Generation Bubble
capitalism
Border Studies: Cultural Exchange Meets Armani Exchange
It’s hard not to think that my silliness and mindless consumerism and joy stolen from artificial scarcity at the time had something to do with Esteban’s lack of decent prospects. Yet now I search for what I helped in part to destroy with that particular brand of American generosity that blights instead of nourishes — a bit of cultural authenticity in a world that becomes more and more homogenized with each passing day. I’ve found it in strange, but not surprising places — an Alpine hut, a Cretan farm, a bottle of pear schnapps smuggled on board an L-1011. I’ve become a veritable fetishist of cultural authenticity. Perhaps that’s because I know that I can never fully inhabit that authenticity, that I will always be like the museum goer who stares at the historical artifact desirous of understanding (but who remains unfulfilled), and the best I can hope is that in the eyes of someone like Esteban I’ll appear as something approaching human.
Sol Invictus: From Boom to Doom in the American Southwest
My return to the West, however, has been a shock to say the least, because I remember this desert megalopolis being so different. When I was last here, everything was enlivened with quickening elixir of easy credit. Strip malls sprouted overnight. Entire housing developments appeared within the span of a week. People were drunk on the belief that their characterless, indifferently constructed houses were ATMs with ever increasing balances. It was a bad way to conduct one’s life, to be sure.
"Recovery Summer"–time Blues: Wage Deflation and Peak Opportunity
A minimum-wage job means a job with crazy hours and crazy shifts. A minimum-wage job means your days off can come consecutively, or fall four days apart. A minimum wage job means working until 10:00 or 11:00 PM, and then having to report to work the next morning at 6:00 AM. A minimum-wage job means having a work schedule that’s never the same one week to the next, and that’s a melange or morning, day and evening shifts calibrated for maximum exhaustion. A minimum-wage job means being hired part-time but working full time hours — without, of course, the benefits conferred upon full-timers (such as they are).
Not Fade Away: The Eternal Return of the Lame
You can’t escape from history and its merciless repetitions. These things grind slow and hard. Lloyd Blankfein isn’t going to have his head chopped off anytime soon. The streets aren’t going to explode in a heatwave-fanned plebeian rage. The New York Times isn’t going to start reporting on news that actually matters outside of Manhattan and the boroughs. It supposedly took the American Revolution ten years to get rolling. It supposedly took the American Revolution ten years to get rolling. Sometimes, in my most fevered dreams, I imagine it will take twice as long for the American people to avenge themselves on the scoundrels, cheats and usurers that have grasped control of this country so completely. In fact, I know it will take at least ten years for that ball to get rolling. History lumbers along at its own pace, headless of the truculent demands of our brains so agitated and dizzied by the instant gratification offered by Blackberries, iPads, Droids and whatnot. And with that realization comes the recognition that an entire decade of my life will pass in desultory strivings and fruitless ravings against a regime that dies hard — or, indeed, not at all.
On Stranger Tides: Booms, Doom and Gloom in the Gulf States
Destruction is a difficult thing to anticipate. It tends to catch us unawares, and when it finds us, it comes on like gangbusters. The week I was in Alabama, news of the collapse of the euro started to make its way over the airwaves with alarming frequency. The stock market fell a thousand points in a minute in the now famous and unprecedented “Flash Crash.” Somehow all these things seem connected. And of course they are: they’re just the groans and creaks of a moribund economic and social order. And the symptoms grow ever more acute….
F–k Your Yankee Blue Jeans: The Politics of Consumption East and West
Americans learn that “real things” and “real selves” only exist as potentialities, though we are obligated to always pursue them. We are obligated to be discontented with what we are — to become someone else — and search for our true selves at the same time. Is this in effect any different from the communists’ insistence that the collective took precedence over the self, that the private self didn’t exist? We are never who we are in a consumer society; instead we have an identity defined negatively, by what we lack and what we yearn for and what we fear is being said about what we have and what we display to the world.
Static Airplane Jive: The Bliss of Volcanically Induced Travel Paralysis
With just a modest amount of money, you can travel almost anywhere nowadays. The ease and relative cheapness of travel gives one the illusion of freedom. But when everyone can travel everywhere, that which made those elusive destinations seem attractive gradually begins to disappear. Don’t get me wrong: I love traveling, and I’m happy I live during a time that allows me — a person with little financial clout — the ability to wander the globe. Yet the price we’ve paid historically, environmentally and emotionally for such privilege makes me reconsider it. For the ease and speed with which we can travel points to an ease and speed with which information can also travel, and thus our lives, whether we like it or not, are also placed under the yoke of increased productivity and profit making.
Body Talk: Contemporary American Gymnosophy and Economic Decline
I have nothing against running, or exercise in general. I wake up every morning at six and wearily lift my dumbbells, thinking all the time of Winston Smith, the main character of George Orwell’s 1984, whose knee bends weren’t deep enough for his telescreen trainer. It’s a lonely activity, and most times, given the current cultural and economic realities, I’m not sure why I do it. Will having a toned body help me pay off my student loans faster? Will my bank stop charging me so many absurd fees if I can claim well-defined quads? Will having a low resting heart rate help me find a white-collar job in a moribund economy? Yes, I’ll be healthier for it, and perhaps live somewhat longer, but do I really want to be that spry octogenarian working at Walmart? Given the state of Social Security and retirement packages, I’d be better off greeting the sun with a pack of Virginia Slims and a fifth of Wild Turkey.
Degrees of Desperation: University Education and Human Capital
If GDP is the only social aim worthy of a state’s attention, then this would seem good, inevitable advice. Forget the metaphysical mumbo jumbo and concentrate on what can be counted. But asking the government to scale back educational subsidies is hard advice to accept, even if it would end the arms race in advanced degrees and the credentialing inflation that makes a master’s a prerequisite for more and more jobs. To pursue such a course is to dismiss the idea that education enriches human potential altogether (or, if you prefer, it defines human potential in terms of industrial output alone). But it’s far preferable to believe that higher education can help people live richer, fuller lives and can make us aware of new possibilities and different ways of thinking.
Manifest Density: The Recession and the Weight of History
I’ve read enough H.P. Lovecraft to know that New England during earlier centuries wasn’t much fun, but the absolute blight and violence of the present condition of late-capitalistic disintegration makes anything that occurred in centuries past look … well … like a tea party in comparison. For the barbaric disintegration of the contemporary New England city doesn’t leave room for hope. It is final, and it’s hard not to think these cities have breathed their last — cultural treasures and all.
Anton Steinpilz
Rob Horning
Ylajali Hansen
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