Feb 142006
My apologies to those of you who didn’t get their daily dose of The 19th Floor yesterday. The server on which this site is hosted decided to call in sick and get totally wasted. But everything seems back to normal now.
I would wish everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day, but I just read this piece by Joe Bageant on the hyper-commoditized existence of the American middle class:
Adding to the anxiety is the lack of evidence that the world needs you or me at all. In this totally commoditized life we are dispensable. Everything is standardized. It really doesn’t matter who grows our food or makes our clothing. If we don’t make it, it someone else will. If we don’t buy it, someone else will. Some other faceless person will step forward to fill in our place. The same goes for the engineers who created this computer and the same goes for your own job. The machine rolls on. With us or without us. Naturally, we have our loved ones and our friends. But increasingly even these relationships are monetized for all classes. Family and leisure activity has become intensely commoditized.
Never has there been such a lonely and inauthentic civilization as the American middle class.
And ever since I read that, I’ve been sitting here at my desk and feeling a little guilty and a little depressed. Because I’m undoubtedly living the life which Bageant is criticizing. I work for a bureaucracy that is mind-boggling in its complexity. I earn enough to impulsively buy junk on Amazon and eBay. I don’t know most of my neighbors.
My first job out of law school, I earned a little more than $10,000 and I don’t recall feeling especially deprived. And now I can’t imagine living on much less than I make now. I worry that I’m getting soft; worse, that what I’m feeling is typical middle-class angst.
I’m sure this will pass, but right now I’m contemplating selling all of my possessions and joining the Peace Corps. All I need is a generator to charge up the ventilator each night.
Perhaps Bageant is in need of some select MEDS!!! Either that or he needs to get himself in with people who care. He sounds so very sad.
If you want to look to find meaninglessness and hypocricy and inauthenticity, the good news is you’ll find it every time. Even better news is that you can go looking for better things, in the smallest of places, and also find those. Generosity, wit, humor, inquisitiveness, and a million little differences that make us interesting despite the surface packaging and similarity. My challenge to myself is to actively look for-and cultivate-those things in my life. I don’t always succeed, but it makes things feel a little less helpless than how Mr. Bageant sounds. And you Mark, are a great place to find all that good stuff, your e-bay addiction notwithstanding…