Let’s have a mind and raise flowers.

This is in response to Jeanine Wurzel’s July 28th Op/Ed in the Daily Californian titled
“The Constant Feeding of an Insatiable Hunger”       

http://www.dailycal.org/article/102152

           There is a place for and a real need to address issues of harmful and pathological addictions, and for the calling of attention to real actions and beliefs that can be shown to negatively affect our communities and cultures. Wurzel’s Op/Ed piece, I believe, is doing neither. Instead, it is an essay with the tone that may be most closely akin to a Fundamentalist screed. I will try to briefly explain how the piece reads like the rhetoric of a strict religionist and then open to other thoughts the piece brought to mind.

She secondly points a finger that is indiscriminate. She speaks of a ‘consumerism’. Is this capitalism? Is it American style free market? Is it just America or does it include the world? I do believe that there is such a thing as an unhealthy attitude towards all types of consumption. I watched enough Phil Donahue and Dr. Phil to know that there are plenty of things to be addicted to. My mother herself has spent over two decades working in mental health and addiction recovery centers. There’s plenty of unhealthy people around who are making choices that harm them, their loved ones, and the world. But Wurzel takes the Calvinist route it seems: we are all under the curse of consumerism. Or that is how the piece reads. When does one go from being a considerate and compassionate citizen and neighbor and become a dazed drone at the whims of The Money Makers? It would have taken a lot more research and thought to discuss the psychology and nature of buying decisions, and I know that’s not what the piece is about but as it stands it seems to be not about much at all.

This brings me to the last point of rhetoric that reads like a 1940’s evangelical tract: Wurzel has somehow been elevated over the plane of consumerist mind control. How many have joined her on the prophetic mountaintop? From her height she can see plainly how all the other poor saps around her are being led stray like sheep. She speaks of the “reality-world” as opposed to what she calls ‘false images’ like brazen calves lulling us into the idolatrous craving for Gelato. If Wurzel is enjoying ‘reality’, I applaud her for it seems that it has been a major philosophical project to deconstruct the idea of ‘reality’.

This type of fundamentalist thought is scary. It is scary because it sounds good. You can easily replace a few words and it can become a ‘rock music is of the devil’ argument, or a Luddite ‘technology is evil’, or any number of paranoid conspiracies. I know that Wurzel wouldn’t damn Huey Lewis and the News or write anything irresponsible, and she hasn’t here. However, without clearly identifying who and what she is talking about and decrying, it appeals to a egoistic reading because rarely does one identify as an ‘addict’ so they must fall in the category of an enlightened one who, like Wurzel is seeing the ‘reality world’.

So, that aside…

The title: “The Constant Feeding of an Insatiable Hunger”. This hellfire and brimstone sounding title could be the heading of any number of religious groups’ publications and it just isn’t really true. Even I, who am living off student loans and has not a care in the world about money except where the closest ATM is, can tell you the American economy is in a downturn. It’s bleak times for those who are trying to sell us things, so I’m told on NPR and the Wall Street Journal. Buyers’ confidence is down they say. What happened to Wurzel’s frantic and insatiable buying? Or is this only a description of the line at Jamba Juice when the weather dares jump above ‘chilly’? She writes of a “constant dreamer, someone who sees through a lens which the images have conditioned.” Not only are our buying habits market driven and conditioned, all things around us are culturally conditioned. I’m not sure if anything we look at, at anytime is ever free and autonomous and not influenced by cultural values of some type.

A word about pornography: It is not journalism. At no time will there ever be a court hearing about a pornographer manipulating the facts and evidence. Recently there have been a number of cases of photo-journalists getting caught doctoring photos, and even reputable newspapers falling prey to fast and loose reporting. We will never see an investigation into Hustler’s photo-essay “The Sex Kitten’s Meow” to find out if Miss August really has a vestigial tail. And porn does not have the corner on the fantasy market. I’ve even been shocked to hear that innocent-looking co-eds among us have fantasized that their partners are Harry Potter characters while in the throes of monogamous sex acts! Draco Malfoy? Really? Fantasy, the considerate and careful crafting of image, and actively pursuing one’s desired reactions in others have always occurred in marketing, romance, and erotica. Another dose of puritanical fundamentalism bleeds through in Wurzel’s “The real, intimate act of sexual intercourse is a far cry from the mechanistic pleasure and 12 inch…high heels…” Intimacy? That all and well for some, but for incoming freshmen and the rest of the good ol’ proud perverts among us, intimacy is the last thing on our minds.

This may be time for a point about the ‘reality world’ that has so far eluded me and many others. I think that perspective, subjective experience, and the interpretive task of parsing the sign vs. signified mean that reality is owned by no one. We are always encountering a strange dance of colliding perspectives that are influenced by many cultural factors. If I wear pants that are fitting in such a way to give the appearance of a buttocks where there is none, am I avoiding reality? Who is the real me? The meek identity I wear on a nervous first date or the bold one I wear when I’m drunk and on a nervous first date? It may not just be the trendy or successful agents of Corporate America who are putting thought into how they are perceived and how they relate to their consumer (a very intimate relationship I have been told by independent business people). How many times have you heard someone report back from a date they found on the personals or an online dating service “Their photo looked a lot better.” Believe me, I actually know some of the people on Myspace and facebook and they look nothing like their profile photos. Amazing what holding the camera above your head will do.

So I want to finish with a note on Wurzel’s writing of a “perfection that can never become a reality”. She elsewhere writes of a ‘naturally occurring drive or hunger’. This ‘drive’, I would argue, is the same that has created Homo Sapiens, religion, and also what she calls in her piece “consumerism”. Humans are looking for bigger, better, more efficient, easier, comfort, pleasure, health, enjoyment, entertainment, etc. I think it could be that the same things in our brains that attract us to that delicious ice cream cone also compel us to write that new hymn to J.R. Bob Dodds or Zeus. It is the fantastic, the impossible, the strange and peculiar that seems to good to be true that brings us back to healthy and unhealthy relationships, makes us get up in the middle of the night to write a hackneyed poem to read at the Starry Plough, or believe that in American politics “Yes We Can”. Is the idea of a global community consisting of justice just a polished up and photo-shopped Jonas Brothers? Maybe it isn’t that we buy into things and value things, but what are we valuing and what do those things mean to us? Is the Pentagon’s military spending a reflection of Wurzel’s ‘Consumerism’ or something else? What kind of perfection is being chased in the Olympics this year in China? Wasn’t the four minute mile a ‘perfection’ that could never be attained?

That we are attracted to the fine, the gourmet, the novel and effective is not so shocking nor is it damnable. What is perhaps worthy of note is that Americans donated nearly three hundred billion dollars to charitable causes in 2006 and have traditionally been in the fore in regards to donating time to social justice causes both faith-based and secular. Maybe Catholic Charities has a catchy logo and really dope ad campaign, or maybe we are all a better lot than it’s easy to suspect.

Ryan McGivern
Catholic and Good Ol’ Perv

http://www.dailycal.org/article/102152