Just A Thought.
I was running last night at midnight, another one of the sleepless ones and I could feel it coming on. "Why not just run then, you're not going to sleep anyway." Laced shoes and stretched hamstrings and I hit the road, my brain turns into a crucible, my mind feeding the ryhthm of footfall after footfall, ideas waft in and out of consciouness and occasionally I pull one down and chew on it for awhile.
All it takes is discipline to be a good runner. I think that's why I like it so much, and probably why Anne likes it so much: I beat my body and made it my slave.
Anyway, the thought last night careering around my consciousness (between the push-pull thrum thrum of breath-in breath-out) was about the kids, how school is looming ominously not so unlike a sword of damocles (knot in the pit of the stomach over it) and how it was and isn't different than when I walked the halls as a student. There is a new paradigm (tm) to some degree.
First, I don't know how (most) of the kids do it. Go there everyday, have discipline handed down to them from on high by adults who don't themselves follow the rules they make. I hate the tardiness issue. I have addressed it before. If you can't make it on time to work, you have precisely no authority to harangue a kid for being late to school. But I digress. (I will always give you an excused pass.)
As I pushed past the first mile I started to think about image among today's youth, I started to think about the process by which identity is born. I think there is a huge oversight in our American Culture (tm) today, I think we've been remiss and the kids are suffering (and will suffer) for it. We are passing down a terrible ethos; that there is no difference between consumption and expression.
Let me elaborate. When I was in high school, there weren't any particularly discernable groups. There were athletic kids. Kids who were into music. Really smart kids. Art kids. Kids who floated among and between the groups. If you were to walk into the school as a stranger, you'd have no idea how to pinpoint one group from the next, as we all looked, talked, and treated each other pretty much the same. What seperated us as people was our interests, the things we did on our own and for our own sanity. The way we answered the call to arms from that unquashable voice on the inside. I think it has changed now, to the point that different groups identify themselves by the image that they transmit to the greater whole. And I think they're learning this from us, the adults. You are what you buy, and more gravely, you are what you can buy. Of course this isn't the totality of the student body that I'm talking about. But I think that for many of today's youth, to talk about the difference between consumption and expression would be nearly impossible because for them, you are what you consume. You are a target market but this isn't a thought that inspires fear. How do we teach kids that the core inside of us isn't a commodity, it's not on a tshirt at hot topic, and it's not in a ridiculously overpriced hand bag?
We live in an advertising culture where we are constantly told that the only thing that stands between our current state and wholeness is a particular commodity. It's the central lie of our culture, and the people who hate mainstream culture the most seem to cling to this lie the most intensely. Notice how many "alternative" people define their non-conformity by how readily they conform to an alternate standard? How they buy objects that articulate their rebellion for them? It has become so ingrained in our culture that the current crop of teenagers makes no distinction between consumption and expression. They are frustrated that consumption alienates them from their own feelings and desires, but they express that frustration by consuming more commodities. It's a vicious circle, and one of the great tragedies of our time. It is killing us as a society. America is so segmented, bifurcated. We have to stop before Walmart and Target become our cultural hallmarks, the things foreign tourists think of when they decide to travel to the good old US of A. We have so much more to offer.
All it takes is discipline to be a good runner. I think that's why I like it so much, and probably why Anne likes it so much: I beat my body and made it my slave.
Anyway, the thought last night careering around my consciousness (between the push-pull thrum thrum of breath-in breath-out) was about the kids, how school is looming ominously not so unlike a sword of damocles (knot in the pit of the stomach over it) and how it was and isn't different than when I walked the halls as a student. There is a new paradigm (tm) to some degree.
First, I don't know how (most) of the kids do it. Go there everyday, have discipline handed down to them from on high by adults who don't themselves follow the rules they make. I hate the tardiness issue. I have addressed it before. If you can't make it on time to work, you have precisely no authority to harangue a kid for being late to school. But I digress. (I will always give you an excused pass.)
As I pushed past the first mile I started to think about image among today's youth, I started to think about the process by which identity is born. I think there is a huge oversight in our American Culture (tm) today, I think we've been remiss and the kids are suffering (and will suffer) for it. We are passing down a terrible ethos; that there is no difference between consumption and expression.
Let me elaborate. When I was in high school, there weren't any particularly discernable groups. There were athletic kids. Kids who were into music. Really smart kids. Art kids. Kids who floated among and between the groups. If you were to walk into the school as a stranger, you'd have no idea how to pinpoint one group from the next, as we all looked, talked, and treated each other pretty much the same. What seperated us as people was our interests, the things we did on our own and for our own sanity. The way we answered the call to arms from that unquashable voice on the inside. I think it has changed now, to the point that different groups identify themselves by the image that they transmit to the greater whole. And I think they're learning this from us, the adults. You are what you buy, and more gravely, you are what you can buy. Of course this isn't the totality of the student body that I'm talking about. But I think that for many of today's youth, to talk about the difference between consumption and expression would be nearly impossible because for them, you are what you consume. You are a target market but this isn't a thought that inspires fear. How do we teach kids that the core inside of us isn't a commodity, it's not on a tshirt at hot topic, and it's not in a ridiculously overpriced hand bag?
We live in an advertising culture where we are constantly told that the only thing that stands between our current state and wholeness is a particular commodity. It's the central lie of our culture, and the people who hate mainstream culture the most seem to cling to this lie the most intensely. Notice how many "alternative" people define their non-conformity by how readily they conform to an alternate standard? How they buy objects that articulate their rebellion for them? It has become so ingrained in our culture that the current crop of teenagers makes no distinction between consumption and expression. They are frustrated that consumption alienates them from their own feelings and desires, but they express that frustration by consuming more commodities. It's a vicious circle, and one of the great tragedies of our time. It is killing us as a society. America is so segmented, bifurcated. We have to stop before Walmart and Target become our cultural hallmarks, the things foreign tourists think of when they decide to travel to the good old US of A. We have so much more to offer.
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