Culture of the Absurd

Unlicensed owner/chef improperly
prepares Blowfish testicles,
sickens seven in Tokyo restaurant.


It’s happening. The Culture of the Absurd is at last running headfirst into concrete reality. Although entirely predictable for many years it can no longer be ignored or denied. I am not speaking here of the current economic crisis. This current crisis obviously is demanding all attention at the moment, but viewed in a broader perspective is little more than the canary in a coal mine. The brutal fact is, our culture, based as it has been on unconscionable waste and a totally unsustainable way of life, is being forced to slow down, change or die. We have based our way of life on decisions and practices that are simply absurd. To sustain this thesis would require a very large book, perhaps even several volumes, but consider just a few of the decisions we made about our life style that have brought us to this undeniable but inevitable position.

It would be hard to argue that the invention of the internal combustion engine was necessarily a bad thing, although there were people like Tolkien and even Churchill who have thought so. It is not hard to argue, however, that we have seriously abused that remarkable invention. The decision to reduce our dependence on railroads in favor of trucks, in retrospect at least, was absurd. It has resulted in an incredible waste of resources and was silly in the extreme. Now we are in the position of having to consider renewed emphasis on rail, both for carrying freight and passengers. We should have done this long ago. In fact, we should never have stopped in the first place. What is even more absurd is the fact that we also elected to use the automobile as our standard mode of transportation. It is absurd that single individuals, even pairs of individuals, should need an automobile to conduct their generally petty everyday needs. That such vehicles should be large and require many gallons of fuel to travel relatively short distances is absurd. We should have opted for a fine public transportation system with buses and trains as most European nations have done. Not only do these vehicles shamelessly waste natural resources, they also contribute to environmental and health problems. This is especially true of vehicles such as ATV’s, personal watercraft, snowmobiles, and etc. Insofar as the Chinese are trying to emulate our lifestyle they are every bit as absurd as we have been and continue to be.

Our reliance on built-in obsolescence in order to keep our manufacturers in business and economy growing is equally absurd. Again, we could have opted to manufacture quality products that would be serviceable, durable, and last, but for the most part we did not. Our items are inexpensive, to be sure, but not really, when you consider they have to be so often replaced. How many toasters or televisions have you seen repaired lately? Our housing reflects this trend as well. Many people in Europe are living quite comfortably in buildings that are two, three hundred years old, and even older in some cases. These buildings were built to last and periodically brought up to date. It is not at all uncommon for houses in the U.S. to be torn down and replaced every 30 to 50 years. In some areas it is not uncommon for perfectly good homes to be torn down and replaced by something bigger and better. And bigger is a problem. The size of homes here is dictated much more by how much money someone has than by the size of the family to reside there. Large homes bring prestige to the owner even though it involves a terrible waste. Building stimulates the economy, but it also wastes natural resources. An economy so dependent upon obsolescence is absurd.

We built dams across our rivers with little or no regard for the salmon or other fish that had been there for centuries. The dams could easily have been built to accommodate the fish, but they weren’t. Only now, when it may well be too late in some cases, is attention being paid to this terrible and absurd mistake. A few dams have been removed and if salmon runs are to survive many more may have to be removed. This could have been avoided but it wasn’t. Indeed, all of our fisheries, like the great codfishing grounds, could have been saved with just a modicum of common sense, but they were allowed to be seriously overfished, just as most of the ocean has. Our record of uncontrolled greed, looking back, is hard to believe. But we are continuing to do the same at the moment. Many species have disappeared and more disappear every year. The forests of the world are disappearing at an alarming rate. Our country which comprises only a small fraction of the world’s population consumes far more than its share of natural resources year after year. Consumerism is encouraged to the point of absurdity. There are women in the U.S. that shop every day. That is what they do, simply shop. The credo is shop ‘til you drop,” and “he who has the most toys wins.” This is absurd. It is part of a whole culture of the absurd. Our military/industrial/political complex is absurd as is our system of health care and corporate farms. I could continue, there are hundreds of other examples of the absurdity of American culture. I said before, and now I say again, “There is something wrong with a culture that requires so much storage” (Morialekafa 8-27-06).

Haiku
First autumn morning:
the mirror I stare into
shows my father's face.

Murakami, Kijo

TILT:It has been estimated there may have been five billion Passenger Pigeons in the U.S. when Europeans arrived. “Martha,” believed to have been the last surviving one, died on September 1, 1914.