Saturday, August 5, 2006 |
02:14 - When in Rome, do like a Roman
http://inertiacrept.livejournal.com/43187.html
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Great post by "The Musty Man" on the "let's go backpacking in some third-world country to purge our souls of the evils of having been born in a land of privilege" impulse that devours so many people of a certain age, and what it does to their minds.
Ten years ago, my sympathies were all with those healthy sunburnt types with the burgeoning dreadlocks and leghair bleached white by salt and sun, and there's still a lot to be said for living cheap and getting naked without too much critical reflection or hesitation. Those people are having FUN, and they're learning all sorts of important lessons about any number of things, and I don't doubt that most of them will be better people because of the time they've spent in places like the Coban. Now that I'm older and grumpier, however, I find that I can only really hang with them until that inevitable first bit of geographical comparison, the jabbing aimlessly in midair with a joint or cig, eyes half closed and staring off at some impossible, unreal ocean sunset and declaring that this, and not America, is the good life, the life worth having. "America sucks, man. All that noise, all that dishonesty, all those people too busy to really talk to each other."
I find it hard enough right here at home, where an offhand comment about the weather in the checkout lane at the hardware store inevitably devolves into an argument about global warming and how much smoggier it is alleged to be in Los Angeles today than in the 70s or the 50s when it was the notorious subject of all those cartoons (apparently they were just imagining it then, prognosticating our dark and grimy future world). Or if you're being introduced to friends of friends, you can almost count down the seconds until someone starts talking about Loose Change and how the World Trade Center had to have been manually demolished (which proves something or other, because after all it was the fact that the buildings fell that made us mad, not the fact that they got attacked in the first place). All too often I can't help thinking it's easier to just not talk to anybody.
Or I could just argue a lot. I'm not sure if that would make me happier or not.
Oh, and as one of the commenters points out, this article will strike a particular chord with people who have read The Beach, or seen the respective movie. Not one of DiCaprio's finer moments, but it did capture the sentiment this guy is expressing, quite vividly.
Via James A.
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