Elitist Darling Rubs Elbows

When Black Friday comes 

I'm gonna dig myself a hole

Gonna lay down in it 'til

I satisfy my soul

Gonna let the world pass by me

The Archbishop's gonna sanctify me

And if he don't come across

I'm gonna let it roll

When Black Friday comes

I'm gonna stake my claim

        I'll guess I'll change my name  
       (Steeley Dan, "Black Friday,"  )


     On  Black Friday, retail's Halloween, I found myself rubbing elbows with the Great Unwashed at two big box retailers in Nashville, that national antipode of elitism.  I was in the city to spend Thanksgiving with my son and his fiancee.  Only love could have overcome my squeamishness about crowds and shopping in general;  M. needed to check out a gear bag at Best Buy and he wanted a particular, modern techy-looking pair of drapes he'd seen at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for his home office. We were both headed out of town the next day and there hadn't been a moment previously in the visit  to shop these stores, so we were more or less forced to brave the crowds.

     Actually, the experience was not as bad as I had feared or as the news broadcasts had predicted...but they would, being professional alarmists.  The real news in Nashville on Friday was no news at all.  We found parking places easily...and then, of course, found better ones once we'd locked the car and were crossing the lot.  M. didn't find his bag, but one of the last pairs of drapes in the right size was available, along with the rod that looked best with them.  I got a chance to pick my computer-savvy son's brain about the netbook I've been craving.  We had a great soup and sandwich lunch (still vegan, for me)  at Jason's Deli nearby, without a wait in line.  All in all, a successful morning.  The problem with the shopping trip--the only problem, really--was that there were a lot of people there; no thundering hoards, no violence or even bad behavior, but there were hundreds of people in the stores.  I like you just fine, Dear Reader, but not People, as a category, and certainly not in any great numbers.  This pseudo-phobia of mine is likely to become a greater and greater problem over the next decade or so, as population growth explodes.  Or is it?

     According to The World Bank's World Development Indicators, the population of the United States for 2008 had dropped to 0.915%.  For the entire world, the picture is not so hopeful, but not nearly as grim as I had feared before I did my homework:  The world's current population growth is 1.2%, and expected to slow to .8% between 2015 and 2030. This indicates a significant drop from the 1960's, when the rate of population growth was 2.2%. Women worldwide are clearly having fewer children.

   

     Browsing my blogroll, I followed my smart, new blog acquaintance Zo over to James Kunstler's blog. On population growth and American culture, Kunstler writes:

Every time I do a Q and A after a college lecture, somebody says (with a fanfare of indignation) - so as to reveal their own brilliance in contrast to my foolishness - "You haven't said anything about overpopulation!

     Right.  I usually don't bother. Their complaint, of course, implies that we would do something about overpopulation if only we would recognize it.  Which is absurd.  What might we do about overpopulation here in the USA?  Legislate a one-child policy?  Set up an onerous set of bureaucratic protocols forcing citizens to apply for permission to reproduce?  Direct the police to shoot all female babies?  Use stimulus money to build crematoria outside of Nashville?

     It's certainly true that the planet is suffering from human population overshoot. We're way beyond "carrying capacity."  Only the remaining supplies of fossil fuels allow us to continue this process, and not for long, anyway. In the meantime, human reproduction rates are also greatly increasing the supply of idiots relative to resources, and that is especially problematic in the USA, where idiots rule the culture and polity.

You might be able to link his whole piece, The Fate of The Yeast People, but his site is in transition.  If you find him, I recommend moving cautiously.  If the link doesn't work, you'll get the drift of his invective from Zo's site, humorlessbitch...don't let her kid you with her title; she's neither. Kunstler, however, might be both. You can google him later. He's worth reading, if only because he makes most of us look like the optimists we wish we were.  Regardless of what Kunstler thinks, the contraction the planet requires seems to be occurring, and maybe it isn't too late.

      There are plenty of reasons to be worried about run-away growth, running out of resources, and running off into the part of the map marked Beyond Here Be Dragons...Kunstler would get no argument from me.  I, too, find it regrettable that the forces that give rise to plentiful parking places on  Black Friday have also stimulated so strange a crop of movies for this time of year-- we're to be scared needlessly silly this Christmas by visions of the Apocalypse. I've got some free movie passes I need to use, but I won't be cashing them in on either "2012" or "The Road." Not even the Mayans believed in the End Times; they just believed that a new cycle of time was beginning. We are not at our most sanguine in the USA just now, but most folks are finding their way. And many of us are trying to find ways to help the rest. The world isn't ending just because we have to ratchet back our Christmas excesses for the second year in a row. I don't think things are as bad as the alarmist movies or Kunstler would indicate; they offer a product, frissons of fear, and we have a choice about purchasing.

     What stood out for me on Black Friday was how smart, responsible, concerned, and informed my irreverent son has become...hilarious and profane, though he may be. And I couldn't help noticing how kind his old friends are in asking after his father and me, or that his fiancee was the soul of cordiality during our visit. My opinion of my children's generation improves with exposure and experience: up close, these kids bear a surprising resemblance to intelligent, inventive, resilient Americans who may have what it takes to rise to the situation they've inherited.  There was more good news, too, when I looked for it.   Most people more or less stayed within their own lanes on the highway for yet another day in the USA. People asked to be excused when they bumped into me at B-cubed. Believe it or not, the security folks at the airport were more polite than they've been in months. The planes I've taken these past few trips have all been on time or even a little early. I've overheard people thanking the uniformed troops they run into at the airport.  

    I'm an elitist, I confess, but I'm not channeling Scrooge this season. I don't like television, or what passes currently for popular culture in the West, or crowded shopping malls, or kids who step on my feet while I'm trying to read the specs on Toshiba's netbook offering. I don't like the nasty political climate we have these days, or the politicians whose personal irresponsibilities stand between the rest of us and even a prayer of responsible governance. But I'm not hopeless, neither globally, nor nationally, nor personally. And I'm going to spend my free movie passes on either "An Education" or "Nine," instead of "New Moon," but all three movies are available for me to see; different strokes for different folks in our country, still, and that's not true everywhere.

    Here's a little early Christmas present, then, via Whiskey River:

It is within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: the only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't."

- David Foster Wallace

I'm going to send me back to this quotation when I get grumped out this season. What strategy will you use? How will you keep a cool head and a warm heart this Christmas?

[image: www.boredla.com/.../black-friday-electronics.bmp]