How to "keep it real"
When the shiny and new is dulled by routine, how do we revive our original fascination - with life, love, work? Along the life path, our expectations are altered to fit with the various experiences that we undergo. Nothing can stay new forever, and in all honesty, who would want to pause in this moment . . . forever. Is it our so-called "throwaway society" that paves the way for specks of dissatisfaction to develop into full-scale disappointment with the present? According to cultural-geographer David Harvey's interpretation of the United States as a "throwaway society," this evolution of society means "more than just throwing away produced goods (creating a monumental waste-disposal problem), but also being able to throw away values, life-styles, stable relationships, and attachments to things, buildings, places, people, and received ways of doing and being" (p. 286 of The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change).
2 comments:
Not sure I can jive with that or not. It's hard to "throwaway" who you are. This idea seems to run counter to a lot of theories of aging which basically say that as one gets old, he or she becomes more of him/herself. That is, that beliefs/attitudes/personalities/etc. become increasingly solidified as one gets older. From watching people in my family age, I would say this seems to be more true.
I tend to agree with you on that one, and that could be why reading David's cynical prognosis of the current times was so disturbing to me. We are human beings, made to adapt to new settings, but we are supposed to build on our foundation. I haven't disregarded my values or become a different person than I was five years ago, though I may seem different now. The professor suggested that his argument is too mechanical, just going on his personal sense of social change. Perhaps so.
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