I started rereading modern Italian history (Andreotti, Moro, Craxi, the Red Brigades, the goddamn Vatican). What the fuck is wrong with us? It reads like a catalog of murder, betrayal, corruption and every other base human impulse or behavior you can think of. Italy is not unique, this shit is the same everywhere, although, in Italian politics, at least all the players are impeccably dressed.
I'm social to a fault, and I'm not the kind of person who hides behind her laptop... but I'm sort of worried these days that my increasingly intense obsession with the shithole mess we're making of our planet, our societies and ourselves may also serve the purpose of distracting me from the things right in front of me, like my friendly Indian neighbor and his charming wife (who -if the smells wafting out of their house are any indication- is a badass in the kitchen). My question is: am I really all that different from those annoying people I see in line at the grocery store greedily reading People Magazine? I'm far too much of a snoot to give a shit about which celebrity is sleeping with which, but plug me into an interview with anti-Mullah protesters in Tehran and the immediate and tangible world right in front of me could collapse on top of me before I'd notice.
Despite how blood-curdling politics always are, I will always follow the things we do to one another. I am, as a friend who knows me extremely (often embarrassingly) well once said, a "specie-ist". Given evolution and, to the extent that we are able, I would like to see us become better than what we have been thus far, because, despite all our shortcomings and however much I love pooches and owls, I think we really are the best this planet has ever seen. We kick the dinosaurs' asses. We write sonnets for Christ's sake, we run into burning buildings to save small children, we build Paris, Cairo and New York. We're Beethoven and Einstein and MLK and Dostoevsky and my loving parents and my inimitable brothers and sisters. I fucking love humanity, for the way we sometimes are and for the things we aspire to be. And I think we're worth saving. But is obsessively following politics the best way to track our progress as a species? Might I not learn more about humanity and its potential and its direction in another, more immediate and usually less depressing way? Could my excessive concern for far away lands be keeping me from knowing whether the dude who sells me cigarettes has children and what their names are? Could it be that celebrity gossip addicts (did I mention how much they annoy me?) are doing more or less the same thing in their own uninteresting and unintelligent way? Is tracking the Egyptian revolution like my life depended on it the same as needing to know what's the latest in the Brangelina drama? Perhaps it isn't exactly the same but I am beginning to think it's not as dissimilar as I would like to believe. Aren't we, in both cases, less present in the business of our own lives than we might be?
Or take another case. My parents never fed us McDonald's. Well, once in the early 90's when we were living in Italy and I was missing America terribly, my mother took me to Rome -Italy only had a handful of McDonald's back then- where we paid more for that greasy ingestable garbage than we would have for two heaping plates of the city's specialty: Bucatini all'Amatriciana and a glass each of a reasonable red. Anyway I got my little piece of America and was as happy as could be expected for an awkward 14 year old. But aside from associating McDonald's with the United States when I was in Italy, I have no comforting associations with that chain. None. I know this is unusual. I know many people of my generation, even those who are normally careful about what they eat, find comfort in Big Macs and McChicken sandwiches. I've said over and over again that I believe in personal responsibility and that, say, if no one ate that garbage, the chain would go out of business and everyone (including the rain forests, for instance) would ultimately be better off because of it.
But somehow that attitude's not exactly fair, is it? Parents take children to McDonald's because kids see commercials and want the Happy Meal and the toys it contains and beg and plead to eat there, the parents acquiesce eager to see their children happy and, perhaps, grateful for not having to cook. Then, once those children grow up and life isn't as easy and sweet as it was when they were young, innocent and under the loving tutelage of their parents, they see the Golden Arches and can't help thinking of a simpler, better time; so (not unlike Pavlovian dogs) they find themselves craving a double cheeseburger. I see all of this as a testament to the genius of McDonald's marketing and advertising executives. And for the simple reason that, like I said, McDonald's was not in my family's repertoire, when I see the Golden Arches, all I think is: "yuk." I don't crave it, when I see one of their clever billboards, I don't think: "man, that would be perfect right about now." I should take no credit for this response though. I'm sure that I'd be salivating along with the rest of them if my parents had been accustomed to saying yes when my brothers and I begged and pleaded like the rest of the kids in our generation to be taken there. But even though I understand that my impervious-ness to that crap comes through no merit of my own, when I'm feeling snooty I wear it like a badge of honor.
Walk me through any Whole Foods though and past an attractive display of organic, fair-traded, sustainably shade grown coffee beans and you might catch me thinking: "my life will actually improve if I purchase this wondrous product." I might find myself thinking that I will become enveloped in a warm glow of love, good-will, deliciousness and comfort if only I fork over the twenty bucks for that organic-lavender-lemon-grass-never-ever-tested-on-cute-and-cuddly-little-animals-jojoba-oil-infused hand cream... Obviously this is bullshit, just like it's bullshit that eating MacDonald's is anything but fucking awful for you and that any self-preserving creature should do anything but run and hide at the site of it. The leftie, hippie, bleeding heart, environmentalist marketing schtick works wonders on me though, it's my Golden Arches. So again the question: is getting weak with desire at the site of raw, cold-pressed, hemp-seed oil really all that different from salivating over breakfast biscuits and sausage patties? In both instances, aren't we both falling prey to marketing strategies designed to make us want, need, crave and happily dish out our money for stuff we could easily do without?
Is this just another version of that? I wonder.
I'm social to a fault, and I'm not the kind of person who hides behind her laptop... but I'm sort of worried these days that my increasingly intense obsession with the shithole mess we're making of our planet, our societies and ourselves may also serve the purpose of distracting me from the things right in front of me, like my friendly Indian neighbor and his charming wife (who -if the smells wafting out of their house are any indication- is a badass in the kitchen). My question is: am I really all that different from those annoying people I see in line at the grocery store greedily reading People Magazine? I'm far too much of a snoot to give a shit about which celebrity is sleeping with which, but plug me into an interview with anti-Mullah protesters in Tehran and the immediate and tangible world right in front of me could collapse on top of me before I'd notice.
Despite how blood-curdling politics always are, I will always follow the things we do to one another. I am, as a friend who knows me extremely (often embarrassingly) well once said, a "specie-ist". Given evolution and, to the extent that we are able, I would like to see us become better than what we have been thus far, because, despite all our shortcomings and however much I love pooches and owls, I think we really are the best this planet has ever seen. We kick the dinosaurs' asses. We write sonnets for Christ's sake, we run into burning buildings to save small children, we build Paris, Cairo and New York. We're Beethoven and Einstein and MLK and Dostoevsky and my loving parents and my inimitable brothers and sisters. I fucking love humanity, for the way we sometimes are and for the things we aspire to be. And I think we're worth saving. But is obsessively following politics the best way to track our progress as a species? Might I not learn more about humanity and its potential and its direction in another, more immediate and usually less depressing way? Could my excessive concern for far away lands be keeping me from knowing whether the dude who sells me cigarettes has children and what their names are? Could it be that celebrity gossip addicts (did I mention how much they annoy me?) are doing more or less the same thing in their own uninteresting and unintelligent way? Is tracking the Egyptian revolution like my life depended on it the same as needing to know what's the latest in the Brangelina drama? Perhaps it isn't exactly the same but I am beginning to think it's not as dissimilar as I would like to believe. Aren't we, in both cases, less present in the business of our own lives than we might be?
Or take another case. My parents never fed us McDonald's. Well, once in the early 90's when we were living in Italy and I was missing America terribly, my mother took me to Rome -Italy only had a handful of McDonald's back then- where we paid more for that greasy ingestable garbage than we would have for two heaping plates of the city's specialty: Bucatini all'Amatriciana and a glass each of a reasonable red. Anyway I got my little piece of America and was as happy as could be expected for an awkward 14 year old. But aside from associating McDonald's with the United States when I was in Italy, I have no comforting associations with that chain. None. I know this is unusual. I know many people of my generation, even those who are normally careful about what they eat, find comfort in Big Macs and McChicken sandwiches. I've said over and over again that I believe in personal responsibility and that, say, if no one ate that garbage, the chain would go out of business and everyone (including the rain forests, for instance) would ultimately be better off because of it.
But somehow that attitude's not exactly fair, is it? Parents take children to McDonald's because kids see commercials and want the Happy Meal and the toys it contains and beg and plead to eat there, the parents acquiesce eager to see their children happy and, perhaps, grateful for not having to cook. Then, once those children grow up and life isn't as easy and sweet as it was when they were young, innocent and under the loving tutelage of their parents, they see the Golden Arches and can't help thinking of a simpler, better time; so (not unlike Pavlovian dogs) they find themselves craving a double cheeseburger. I see all of this as a testament to the genius of McDonald's marketing and advertising executives. And for the simple reason that, like I said, McDonald's was not in my family's repertoire, when I see the Golden Arches, all I think is: "yuk." I don't crave it, when I see one of their clever billboards, I don't think: "man, that would be perfect right about now." I should take no credit for this response though. I'm sure that I'd be salivating along with the rest of them if my parents had been accustomed to saying yes when my brothers and I begged and pleaded like the rest of the kids in our generation to be taken there. But even though I understand that my impervious-ness to that crap comes through no merit of my own, when I'm feeling snooty I wear it like a badge of honor.
Walk me through any Whole Foods though and past an attractive display of organic, fair-traded, sustainably shade grown coffee beans and you might catch me thinking: "my life will actually improve if I purchase this wondrous product." I might find myself thinking that I will become enveloped in a warm glow of love, good-will, deliciousness and comfort if only I fork over the twenty bucks for that organic-lavender-lemon-grass-never-ever-tested-on-cute-and-cuddly-little-animals-jojoba-oil-infused hand cream... Obviously this is bullshit, just like it's bullshit that eating MacDonald's is anything but fucking awful for you and that any self-preserving creature should do anything but run and hide at the site of it. The leftie, hippie, bleeding heart, environmentalist marketing schtick works wonders on me though, it's my Golden Arches. So again the question: is getting weak with desire at the site of raw, cold-pressed, hemp-seed oil really all that different from salivating over breakfast biscuits and sausage patties? In both instances, aren't we both falling prey to marketing strategies designed to make us want, need, crave and happily dish out our money for stuff we could easily do without?
Is this just another version of that? I wonder.
