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The Divide

Saturday morning,we went to visit Nevada City. It's a California gold country town up on the mid-sierra, no longer populated by farmers and miners, but by t-shirt vendors,fudge stores,funky bookstores and stores that contain the same sort of things you see on the wall at TGI Fridays. The town itself dates back to the civil war, many of the buildings are still of the old style false front buildings seen on movie sets, but these are real work a day places where folks try to make their living selling art, overpriced wine and the latest in hip cuisine choices.

This is one of my favorite places on Earth, It really doesnt belong to any specific time or place. You can often find guys who are still working in shifts down the shafts at the local hardrock gold mine sitting side by side with bohemian bicyclists out exploring the sierras on their winter break from UC Berkelely, where they are holding a major in "peace studies". There are many little sole proprietor stores that deal in occult,crystals,kites and macrame in nearly every store you find music that is called 'world' or 'ethnic' music. This is not to say that this is a dark town, this is a very light hearted town. Directly across the street from the bright pink feminist bookstore is the "Fur Traders" store where you too can buy a fur covered car seat.Across the corner from there you can find the candy store where you can get your fill of fudge at yet another store. It's that kind of eclectic thing that only makes sense in Nevada City. The smell of incense is a part of the personality of every door that you open in Nevada City. Theres a recognition of the old while an embrace of the new in everyone that lives there.

This is town that proves once again, that only the rich can afford the luxury of really bad ideas. Those that go to Nevada City to live out their lives in artisty in the tall pines and craggy peaks of the sierras, to join the burgeoning theatre group that is there, are almost all wealthy. It takes a lot of money to open a bookshop that has almost no inventory, to pay the rent month to month, to get the payroll out. It takes a lot of money to live without a day-in day-out job. If you were to ask those that are there, like the 20 something kid who served us tea at the tea shop if they were wealthy, they would say "no way man!", "I hate money". It's funny to watch how self illusion can cloud someones mind to the reality that they themselves have created.
You work at a job, junior! - you get paid for it too! - you like money because you like to eat and staying dry under a roof is a good thing. You young "Davey Sumshine" for all your counter culture anti-culture rebellion stylizing are no different than I am, and while that doesnt bother me at all to be in the same group as you, tonight my dear dreadlocked friend, this will keep you awake worrying about it until sunrise.

Today, It occured to me that America is probably the only culture on earth at any time in history where the counter culture is a reaction of the Rich against the Poor and the middle class. Usually, the counter culture is found in the ghettos and the places of poverty as a reaction to the power elite, but in this country, It's the children of the rich who would do anything except be thought of as "average". To say someone looks like they shop at wal-mart is the height of insult in our counter culture.

I've noted before that I never met an actual communist while I worked in a factory, but I did meet lots of them when I was at school. I also never found a communist or someone who believed in communism who actually had a job. What's worse, those who constantly lectured me on the values of communism were always the ones who sneered at the janitor, or gave the waitresses a hard time and left no tips. I learned a lot about the left while I was in college, although I'm sure it was not the lesson they hoped to teach me.

Nevada City is one of those places where you can see the divide in our culture in the wide open. It is like a heart surgeons chest spreader for the soul. We are a people divided between those who wish only to be average and embrace the rational and those who wish to reject the common and only embrace the irrational. On one side of the divide we have a culture that, strives to be different even if being the same is the result, and lives without obligations except to satisfy the self. the very idea that the the self is not the most important thing is incomprensible to that side of the divide. On the other side of the divide, there is an emphasis on family and selflessness, of sacrifice of the self for a greater good.

I believe it is this concept of obligation over self fulfillment that serves as the precise point of rupture in our culture.

Over the summer, one of the books I read while I was working in Seattle was "1939: The Lost World of the Fair" by David Gelernter. In this book, Mr. Gelernter describes the world of 1939 in terms of cultural values. He describes the 1939 world as a world of "aught", as in " This is what you aught to do" , in 1939, you as an individual had obligations to perform. In the world of today, we almost never describe our lives in terms of our obligations to others. Whats worse, we describe those who do hold onto obligations in low esteem. Watch TV today, and the father figure of every commericial is a babbling idiot, Watch TV today and every mother and father is a harried victim on the run from this or that threat. Watch TV today and see children who are always smarter and more wise than their parents. It's accepted as a reflection of realty, no one questions the validity of it.

A few years back, there was yet another movie about how awful life was in the suburbs. American Beauty. It didnt bother me that Hollywood made yet another movie describing suburban life as the 9th circle of hell, it didnt bother me that it was well reviewed and thought by he critics to be a great movie. What bothered me is no one ever stood up and said:

" For it being such an awful place to live, there sure is a hell of a lot of people moving to the suburbs all the time ".

I Love Nevada City, and I like the people who live there. But I do resent that the other side of the cultural divide who has benefitted so much from what the suburbs have created can only look back at it with a sneer and a giggle. Sneer away kids, you might think we sit in our suburban homes crying into our pillows, but most of us live a pretty damn good life here in the average suburb. Those of us who have been poor know that although there is no virtue in wealth for its own purpose, we also know that there is not virtue in poverty either. We like our lives here in suburbia. We like our lawns, our garages, our lawn sprinkers. We chose this life, just as you chose yours.

Embrace Diversity.

UPDATE: In the auditorium of ideas, my chair is somehwere between this guy and Christopher Hitchens. I'm also probably kicking the back of the seat that P.J. O'Rourke is sitting in.

Posted @ October 23, 2004 07:12 PM | Current Events

Posted by: Paul Young at October 24, 2004 09:02 PM