Recently I asked Beth Bathory to write a few things for me and this is the first of a few of her opinion pieces which will show up on here.
Editors note: AlrightImWrong.com does very much so agree with the opinions shared hereafter. What a great writer and person.
Pop culture is THE sign of the apocalypse. Western society is headed toward collapse under the weight of its delusional self-importance, but it’s too busy watching The Real World season 21 to notice.
In theory, there are two types of knowledge: cognitive (things we’ve learned because we’re told they’re true, e.g., “The surface of the sun is 11000°F”) and experiential (things we’ve learned because we’ve experienced them to be true, e.g., “A hot stove is HOT”). Cognitive learning is essential—this way, we can read the bleach bottle instead of drinking it to know it’s bad for us. But it is experience that teaches us which sources of cognitive knowledge we should trust to reflect reality (e.g. Wikipedia is a convenient reference, but parts of it appear to have been written by stoned monkeys; Lennie from the school bus may not have had all of the facts about sex quite right; and your parents might actually know what they’re talking about sometimes).
My complaint about popular culture is neither the media nor the messages, per se—I don’t believe that people do stupid things simply because they are exposed to certain music, movies, video games, or ideas and experiences in general. And fantasy is great when it is used to explore or escape the outer limits of experience in the service of enhancing understanding. My concern is society’s overwhelming and short-sighted prioritization of comfort, convenience, and “virtual reality” over actual experience, which had bred stupid people who inevitably do stupid things.
The Western world has become the quintessential smart and lazy kid who realized he could pay the poor, dumb kid to do his homework for him. We’ve had the privilege of deciding that we should not have to experience certain unpleasant and uncomfortable tasks or emotional and physical states. That’s awesome, except that reality happens to include a certain amount of nasty, painful stuff. By avoiding those experiences, we’re utterly screwed at testing time and ultimately fail at life. There’s a clinical term for our cultural relationship with reality: we’re delusional.
Exhibit A: processed food. Food comes from other living things and keeps us alive. Do you have any idea what creature bologna is made from? What biomass goes into a Twinky? So much of what we eat is bad for us because it’s NOT FOOD! It’s a sad fact that economically affluent societies could feed everyone on the entire planet if they cared to critically examine their food production, distribution, and consumption.
Exhibit B: fashion. Why is women’s fashion predicated on eternal adolescence? I totally loved being a teenager, but it’s still the most embarrassing, awkward, angst-y period of most people’s lives. It’s an eighteen-year-old body that makes an eighteen-year-old’s clothing look attractive. Seven-year-old girls in platform heels and booty shorts and forty-seven-year old women in rhinestone flare jeans with surgically restructured faces only emphasize the fact that neither is prime for childbearing, which is a fact, but not one that really needs to be emphasized by fashion. And if you’re more than two decades old, realize that your original teenage fashion choice is already being marketed as a commercially-produced Halloween costume complete with a shiny, matching wig of your regrettable teen-era hair.
Exhibit C: the economy. Enough said.
I’m honestly fascinated by reality television, but I wouldn’t use it as a prototype for demonstrating (à la MTV) “what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real,” except in the context of celebrity and entertainment. The real problem is that we’re utterly disconnected from phenomenal interaction with the social and environmental worlds that support our existence. You’ve got 673 friends on MySpace, but can you walk comfortably into a room of strangers and make a real one when you need to? You’ve mastered World of Warcraft, but do you have any idea how your government or your ecosystem works (and what to do when they stop working)? You don’t get extra lives in real life, and you don’t get a second opportunity to learn that. It might be wise to pay attention.