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So, Why Do We Hate Us? New Book Tries to Explain
I was born in the 1970s, and even at my tender age, have fallen victim to a creeping cynicism (too often expressed in the form of easy sarcasm) that has me worried lately. I'm too young for such negativity. I haven't earned that badge. Not yet, anyway. For years, I chalked it up to a generational entitlement: after all, isn't my brood, Generation X, defined by its feelings of apathy and emotional confusion? That was the message of popular culture at the time. (Just watch "Reality Bites" or read Douglas Coupland's Generation X.) And it's the culture that is the problem, writes Dick Meyer in his new book, Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium.
Meyer, the editorial director of digital media at NPR, ticks off the many widely shared annoyances of everyday life: telemarketers, pedestrians with eyes glued to their iPhones, t-shirts emblazoned with vulgar or stupid messages, and the ever-expanding menu of inane reality TV shows.* Lest you think he's just a grumpy old man, he also takes on weightier subjects, such as the impact of social networking sites, the decline of "organic communities," the all-pervasive presence of marketing, and our national worship of celebrity, among many other things. All told, it's a composite of exactly the sort of cultural ugliness that feeds our collective distrust of government, the media, entertainment, and each other.
If, like me, you believe that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, but you're not sure what, give Meyer's book a read. You'll laugh, if nothing else, and might just find that it helps you to look on the bright side of things.
*I have an iPhone, some stupid t-shirts, and have been known to enjoy certain reality TV shows. I have never worked as a telemarketer.
From the NPR on line article about this book, I have pasted an excerpt. I haven't read the book and can't speak to it from that perspective. However, the portion of the article below really irked me. Meyer takes on the shift in our culture that gave way to people following personal choice. As a gay man, I have benefited from that rebellion. I think it is naive of Meyer to lambast this shift when, for many people, it became a portal through which to pass to a more personal and truthful self, unfettered by narrow mores of past generations. I think laying the blame of all the ugly, trivial and sordid things in our lives on our expanding personal choices is just plain wrong. It doesn't come off as progressive to me, but more of the same conservative speak that built the careers of men like Limbaugh. The excerpt is below:
'All those little complaints are indicators of something bigger, Meyer told Steve Inskeep: a lack of trust in public leadership and an overall weakening of public morality.
"The 1960s was a symbolic turning point," Meyer said, citing the decade as a time when personal choice became more important than following tradition.
"It became much more important to make all these choices as a witting, conscious consumer of life," Meyer said of formerly tradition-bound elements like religion, where people live, whether they decide to get married.
"And deeper than that, there was a sense that if you did follow a traditional route," Meyer said, "you were an existential weakling."
The realm of personal choice has only expanded since then.
"Now, it means choosing your breast size. It might mean choosing the way your nose looks. Almost every discrete element of our lives now can be looked at as a consumer choice," Meyer said.
It's enough to make Meyer nostalgic for the days when a sense of community and belonging, he says, were not so rare as they are now.
"We accepted, naively, a bill of goods about how one forges an identity and happiness in life. And it doesn't come in a vacuum ? it comes in a community with the help of others."'
From the NPR on line article about this book, I have pasted an excerpt. I haven't read the book and can't speak to it from that perspective. However, the portion of the article below really irked me. Meyer takes on the shift in our culture that gave way to people following personal choice. As a gay man, I have benefited from that rebellion. I think it is naive of Meyer to lambast this shift when, for many people, it became a portal through which to pass to a more personal and truthful self, unfettered by narrow mores of past generations. I think laying the blame of all the ugly, trivial and sordid things in our lives on our expanding personal choices is just plain wrong. It doesn't come off as progressive to me, but more of the same conservative speak that built the careers of men like Limbaugh. The excerpt is below:
'All those little complaints are indicators of something bigger, Meyer told Steve Inskeep: a lack of trust in public leadership and an overall weakening of public morality.
"The 1960s was a symbolic turning point," Meyer said, citing the decade as a time when personal choice became more important than following tradition.
"It became much more important to make all these choices as a witting, conscious consumer of life," Meyer said of formerly tradition-bound elements like religion, where people live, whether they decide to get married.
"And deeper than that, there was a sense that if you did follow a traditional route," Meyer said, "you were an existential weakling."
The realm of personal choice has only expanded since then.
"Now, it means choosing your breast size. It might mean choosing the way your nose looks. Almost every discrete element of our lives now can be looked at as a consumer choice," Meyer said.
It's enough to make Meyer nostalgic for the days when a sense of community and belonging, he says, were not so rare as they are now.
"We accepted, naively, a bill of goods about how one forges an identity and happiness in life. And it doesn't come in a vacuum ? it comes in a community with the help of others."'
From the NPR on line article about this book, I have pasted an excerpt. I haven't read the book and can't speak to it from that perspective. However, the portion of the article below really irked me. Meyer takes on the shift in our culture that gave way to people following personal choice. As a gay man, I have benefited from that rebellion. I think it is naive of Meyer to lambast this shift when, for many people, it became a portal through which to pass to a more personal and truthful self, unfettered by narrow mores of past generations. I think laying the blame of all the ugly, trivial and sordid things in our lives on our expanding personal choices is just plain wrong. It doesn't come off as progressive to me, but more of the same conservative speak that built the careers of men like Limbaugh. The excerpt is below:
'All those little complaints are indicators of something bigger, Meyer told Steve Inskeep: a lack of trust in public leadership and an overall weakening of public morality.
"The 1960s was a symbolic turning point," Meyer said, citing the decade as a time when personal choice became more important than following tradition.
"It became much more important to make all these choices as a witting, conscious consumer of life," Meyer said of formerly tradition-bound elements like religion, where people live, whether they decide to get married.
"And deeper than that, there was a sense that if you did follow a traditional route," Meyer said, "you were an existential weakling."
The realm of personal choice has only expanded since then.
"Now, it means choosing your breast size. It might mean choosing the way your nose looks. Almost every discrete element of our lives now can be looked at as a consumer choice," Meyer said.
It's enough to make Meyer nostalgic for the days when a sense of community and belonging, he says, were not so rare as they are now.
"We accepted, naively, a bill of goods about how one forges an identity and happiness in life. And it doesn't come in a vacuum it comes in a community with the help of others."'
And another complaint:
In response to Meyer's positing that vanity like breast jobs got a running start through the 60's, I'd advise his readers to look up pictures of Victorian socialites who had their bottom ribs removed surgically to have the ideal 18" waist.
I can't wait for Baby Boomers to get so old they finally get over themselves and stop thinking they invented our culture. They are as much flotsam on the stream as every generation before and everyone to follow.
Bruce, you are a bigot and a racist. "If, like me, you believe that something is rotten in the state of Denmark". You better recheck MoJo's policy on racist blogging. Bruce, are you allowed to make similar comments about Jews, Blacks, and gays? You know that MoJo is a tax exempt organization and racist blogging is not allowed.
'PC Police' - Me thinks you are a troll, but maybe just ignorant. The reference to Denmark is a commonly used one that comes from Hamlet, the Shakespearean play about the Danish prince named Hamlet? Hamlet? Remember that Mel Gibson flick you went to see because you thought it was going to have a car chase and a titty shot? You were thinking it might have something to do with a ham omelet and trying to work out how that was going to figure in but then it was just a bunch of English actors talking funky and swaddled from head to toe in yards of brocade? Yeah, that one. Alright. We'll discuss brocade later but rest assured it is not a slur against people who are broke.
Gee, why stop at the sixties? Why not run it back to the forties, when we came back from WWII having proved ourselves the superpower? Housing was within reach of most, industry was geared up, everything was go and every American was entitled to have everything he wanted if he worked. And then the fifties, when we all had to have cars and A.P. Sloan came up with new models every year to keep us buying them. Advertising was king, and we were all subject to it. If anything, kids in the sixties tried to rebel against being sucked into the industrial machinery, but failed largely I suspect because this sense of entitlement was part of the cause; we just felt we were entitled to a different mode of living. That made it all too easy for the rebellion itself to be co-opted by the fashion industry, the music industry, and so on. Eisenhower warned us, but like the shill caught up in the con, we all thought we were too smart to fall for that one.
Bruce needs diversity training. As for Paul, Shakespear had some offensive things to say . In Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice," considered to be one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time, the villain Shylock was a Jewish moneylender. By the end of the play he is mocked on the streets after his daughter elopes with a Christian. Shylock, then, compulsorily converts to Christianity as a part of a deal gone wrong. This has raised profound implications regarding Shakespeare and antisemitism. Shakespear was 500 years ago and was not PC. Paul, if you think that Shakespear is PC you don't belong here as a poster. You are apparently a disguised anti-Semite in need of diversity training as well.
Sorry, folks, but I can't resist jumping in on this one again. Recall that the bad guy in Hamlet is a Danish king, ergo, old Shake really was antidanean. For gosh sakes, now we have to dump Shakespeare because he's not as enlightened as we are? Let's not forget, either, that Shylock, the "evil" Jew in The Merchant of Venice, gets treated pretty meanly by those he demands his pound of flesh from, and is in many ways a sympathetic character. Stage conversions were a popular way of pandering to the groundlings back in the day, but Shylock's "conversion" is only a legal formality forced upon him at the swordpoint of the law, which is why I hope Shakespeare will still be read and argued over long after our ill-informed blogs decay into electronic dust.
But Shakespeare's not PC enough to post here either, is he? Well, there are prejudices, and then there are prejudices.
I can't get behind hypersensitivity like that of Panda Bear or PC Police. You cannot successfully make the point that Bruce Falconer is bigoted because he used a quote from Hamlet that was merely a comment made BY A DANE, about the crooked politics going on in Denmark [Hamlet's uncle killing his brother for the throne]. Regardless, Panda Bear, I suspect you're merely trolling, which makes trying to have a smart conversation with you tiresome, to say the least.
Paul observes: 'PC Police' - Me thinks you are a troll...
Me-thinks so as well, Paul.
I think he's just the fun-loving type though, who's here more to poke fun at any seeming inconsistencies he observes, and not the more offensive type who come armed with every obscenity and slur they can pack into their shriveled, hate-obsessed pea-brains.
The PC Police type of commentary I can tolerate, no sweat, and might even laugh if they're clever enough in presenting it.
The other guys...? Personally, I don't believe in censorship in any way, shape or form. And I've observed that they usually get taken to pieces by brain-equipped posters from all points of the political landscape, which I find much preferable to censoring their nonsense.
But we know that most messageboards are jittery entities, and will censor them before that all has a chance to play itself out.
Paul, to defend an anti-Semite, makes you a fellow traveler. There is no room for anti-Semites, shame on you. That goes for the rest of you Jew haters as well.
We have gotten way off topic here, but I have to let Sarah have the last word or two: "no room." As she put it, "no room for" anyone who disagrees with me. They're all nothing but a bunch of Jew hating fellow travelers, so into the ovens with them.
Shakespeare(English) wrote Hamlet and one of his characters was a Dane(Viking). The Vikings just about conquered England in 870, so it is natural that Shakespeare, the English, would malign the Danes in his play(he apparently had it in for the Jew as well in another play). But such repeating of the slander 500 years later is a republishing of it, which is actionable. Therefore, be forewarned, that anymore repetition of this slander(actually libel) is racism and I am sure that the PC police will come down on you and Panda Bear(of South Park fame?) will be the instructor in your diversity classes. Sarah Siverman, you need to go to diversity training as well.
"Big" Dick Meyer is despicable. It takes "community help" to form an identity??? More like community INTERFERENCE...has this man always suffered from rectal/cranial inversion? Oh yeah, now I remember--he's a middle aged white guy in America. Say no more. Somebody, please cut off his oxygen. Or Dickie, shut it for good and go back to playing with your penis and daydreaming about how you're God. Worthless feck.
Tenacious G said, "middle aged white guy". Tenacious, you are also in need of diversity training from Panda bear. You are a bigot when it comes to age and race. I am surprised that MoJo seems to attract so many bigots and racists. I would expect this on right wing posts, but not MoJo.
who was the blogger that compared todays vanity w/ the victorian era? yes, it happened. for the very wealthy. i think the terms 'disconnect' and 'de-
pression' are what stand out.
there is anger, and the anger
does not seem to have healthy
outlets in a world full of a culture of 'me first'. me first is not a new want. but
expecting the wants results is. excellent read.