole issue. I have in my wallet a card that goes behind my credit card that says: GOD HAS MADE ME A STEWARD OF HIS RESOURCES. Good reminder every time I pull that puppy out.

There is a fine, but very definate line, between ENJOYING things and experiences (1 Timothy 6:17) and WORSHIPPING things (Matthew 6:19-24). God help us all!

Help us, o guru of consumerism, Professor of Philosopy and stuff! What say you? As we rub the belly of this budda, what can you give to us to empower us? Heal our land and our habits!

I loved the description of the class. I'm sure it was life changing for those students, and a great reminder for you. However, American culture will quickly suck all the life out of their learning without the "eternal vigilance which is the price of freedom..."

Hope all is well with you out there in "fly over country." It is beautiful these days in MN. Will you be around at all this summer?

Take care, my friend,

Trike

An email from my friend Andy

Steve, Stan, and other friends at Hope,

When I was at Bethel, I started developing a course to go look at consumerism in Las vegas and Los Angeles, and once I got to Creighton I kept working on that plan and now I've completed my first version of that class, so I thought I'd tell you a little about the 18 day class. (I sent parts of this to other friends too)

The class was on how business and development affect culture and society, focusing on Las Vegas and Los Angeles, with a camping trip to Grand Canyon and later to Joshua tree national park. Issues we focused on were how business transforms and affects our values, and our vision of what the good life is; how development makes the quality of life better or worse for people in terms of new places to live and play, and the resulting sprawl, traffic issues, and ways to deal with that (public transport, smart growth, etc). We also thought about water issues, since we spent a lot of time in the southwest. Environmental issues were considered also.

We visited with city leaders in Las Vegas, LA, Boulder City Nevada and Ventura California. We visted companies in the LV and LA areas, talked with CFOs, managers, workers, a showgirl, an artist, a film critic, a hollywood historian, a biologist working on preserving wetlands fromdevelopment, a farmer near LA, firefighters, and a lot of other people.

Our focus was to consider consumerism, hyperreality creation and the commodification of values.

Consumerism: how people are encouraged to find their identity through consuming things: Vegas entertainment, Vegas commodities (Gucci Bags at Ceasars or Wynn Casino, purchasing bigger houses, ferrarris, hummers, LA hollywood consumerism, the materialism at Santa monica, Newport beach, etc...) Shopping centers are temples to this religion... Happiness comes through the act of consumption-- at restaurants, movies, bars, stores, taxis, etc etc...

Hyperreality: virtual realities which we create which are 'better' than reality: TV and Movies which present idealized realities which don't actually exist, edited versions of reality through the news, etc., cleaned up versions of reality like the 'grand canyon experience' on the disneyland railroad, or The Venetian casino, where the canals are filtered and chlorinated and the ceilings always have blue sunny skies with beautiful fluffy white clouds..much nicer than the original Venice, which is fairly dirty and has gross canal water.... and there are simulacrum as well-- realities which purport to be representations of another reality, but which actually have no real original-- like Cartoonland at Disneyland, where they have recreated a city which is based on fantasy (cartoon) or Excaliber casino, which is a replica of King Aurthurs Court-- something which previously only existed in legend and lore. Or consider the life of Celine Dion: Living in a Mansion on the artificial lake in the desert called "Las Vegas Lake" (as unnatural as a Sahara Sea or Death Valley Swim park) she is helicoptered daily to her workplace: a Roman Colloseum at Ceasars Palace, where she has a replica of part of her house so that when her son comes with her to work he won't feel like he isn't at home. Celine's life is a world of hyperreality, where experience is fantasy and the true reality is covered over in fiction.

COMMODIFICATION of values: the ways in which business finds ways to associate commodities with your values, so that to maintain those values, you must purchase commodities. For example: purchasing a $69 pass to Disneyland for each of your kids plus yourself becomes an essential part of the american family experience (plus the hotel stay, and really good parents will also provide the park-hopper pass so that the california park can also be experienced, etc etc) and when you are that close to Hollywood, a good parent would pay $50 more for a universal studios pass un in Burbank. To be entertained you NEED to lose money on the floor in Vegas, preferably at one of the nicer places, where you can have a "real vegas experience" in the standard 700 sq foot rooms. THis is entertainment, and now that Vegas has been dubbed the American City, this is an essential AMerican experience-- it is, in fact, an essential experience for anyone who wants to understand America, which is why it is filled with foreigners trying to understand America better. (It is, of course, the American which the 911 terrorists were fighting against-- an america of cheap easy sex without penalty, lavish opulence, no spiritual concern in the midst of total materialistic pleasure) In LA, it is essential to buy breast implants to be beautiful, the latest styles feel fit to be seen on the street, cars and gasoline to go to work, buy food, get home, see friends-- any movement at all requires purchasing a vehicle and gasoline, at the very least--- And then simply providing a house for your family where your two kids get their own room will likely cost well over 500,000...

So, thats a bit of what the class was about. It went well, and I look forward to doing it again next year. I think I will have them read: The Walmart Effect, The Tipping Point, Fast Food Nation and parts of THe World Is Flat, among other things.

I think that as Christians we often don't realize the ways in which our consumer culture affects our values. This class helped me think more seriously about that.

Hope your summer is going well so far. I'd love to hear from you, and hope to visit sometime this summer.

Andy