Ah, NPR
You all know how addicted I am to listening to BBC World Service in the morning at work. I just can’t get enough of the sexy sexy voice of Owen Bennett Jones and of course Robin Lustig, who talks like someone making fun of English people by imitating and exaggerating a British accent. Well, in addition to BBC WS, I’ve been listening to On Point with Tom Ashbrook a lot, because it comes on right after the BBC.
On Point is awesome because they have people talk about their specialty (like Zimbabwean culture, the history of oysters, or the Terrorist Threat) and then they have listeners call in and bitch about it. This is the key– the listeners contributing their 2 cents. Most of the time you get the Whole Foods buying, Greenpeace Sticker on Volvo Station Wagon driving crunchies waxing poetic about how everyone needs to just eat tofu and all get along. Sometimes you get rednecks talking about how we need to nuke all them A-rabs and stuff. It’s up to Tom Ashbrook to make their sometimes completely random off-topic rants seem relevant and interesting, and he mostly does a good job. He also gets to cut them off when they ramble on and on about nothing.
Today was a great example of all of the above. The show featured some lady who had written a book about how Americans are all really lonely; in fact more lonely than they’ve ever reported to have been. Some of the points the people made were on-point (if you’ll excuse the pun), but some of the callers were just funny. This one lady talked about how people have back decks on their houses, but not front porches anymore. Yes, this contributes to isolation, but is it a cause? I don’t think so.
Sure, American culture is getting more and more impersonal. We talk to probably way fewer human beings than we ever used to with the advent of ATMs, self checkout lines at the grocery store, computerized customer service phone lines, mail order things… we can go for days or weeks without ever having to interact with humans other than our immediate co-workers and whomever we live with. In the old days you could go down to the corner store and ask Mr. Johnson for a jug of milk (or even have the mailman to chat with when he dropped it off). Now we have giant supermarkets with a high employee turnover rate, so you may or may not ever see the same employee twice. Plus we are now a highly transient society–everybody moves all the time. They don’t move in groups, like nomads, though, so there’s no sense of community.
Has all this made Americans more lonely? Possibly. I think it had made Americans more whiny and neurotic, personally. It’s harder to be noticed in this busy, impersonal world, thus it’s turned more people into drama whores as well. I mean, look at me! I’m writing in this stupid BLOG, for instance, which is viewable to the entire universe of internet connected people. Of course, I never thought anybody actually read my whining until I got fired for it, but that’s another story.
American has become a nation of pussies, basically. I mean, we want to appear tough, like we want to beat up Al Qaeda and wage a War on Drugs, and disapprove of illegal immigrants, homos and flag burners, but when it comes right down to it, we’re just wimps. Everybody suddenly has food allergies. Is everyone suddenly collectively allergic to peanuts? When I was a kid, I never ever even heard of anyone being allergic to peanuts. Now, kids can’t bring peanut butter sandwiches to school anymore in some places because some kid might be allergic to peanuts and die.
Because of the increasing anonymity of the individual human, people do things in order to stand out. For example, some become vegans. I’m not saying that all vegans are drama sluts, but some people do choose some kind of weird lifestyle or whatever just to stand out, and by standing out, fit into a particular subculture. People have been doing this for years, but it seems like every single person I know has some sort of random dietary restriction, or something they can’t do because of moral, ethical, religious, anti-religious reason or some other sort of principle. Welcome to the world of whiny narcissists!
Nowadays, everything is amazingly safe. Oy, I remember the playgrounds in my day– metal structures that you climbed on. They were fun! No doubt a single jungle gym was less fun than the giant wooden structures with tire swings and plastic spiral slides attached and stuff, but now they are considered dangerous. Have you seen baby furniture lately? It’s all padded and soft and squishy. I can’t tell you how many kids I saw riding tricycles (all plastic, of course) wearing HELMETS (and in extreme cases, knee pads) while their mothers pushed them (tricycles these days have long handles in the back so that parents can guide them along).
Look at this thing:
It has a freaking SEAT BELT. I mean, come on. How fast is a kid going to go (1) on a tricycle (2) when the parent is probably white-knuckling the handle behind him or her. Plus, it’s pretty hard to tip over on a tricycle when using it normally. I remember trying to wipe out by going down a hill fast and then turning quickly. Wiping out was part of the fun!
Yeah, I know I sound like a stodgy old fart, but I just think that people in general (not just kids) are too safe and coddled to. I mean, lots of people refuse to wear seatbelts in cars, and that’s stupid. Some safety devices are necessary. However, those extra blinker signals that are on the side mirrors of some cars? Mini vans that make BACKUP BEEPING NOISES? Give me a break!
Of course, Americans love to sue people. We’re one suing-happy nation as well. I suppose many of the over the top safety features out there are just so companies can cover their asses from trigger-happy litigious people. But, whenever things get more safe, people expect the disasters that were supposedly to have occurred without said safety feature to happen. This makes them more fearful and well, more wimpy. People become afraid of getting hit by a mini van because they didn’t hear the backup beeps. Everyone’s afraid of everything these days.
What else can I bitch about as long as I’m on a roll? Hmmmm…..
