Wasteland America

Apparently It’s Been Slow-Down Week

Over at Adbusters they’re at it again, pushing for to make another national holiday for introspection and taking control of your lives. All of your lives. Your multiple lives. That you personally own. It’s called “Slow Down Week”, and encourages people to be aware of how they spend their time and whether it’s really what they want out of their lives.

I think it’s a fantastic idea. The flash movie they made to promote it me want to stuff baby lambs in my ears. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t get my volume to go lower. But check it out, and think about it.

Determination and the American Dream

There’s a great ol’ American tradition of ours, most actively performed by people who most identify as “patriots”, of putting the winner on a pedestal and blaming the loser for not being more like the winner. This type of opinion frequently comes up in discussions about the American Dream. You know the opinion…The rich got that way because they had the drive and the diligence that you don’t, bum. Maybe if you worked harder, you’d be one of them. You also see this idea promoted by health and beauty magazines about weight loss. Just replace “rich” with “skinny”, and “bum” with “fatty”. You also see this when in sports training. The best athletes train hardest. You snooze, you lose. And maybe you’ve heard the childhood variation of the philosophy. You can do anything you set your mind to. When you grow up, well…it gets meaner and starts to blame you for not getting what you want.

When stuff like this gets said over and over, people start to believe it. They also start to hate themselves for not being like how everyone wants them to be. It makes you feel bad and then gives you a way out. Like you’re some twisted wretch of a person unfit to live, but even you can work your way out of this hole you dug yourself in. It gives you a problem and then sells you a solution.
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Hello World!

’sup world? Welcome to WastelandAmerica. I’ll be updating this blog every once and a while, figure once every two weeks. Don’t hold me to it though because I’m just a college kid and my free time’s available sporadically. But yeah, enjoy! Post comments, let me know what you think.

So, what’s this blog about? This blog’s about my simultaneous fascination and discontent with America’s culture. It started at the end of my senior year of high school back in 2007. I was just graduating. As much praise as I got for getting accepted to a good college and getting out with good grades, I didn’t feel like I accomplished anything. When I looked back on my high school days it was clear that I hadn’t earned any credit to my name. I zoned out through all my classes and all my work, I spent the weekends in a hedonistic stupor, drowned in sloth behind a computer screen…if anything, the best way to measure my worth was to count the numbers of weeks I did doing nothing at all! I didn’t graduate from high school; I slept my way through it. I was asleep at the wheel of my own life. I was letting it happen without me.

I got angry. I got angry at myself for letting four years of fantastic opportunities go to waste. This was the legendary high school experience everyone talks about! This was where the Breakfast Club was supposed to happen! I used to dream about this place when I was in 8th grade! I used to think that it was where my real life would begin! Instead, I fell asleep. But I woke up, and I got angry.
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