Musings of the Great Eric

A couple of weeks ago, my mom (the loving mother that she is) bought me a bunch of groceries and delivered them in a reusable grocery bag, which she let me keep. This was actually a novel concept to me; I’d never given much thought at all to the question of grocery bags before, and the idea of a reusable one had honestly never occurred to me. It piqued my interest enough though that I brought it with my on my next trip to the supermarket, and have since acquired a few more to meet all my grocery bagging needs.

In retrospect, it seems an idea that’s both obvious and genius. The bags I now use hold many more groceries that the disposable bags found at the supermarket. They have strong handles or shoulder straps, and are thick enough that they don’t break even if I fill one of them to the brink with soda bottles. The most difficult part of using them is convincing the bagging clerk to use them, as the request. When I’m done, I stash them under the sink and pull them out again for my next trip to the supermarket - I’ve yet to feel this is an inconvenience.

This idea underscores something far more profound than mere grocery bags though. I feel almost humiliated that I’ve lived for nearly a quarter century before an idea like this even occurred to me. I just took the disposable bags offered at the checklist line, and threw them out after I’d gotten home and unpacked them. We live in the most wasteful society in the history of mankind, and it’s clear that I’m a part of it.

I think it’s a great thing that our civilization is finally getting its head together with regards to resource management, recycling, global warming, and other environmental issues, but now I can’t help but feel these efforts are misguided. Recycling paper bags is nothing compared to not using them in the first place - in trying to minimize our environmental impact, we’re concentrating our efforts on the wrong side of the equation.

And it seems to me that these kinds of changes would be much easier to implement than recycling programs and other technological solutions. Imagine if the grocery store simply didn’t offer paper or plastic, but instead sold reusable bags at the checkout? Supermarkets would be happy; it would turn an expense into one more thing they could sell. People would likely bitch at first, but then get used to it and even come to appreciate them as I have. And we’d be that much less wasteful as a society.

Time Magazine recently printed an excerpt from Al Gore’s new book and I have to say it’s fantastic. I rarely indulge in contemporary political books, but I think this is one I’ll be buying:

Our Founders’ faith in the viability of representative democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry, their ingenious design for checks and balances, and their belief that the rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people. The Founders took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas so that knowledge could flow freely. Thus they not only protected freedom of assembly, they made a special point—in the First Amendment—of protecting the freedom of the printing press. And yet today, almost 45 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers. Reading itself is in decline. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by the empire of television.

Radio, the Internet, movies, cell phones, iPods, computers, instant messaging, video games and personal digital assistants all now vie for our attention—but it is television that still dominates the flow of information. According to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes every day—90 minutes more than the world average. When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time the average American has.

In the world of television, the massive flows of information are largely in only one direction, which makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation. Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They hear, but they do not speak. The “well-informed citizenry” is in danger of becoming the “well-amused audience.” Moreover, the high capital investment required for the ownership and operation of a television station and the centralized nature of broadcast, cable and satellite networks have led to the increasing concentration of ownership by an ever smaller number of larger corporations that now effectively control the majority of television programming in America.

In practice, what television’s dominance has come to mean is that the inherent value of political propositions put forward by candidates is now largely irrelevant compared with the image-based ad campaigns they use to shape the perceptions of voters. The high cost of these commercials has radically increased the role of money in politics—and the influence of those who contribute it. That is why campaign finance reform, however well drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the dominant means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue in one way or another to dominate American politics. And as a result, ideas will continue to play a diminished role. That is also why the House and Senate campaign committees in both parties now search for candidates who are multimillionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources.

I’ve taken a great interest in exactly what ails our democracy; it’s one thing to point out the (voluminous) ways in which George W Bush is a corrupt fuck up, but the root causes of why someone like him was allowed to get into power and get away with what he has is both far more interesting and critical - this is what the above gets at.

And though I’m normally loathe to look for single-factor answers, I’ve often come to the same conclusion that Gore is talking about here. Of all the inventions of the 20th century, television has had the most deleterious effect on our civilization, and stands as perhaps the root cause of many of our troubles, from the decay of our political discourse to seemingly unrelated problems like obesity. (This will be the subject of a more detailed future post).

Anyway, the linked excerpt is well worth reading if you haven’t already, and I suspect the whole book will be worth it as well.

This pisses me off:

A growing number of shopping malls are turning away teenagers during evening hours unless they’re accompanied by adults.

Restrictions at some malls apply every night, others on Fridays and Saturdays. Hours and ages vary. The rules are meant to reduce fighting and ensure that adults and families don’t avoid malls where rowdy teenagers take over stores, corridors and food courts.

The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., was the first U.S. mall to create an “escort policy” in 1996, says the International Council of Shopping Centers. The idea has caught on: 39 malls now have limits on teenagers. Fifteen implemented such policies in the past two years and dozens more are considering them.

I hate this default assumption that all teenagers are criminals; it bothered me when I was a teenager and my attitude hasn’t changed since. It’s the last acceptable and perfectly legal form of discrimination. Some teenagers cause trouble, so rather than punish the behavior we punish someone for being a certain age; that’s the very definition of discrimination and contrary to the ideals of a supposedly free society.

Further, while this might solve the problem for the malls - it does nothing to solve the root problem and in fact exacerbates it. The root problem is that there’s just nothing to do in the suburbs but go to the mall. These monuments to consumerism are unfortunately the new public squares; and without any real recreational options for teenagers, it’s no surprise that they become mallrats. It’s a signal that there’s something profoundly wrong with our society.

More than that - what’s left that a teenager can legally do with their spare time? They can’t go very far, since they lack transportation. They don’t have a lot of cash. In my experience, police will harass any group of teenagers hanging out in a public place, irrespective of whether they’re doing anything criminal. It seems that society just wishes they’d stay in their parents’ basements until they turn 18, at which point they’ll go outside for the first time.

When we treat all teenagers like criminals, irrespective of their own personal behavior, what are we teaching them? Is it any surprise that so many become socially maladjusted?