Today the final part of a three part series of articles on American culture appeared on Focus on the Family's Plugged In website. Here are the links in case you feel like reading them: Part One: Letting the Joneses Win, Part Two: Talkin' in the USA, and Part Three: Livin' la Vida Vicarious.
Okay, here is my commentary. The author, Meredith Whitmore, who has just returned to the United States after five years of teaching English in Africa and China, writes about her experiences fitting back into what we call "American culture" (although I'm not entirely sure there is such a thing).
I was very intrigued by the Part One. It showed a sharp insight and it was well written. The observations were extremely astute and prompted more than just a cursory glance inward. She challenges the reader to drop our materialistic urges--to forget about the stuff, the possession of which we so energetically pursue, and focus on living instead. The big message of the article is that we tend to value ourselves based on what we have compared to what everyone else has. She says, if our sweater (or minivan, condo, hairstyle, furniture ...) isn't quite as nice as our neighbours, who cares? Those are just things, they don't influence who you are or what you're worth. Okay, that was the first part and I thought to myself, Wow! This is great stuff! I can't wait until parts two and three come out; I want to see what else she has to say! I even forwarded a copy of the article to Janelle to read and she thought it was awesome too.
So, obviously, I was pretty excited when Part Two came out one week later and read it voraciously. I was disappointed. Ok, so before I go on about why I was disappointed, I will summarize Whitmore's article. She quotes someone--she doesn't say who (and I won't go on google and find out)--who says: "The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate." Her big beef in this article seems to be with our obsession with technology, particularly communication technology. She argues that while we have all kinds of communication technology, like cell phones, instant messaging, facebook, e-mail and all that jazzy stuff, we're not actually communicating. I'll quote one example she uses:
Okay, here is my commentary. The author, Meredith Whitmore, who has just returned to the United States after five years of teaching English in Africa and China, writes about her experiences fitting back into what we call "American culture" (although I'm not entirely sure there is such a thing).
I was very intrigued by the Part One. It showed a sharp insight and it was well written. The observations were extremely astute and prompted more than just a cursory glance inward. She challenges the reader to drop our materialistic urges--to forget about the stuff, the possession of which we so energetically pursue, and focus on living instead. The big message of the article is that we tend to value ourselves based on what we have compared to what everyone else has. She says, if our sweater (or minivan, condo, hairstyle, furniture ...) isn't quite as nice as our neighbours, who cares? Those are just things, they don't influence who you are or what you're worth. Okay, that was the first part and I thought to myself, Wow! This is great stuff! I can't wait until parts two and three come out; I want to see what else she has to say! I even forwarded a copy of the article to Janelle to read and she thought it was awesome too.
So, obviously, I was pretty excited when Part Two came out one week later and read it voraciously. I was disappointed. Ok, so before I go on about why I was disappointed, I will summarize Whitmore's article. She quotes someone--she doesn't say who (and I won't go on google and find out)--who says: "The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate." Her big beef in this article seems to be with our obsession with technology, particularly communication technology. She argues that while we have all kinds of communication technology, like cell phones, instant messaging, facebook, e-mail and all that jazzy stuff, we're not actually communicating. I'll quote one example she uses:
"A few weeks ago I was at home working online when my housemate sent a Facebook message from downstairs. But let me restate this: She knew I was only a few feet away and she still sent me a digital message. Once I'd read her post and laughed, I shut my laptop and practically sprinted to her, barely missing the cat on the last step. 'Oh, please!' I said, feigning disgust when she could see me in the kitchen. 'Talk to me! We are not going down this road!'"
In another example, she writes about an episode where she was at the theatre and all her fellow theatre-goers were wearing Bluetooth devices and talking on them and she thought she may have wandered into a crowd of cyborgs.
The third example I'm going to reference is the most poignant, I think, and I will quote it:
"When I traveled with a youth group recently, I watched teenagers in the van chat on cell phones, listen to mp3s and play video games—all without so much as breathing on their seat-belted neighbors. They texted BFFs elsewhere rather than getting to know the teens around them. Hardly anyone talked to anybody else in the vehicle for hours."
"To me," she writes, "How Americans communicate often feels more like a tutorial in how to avoid communication."
The example about the youth group is, to me, the important part of the article. I think she could have just put that in and cut everything else out and that would have been excellent. Getting to know the people around you is something I find very lacking in North American culture--myself included.
Here follows what disappointed me about this article: I don't particularly care for her brand of sarcasm. It's very cheap. But that's just my taste, it's not an objective observation. It seems to me that the article deals more with the symptoms of the problem: our obsession with technology than with the actual problem: our culture of laziness. To me, that's a major problem with Focus on the Family in general: they tend to put more focus on the symptoms of the problem than on the actual problem. For example, they campaign against abortion and homosexual marriage but those things are just a symptom of the problem of Sin--we should expect unsaved people to live sinfully and not try to treat their sins with campaigns and legislation but to present to them the One who can save them from their Sin. Anyways I think this article is typical of Focus on the Family's way of looking at things.
I mentioned earlier that I'm not entirely sure if there is such a thing as American culture. (Obviously, by American, I mean North American.) And I think that's what Whitmore is trying to talk about in these articles: the great vacuity that is North American culture. I think there is a lot of regional culture in North America, for example, Halifax has a lively culture of beer, academics, and music and the three mix together very well to create a fine, fun, and intelligent culture in this city. But there is no grand culture that describes all of North America except for the great vacuity that is our Media: we have shows like Jerry Springer and Maury playing on TV, our magazines are obsessed with scantily clad women and the clothing that they may or may not wear, a big chunk of our newspapers are devoted to Entertainment. It's all vacuity; it's all meaningless; it brings no joy or value to our lives.
And this obsession with Entertainment is the topic of Whitmore's third article, titled "Livin' la Vida Vicarious." She writes about how TV and Media life seems to have become much more engrossing than real life, and how this is replacing real-life experiences. While I agree with her in principle, I find her approach very judgmental and self-righteous. I don't know any people who confuse TV and Media life with real life like the people in the examples she uses in her article. Anyways, it just turned me off and I was disappointed enough to blog about it.
So read the first article, it's great and has some astute and inspiring observations but the other two articles are just a bit annoying. Personally, I appreciate Matthew Good's social commentary on the same subject much more.
The third example I'm going to reference is the most poignant, I think, and I will quote it:
"When I traveled with a youth group recently, I watched teenagers in the van chat on cell phones, listen to mp3s and play video games—all without so much as breathing on their seat-belted neighbors. They texted BFFs elsewhere rather than getting to know the teens around them. Hardly anyone talked to anybody else in the vehicle for hours."
"To me," she writes, "How Americans communicate often feels more like a tutorial in how to avoid communication."
The example about the youth group is, to me, the important part of the article. I think she could have just put that in and cut everything else out and that would have been excellent. Getting to know the people around you is something I find very lacking in North American culture--myself included.
Here follows what disappointed me about this article: I don't particularly care for her brand of sarcasm. It's very cheap. But that's just my taste, it's not an objective observation. It seems to me that the article deals more with the symptoms of the problem: our obsession with technology than with the actual problem: our culture of laziness. To me, that's a major problem with Focus on the Family in general: they tend to put more focus on the symptoms of the problem than on the actual problem. For example, they campaign against abortion and homosexual marriage but those things are just a symptom of the problem of Sin--we should expect unsaved people to live sinfully and not try to treat their sins with campaigns and legislation but to present to them the One who can save them from their Sin. Anyways I think this article is typical of Focus on the Family's way of looking at things.
I mentioned earlier that I'm not entirely sure if there is such a thing as American culture. (Obviously, by American, I mean North American.) And I think that's what Whitmore is trying to talk about in these articles: the great vacuity that is North American culture. I think there is a lot of regional culture in North America, for example, Halifax has a lively culture of beer, academics, and music and the three mix together very well to create a fine, fun, and intelligent culture in this city. But there is no grand culture that describes all of North America except for the great vacuity that is our Media: we have shows like Jerry Springer and Maury playing on TV, our magazines are obsessed with scantily clad women and the clothing that they may or may not wear, a big chunk of our newspapers are devoted to Entertainment. It's all vacuity; it's all meaningless; it brings no joy or value to our lives.
And this obsession with Entertainment is the topic of Whitmore's third article, titled "Livin' la Vida Vicarious." She writes about how TV and Media life seems to have become much more engrossing than real life, and how this is replacing real-life experiences. While I agree with her in principle, I find her approach very judgmental and self-righteous. I don't know any people who confuse TV and Media life with real life like the people in the examples she uses in her article. Anyways, it just turned me off and I was disappointed enough to blog about it.
So read the first article, it's great and has some astute and inspiring observations but the other two articles are just a bit annoying. Personally, I appreciate Matthew Good's social commentary on the same subject much more.
Just curious. Have you ever lived overseas?
ReplyDeleteno. actually, i have never lived outside of canada
ReplyDelete