On the same theme, but found a few minutes after my last post. This entry on Garden Rant is excellent. The crux of the entry is amazement that so many people think spending money on their lawn furniture (and water features, and sound systems, and more) will transform said yard into a pristine wonderland, as advertised in the Pottery Barn catalogue. Even though none of us have ever been in someone's perfect outdoor paradise, we can still conjure how clean, bug-free, and comfy it will be to lounge on our chaise with our mojito.
Or not. People are then disappointed that the outdoors is still, well, outdoors.
Man, it is easy to want to blame TV and magazines for selling us a form of lifestyle porn, but I'm almost sad it's not that simple. Oh yeah, and we can blame A/C, because we all know I love that rant. And car culture that keeps us from walking and compartmentalizes the day into trips. I like that rant too.
But this isn't a new sentiment. There is always this current. The Romantics (Goethe, Blake, Whitman) were in some way responding sceptically to the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment. Where has our imagination gone in this Age of Reason, they cried? It's time to go read some Shelley (the outcast because he was the atheist of the movement). Such is the hubris of man to think that our works, giant stone statues in the desert or waterproof sound systems, will somehow outwit, outlast or even distract the elements. I almost like the absurdity of the image of the NJ businessman investing $200K on his own thwack back at nature (hot tub, firepit, expensive furniture, all on the slate patio) juxtaposed to that of an ancient Pharoah (pyramid, stone sculpture, fountain, firepit, all on a stone terrace).
The sky isn't falling today any more than it was before. It's just a long slow process.
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