stuck in the middle with you

our culture is dominated by the middle class.

the zeitgeist: The spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation

those most plugged into the culture, those who consume it via television, cinema, the internet and popular music, are also driving that culture. they grow up to create it, and then regurgitate their empty desires for their young, who are starving for meaning, for archetypes, for heroes and villains, to partake in the sharing of stories that connect us to each other.

but somewhere that story went/is going terribly awry. what we're left with is drivel. this weeks top 10 tv shows is slightly more depressing.

the meaning has been stripped out. culture is dead. the postmodern movement just a desire to explain why there was no meaning, to infuse a meaningful narrative into life, but not knowing what was meaningful, or not wanting to know. easy consumerism was better. making fun of people is easier than looking at yourself. celebrity and sex culture is more instant. laziness wins. is justified.

an aside: The First episode of 'Joanie Loves Chachi' (a Happy Days spinoff) was the highest rated American TV program on Korean television. Why?? 'Chachi' is Korean for penis.

so we've created a culture defined by those in the middle class, FOR those in the middle class. the problems with the middle class are legion. but my problem with the middle class (besides them being legion... of doom) is that they are incredibly stupid. and their stupidity is polluting the zeitgeist. (to anyone who has read salman rushdie's "haroun and the sea of stories", the sea of stories, the narrative we choose to hear, is sick)

today, it seems that the cultural now-ness of the world is dominated by celebrity culture, of which reality television is an inverted-backwards created element. there are offshoots to celebrity culture showing up as well, but the real focus of all of it seems to be on the 'ME'. which brings 'me' to ---

Schadenfreude: Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

i believe that the middle class are aware of, not their privelidge exactly, but of their opportunity to do/be anything. incredible personal potential. the world at their feet. prosperity and comfort for so many, opportunity to explore yourself, to take time. no need to be married with children at 17. Go figure yourself out first. Know thyself.

but coupling this incredible opportunity with laziness and a sense of entitlement has crippled their sense of reality, as they are unable to justify lazy ineffectiveness with an opportunity they know is theirs to claim. What happens is deformity. Unable to look inward, the self projects outwards. Ugly. Grotesque. Sick.

television, celebrity, movie, magazine, gossip, advertisements, ipod as accessory, television on your phone (how else would I know how to dress??), and an entire cadre of movie cult heroes whom to belittle and insult in an effort to elevate the damaged psyche. I'm not talking about me or you as a few people, but a collective sadness belonging to those who dwell in and long for:

mediocrity: n 1: ordinariness as a consequence of being average and not outstanding

the dictionary has a definition, but not a response to that definition. What do we, as a group, feel about our inherent inability to really achieve anything? Our society moves so slowly, meaning that we cannot just up and change it today. It takes time. time many don't want to spend on the chance that nothing happens:

the cure for AIDS takes a backseat to the cure for baldness.

war is fought for, because it makes more money than peace.

monsanto wants to OWN ALL basmati rice. including ANY I could grow in my yard.

Newfoundland has no fish.

gays can't get married (in many places).

we STILL use the internal combustion engine. we still use petroleum.

53% of americans think the earth was created JUST like how it says in the bible.

the intelligentia are ignored and ridiculed, liberalism a dirty word. the smartest people in the world are labelled and dismissed.

students are encouraged to snitch on their teachers.

we can't swim in our lakes, or eat fish from them. (aside 1.5: the loch ness monster myth is solved)

the most powerful nation on earth is dying, choking on its own ignorance, an ignorance it cultivated for itself.

an aside 2: Out of the top 50 all-time-top-rated television shows, number that are Super Bowls: 18.

and so, I believe, people shut down. they turn off. the only way they know they can make a difference is to bunker down and plan for the future - they'll have children. their children will change the world, or live up to their potential, a potential they're willing to spend the rest of their life working to assure them of. and so the cycle repeats itself. and the lazy and entitled do nothing but shop for new toys and get jobs that enable them to buy new toys and so on. the massive cultural effect of millions and millions of people just settling, just rolling over, the effect of this, on a culture, on the psyche of a culture, must be terrible. bitterness. jealousy. pettiness. a nation, nations, of people, the majority of whom have given up, have shame or guilt about their lot, have left dreams and chosen nothing, THIS results in a polluted culture.

our narrative takes on the shape that is willed by the powerful middle. through sheer numbers the stories they want to see and tell dominate the culture. and so we become defined, through history, by this seething sobbing mass. the zeitgeist is theirs to define.

an aside 3: Percentage of U.S. women born blonde: 16. Percentage of women who are blonde today: 33. Percentage of TV newscasters who are blonde: 64. Percentage of Miss Americas who are blonde: 65. (I'm getting this stat from a website, but I like the progression - the next stat would be 'percentage of porn stars who are blonde', and a similarly increasing number (probably 99.9%). this means that newscasting women also have a 64% of being a pornstar. )


and as the cycle of regurgitation continues, the content gets watered down. even a CD breaks down over time. a regurgitation of a regurgitation, a memory of a myth of memory. and the stories we have left to tell ourselves are subverted. perverted. its for advertising. to sell you something you don't even need. but the patch is ripe for perversion, the culture wanting it. craving it.

instead of a story told for its own sake, the story now comes with strings attached.

and after a while our culture came to understand that there were strings attached. and so we saw the elephant in the room.

and instead of kicking it out, we embraced it. said that money for its own sake was good. that advertising to our greatest weaknesses was fine by us, as long as it had a funny show in between it, it could make us feel as insecure as possible. as dumb, ugly, smelly, as it could. as big a loser in life (hello tony robbins), or a big loser in the kitchen (hello wok with yan), there was a way to make us feel terrible for profit.

advertising, the science. it's not just a business anymore, it's calculated to destroy you. and we welcome it in. because we embraced the emptiness of money, the reason for money. we said it's okay to be wrong, as long as you're rich.

it's okay to be an asshole, as long as you did it for the bottom line.

it's okay to kill people, to destroy the planet, to lie, lie, as long as you are doing it to make money. your country, your friends, your family, and your neighbors, they would all understand, on the inside, would do the same thing if given the chance.

oh publicly they'd tear you limb from limb, denounce you and your gene pool. but they all understood, because they've read the same narratives, saw the same stories, wanted the same things, grew up in a town just like yours, with parents just like yours, who wanted the same things your parents wanted, went to schools like yours, for reasons like yours.

the narrative is fractured. on the one hand we are moral, or say we are. Our laws say we are, at least.

on the other hand, we have created corporations and instituation that allow us to turn a blind eye to the failure of our culture to transcend itself, to rise up, indeed, we now welcome the other side of morality, all for the "greater good", the economy, the national debt, the housing starts, the numbers that mean nothing to most, but justify everything.

the middle class are driving a car made for by the wealthy, straight towards a pack of the poor. that's the way it goes, and will go. we are on a ride we will not get off (and i say "will" instead of "can", because like the little engine that could, we can).

because of mediocrity. because the middle class can change, and therefore that's enough. to know we could if we wanted to. we have the power, the collective wealth, the intelligence and the opportunity. but it's squandered because we're fat enough. happy... enough. can turn our eye from homelessness and say "but what can I do?", can turn our eye from the destruction of the planet, from corruption in all world leaders, not because we can't 'fix' it, but because clearly we don't want to. clearly, we're content to fail. we've been brought up on failure. the parents of the middle class, the founding fathers, failed by aspiring to the middle.

and passing it down the line as tradition.