January 21, 2005
Generica
Umbrae Canarum has a post up prompted by reflection on Texas small towns and their charming, old-fashioned main streets. A good post, but it annoyed me. Not because I disagree with anything he writes, but because it reminded me of what I see as the biggest flaws in American culture. Rather than retype everything I said in the comments, I'll just reproduce most of it here with some elaboration.
Texas has these small towns all over the place. The old, delapidated main streets still have a definite charm, but even those are being overrun by Generica, the scourge of our nation. Do most people find it comforting that the only difference from one city to the next is the arrangement of the stores? Or is it simply something they take for granted? I fear that 20 years from now, there will only be a handful of cities in the nation that are distinct from the others (Austin, Portland, San Francisco, etc), but even those will be in danger of being overrun. I know the big box stores and the restaurant chains are convenient, but the quality, particularly of the restaurants, is usually mediocre at best. What happened to exploration and adventure, even if on such a small scale as trying a new place to eat? Isn't a fierce individualism supposed to be a distinctly American trait?
Gah! I know I'm just coming off as bitter and arrogant, but I see this as just another sign of the general decline of culture and education in the US. We're rapidly moving towards being a nation of obese, illiterate, and generally ignorant automatons. Naturally, I think the answer rests in better education. It is the foundation for a thoughtful, cultured life, one that would lead more people to reject the anonymizing commercialism created and sustained by the Walmarts, McDonald's, and Applebees. The unexamined life is the one most Americans live. Am I wrong about this? Am I just being a snob? It's indisputable that educational standards have fallen precipitously in the last few decades; that much is really not debatable. Is it only coincidence that this coincides with the rapid expansion of Generica and its attendant ills?
You know, I'm not aware of many Texas cities that have these main streets. I mean, you see them in West Texas, but it's not like people walk down the streets going from shop to shop. People in West Texas still drive everywhere. Where real main streets still exist in Tejas (say, Fredricksburg or Granbury), it's usually kept up as a means of luring shopping and/or tourism. Unless there is a huge shift in American culture, I think the future of "main street" culture is likely to be confined to attracting the affluent through charm.
As I see it, the rapid rise of a mass suburban culture (whose members were primarily from proletarian or rural backgrounds) necessarily overwelmed the precedence of the cultivated bourgeois aesthetic (still visible in New York and San Fransisco). This country grew so fast that economic mobility and aesthetic/ethical standards couldn't rise at the same rate. Schools and universities today hold no pretensions of fostering a common culture--hence economic efficency easily rose to the fore as the primary factor in consumer choice. Finally, I think most of the masses stopped caring about the idea of high culture as an ideal at some point in the 70s-80s. Aesthetic elitism (and class difference) became irrelevant in a way that hasn't yet occured in Europe.
It's not all bad. Americans have way more access to consumer services than any other nation, and the poor here can afford far more than the poor elsewhere. There is little class conflict because little besides money seperates the classes. But we decimated our communities--and with the decline of community, I think there is a corresponding decline in virtue and responsibility. I think there is a legitimate argument to be made that city life holds definite advantages over suburban life in terms of the quality of citizens it produces, but that's a difficult issue, since a partisan for suburbia can retort with a family-based argument.
You know, I'm not aware of many Texas cities that have these main streets. I mean, you see them in West Texas, but it's not like people walk down the streets going from shop to shop. People in West Texas still drive everywhere. Where real main streets still exist in Tejas (say, Fredricksburg or Granbury), it's usually kept up as a means of luring shopping and/or tourism. Unless there is a huge shift in American culture, I think the future of "main street" culture is likely to be confined to attracting the affluent through charm.
That's true, they are kept out of nostalgic reasons more than anything else, but Denton, for example, still has a vibrant, old town square with the courthouse right there. Paris (Texas) also still uses its town square. There are quite a few towns that do still have local businesses in their main street or square that get plenty of customers.
As I see it, the rapid rise of a mass suburban culture (whose members were primarily from proletarian or rural backgrounds) necessarily overwelmed the precedence of the cultivated bourgeois aesthetic (still visible in New York and San Fransisco). This country grew so fast that economic mobility and aesthetic/ethical standards couldn't rise at the same rate. Schools and universities today hold no pretensions of fostering a common culture--hence economic efficency easily rose to the fore as the primary factor in consumer choice. Finally, I think most of the masses stopped caring about the idea of high culture as an ideal at some point in the 70s-80s. Aesthetic elitism (and class difference) became irrelevant in a way that hasn't yet occured in Europe.
Academic-bashers would blame the post-modernists for blurring the line between high and low culture, hence devaluing (at least inadvertently, if not purposefully) the former. I doubt that's the reason. It seems more likely that theorists of that time period were simply intellectualizing the devaluation that was happening everywhere, if your time frame correct. I don't know that much about cultural trends of the past 30 years to claim that's right, but it sounds true. Wouldn't you say that part of the reason people stopped caring about high culture can be traced to the decline in quality of public education coupled with the massive expansion of television?
t's not all bad. Americans have way more access to consumer services than any other nation, and the poor here can afford far more than the poor elsewhere. There is little class conflict because little besides money seperates the classes. But we decimated our communities--and with the decline of community, I think there is a corresponding decline in virtue and responsibility. I think there is a legitimate argument to be made that city life holds definite advantages over suburban life in terms of the quality of citizens it produces, but that's a difficult issue, since a partisan for suburbia can retort with a family-based argument.
Poverty in America means you can only afford a 27" television and one car. Not to pass over the truly impoverished of which there are plenty, but those that are generally considered poor would still be seen as rich by the truly poor around the world. I really don't think access to more consumer services makes up for the decline in respect for education and culture, though. Consumerism can only attend to material needs.
In all honesty, I doubt public education was ever "better" in the US. Way back in the day, school teachers (and lawyers) usually didn't have any college education.
But I also think television and other consumption-related activities deflated progressive possibilities opened up by material progress. I once read an interview with a disenchanted labor and women's rights activist (she had taken part in the 1919 marches), where she voices her disapointment that the masses waste the precious time produced by determined and difficult activism watching Hollywood Squares, while she and her Progressive contemporaries had read Shakespheare by candlelight after 60 hour workweeks. According to this narrative, the kind of productive proletarian character envisioned by early 20th century activists (which would supposedly emerge with greater human equality) was headed off by the invention of limitless opportunities for mindless consumption.
Whether this is fair or not, I think television has helped popularize models of successful and happy human beings that don't necessarily follow the traditional roads to virtue--education, culture, religion, etc. Television expands society's communications and national cohesion, but it seems to have limited capacity to help sponser productive and socialized human beings.