Monday, July 09, 2007

Kunstler on Live Earth

I don't always agree with sprawl debunker James Howard Kunstler, but his writing never fails to crack me up. Here he is today blogging about Live Earth:

Am I the only one who wonders whether rock and roll extravaganzas in the service of Great Causes might be exercises in grandiosity and futility? What I wonder especially: is this the only way we know how to respond to the difficulties that life on earth presents -- to engage a corps of professional narcissists to strut and pose in stadiums, affecting to wave their magic wands (or Fender Stratocasters) and make everybody feel better about a given problem (distress on the farm, disease in Africa, global warming....)? Can't we think of other, more meaningful things to do? Or are we stuck in a perpetually delusional rut of Woodstock-style symbolism, out doing a global rain dance instead of really changing our behavior?

I'm not convinced that these big public service rock shows do much harm -- other than perhaps inflating our expectations and using too much electricity -- but this particular one galled me a little.

For one thing, even though global warming is by definition a global problem, the notion of a global community as a permanent fixture of human history is, I think, a mirage. If there is any salient macro implication to the problems I term the long emergency, it is that the world will soon become a bigger place again; the great nations will soon retreat to their own corners of the world as they powerdown by necessity; and all the trade relations, cultural exchanges, and geopolitical conceits that have lately made the Earth seem like a big international hotel give way to much more local issues of sheer survival.

There was so much about the Live Earth show that actually expressed what is worst about the current state of American culture: the obscene posturing of zillionaire celebrities, awarding themselves brownie points for the largeness of their concern -- even while, like Mr. Sting of the band called the Police, they buy-and-sell $20 million Manhattan condos, and burn god-knows-how many tons of Wyoming coal amplifying the bass runs to "Roxanne." And the flip-side of these celebrity pretensions, of course, is the disturbing fealty paid to them by the fans, as members of the public caught up in celebrity-worship are called. Obviously, the whole thing is a kind of self-reinforcing feedback loop spiraling up to ever worse grandiosity on the part of the celebs and ever more pathetic groveling worship of these fake gods by the fans -- until it becomes little more than an object lesson in the tragic limitations of the human condition.

Looming behind the spectacle like some Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon, is the puffy figure of Al Gore, who has managed to turn his journalistic accomplishment into something uncomfortably like a Nuremberg rally. I say this perhaps incautiously, not because I believe that Al Gore is a bad person, but because it could get to the point here in America, not far down the line, when a desperate public will beg some political leader to push them around, to tell them what to do, to direct their behavior in some purposeful way to save their asses. And these prancing, preening rock and roll celebrities may be paving the way, so to speak, for some corn pone American fascist to strut his stuff for an American audience worried about the growing darkness, and the falling needle on their car's gas gauge.

The last thing we need now is the carefully packaged postures of concern from "stars." Al Gore could do a lot more good militating to get regular hourly passenger train service running between Nashville and Atlanta, or stomping his state, from Memphis to Chattanooga for swapping sales tax on regular merchandise for a higher tax on gasoline. Or, he could just put aside his pretensions for being a kind of global Wizard of Oz and just cut the shit and run for president of the US, where he might actually make a difference.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, it's a symphony all right.
Humorous in parts, resaonable in parts, and sadly self-blind in others. I mean here's a self-proclaimed (possibly even "corn-pone") guru who is worshipped by scared, no terrified followers crawling up the asses of other Corn Pone Celebrities and polititcains who are trying to make a buck. And of course Kunstler makes a living by writing sensational books and needs to stay in the public eye to survive not unlike Madonna who places Bob Dylan in her video in the poets and prophets segment thereby pissing off Dylan fans because he is "real" and she is not.

So basically what we have in this view of things is a mass of people choosing personal Jesuses (Jesi) from the global free market jesus economy. (New and improved Jesus! No trans-fats!) And the Jesi are in competition with each other. If I put this more kindly I might say everyone is choosing a personal symbol based on their predilicitions of style and other preferences. Who sings for you - Josh Groban ? Tom Waits?

Especially amusing since I have my own personal Jesus post on my blog today. Yes, I am showing "disturbing fealty" and " pathetic groveling worship of th(is) fake god". What a loser Kunstler is, what an overly-inelegant thinker, completely unable to detect "play" amongst his fellow beings. he is a sadly literal perceiver. Like - If Jody says Dave Grohl is Jesus on her blog she must mean that". Or, like any tent preacher, does Kunstler just shore up his own position by such accusations. Could be. (Kunstler means "artist" in german - now that's an irony there)

Kunstler lacks a sense of humor, fun and imagination. There is a lot of stuff he just does not "get". it has to be black and white, and no silliness. Above all, no silliness. I have noticed this on his site. You have only to read his trashing of Lord of the Rings as a complete waste of human effort to see has has a strong puritannical streak and a need to be The Decider. Humorless people are a pox on the planet - I am going to have a concert to raise money to have them removed.
And I think Kunstler's jealous . HE wants to be the Jesus of the Month, doesn't want to watch other "fake gods" pontificate when he coulda been the One. You can't be the guru 'cause I am...

Basically all the mini-gods should STFU but they're not likely to, so we might as well enjoy a song or too before we hit the pine box - okay, James Howard? A little music in the foxhole, that's all it is.
Of course the global concert won't amount to shit. Has our society changed a whole lot since the roman empire? (Answer: no. But read about it before you say I'm dumb, oh hecklers) Live Earth was just another spectacle, we humans like/need spectacles I guess. What goofs people are to hold this up to Woodstock as "inferior", because what did Woodstock do? Nothing. Just another symbol, an airy human construction in our heads.

But where Kunstler really falls down IMHO is in his lack of self-awareness, or if he has it, he hides it because it's bad for his bottom line. He needs to play guru to keep the checks coming in so he can pay his bills. Are these celebrities jackasses? Sure, but so is he. He does what THEY do but he wants to pretend he's more pure about it, that HE has the real hotline to god. (BTW, I'm a jackass too. If there's one thing I strive to make perfectly clear - it would be that.
So, yeah, funny Kunstler, though maybe we are not laughing at the same jokes. Who knows.

gypsywinds said...

Dr. P - I'm surprised that you would spread and reprint JHK's putrid toxicity. He has nothing but negative energy to spread around this presently still "Live Earth". At least the performers are trying to spread some feel good
vibe and bring consciousness to
those unawares.

I find the JHK man vile even when I agree with minor aesthetic annoyances he writes of.

Beware anyone who emails him asking for sprawl research advice without paying proper ego-worship to the almighty Kunstler-Jesus... you might end up getting a rather rude response like the one I got,

"I'm not you're research assistant...don't you know who I am? Didn't you at least google me?"

I suppose I should have at least lied and said I had bought/read all his books/blogs before asking my lame-ass question of the expert.

Ron said...

I heard Kunstler speak last year at the MREA at Stevens Point. Then I read his book, the Long Emergency.

His book scared the shit out of me. I loved it.

Apparently he is making a lot of people mad lately, maybe he is cracking up or something, but that shouldn't cloud over the message of his book "The Long Emergency" which is a wake up call to look and see the future we are driving toward if we don't start taking drastic action ASAP.

Kunstler and Gore are preaching the same message. Whether one or both are asses or not do not change the message.

Anonymous said...

Well yeah, Ron, I think you kinda hit on something there. The being scared part. EVERYONE is selling armageddon these days in some form or other and everyone else buys it. Me too - more often than I'd like to admit.

al Qaeda, immigrants and La Raza, Wal-mart and peak oil, all of that and more are forms of armageddon thinking and I guess that's where we are now most of us, left or right. Maybe these books/attitudes give an immediacy and focus to life now that is otherwise lacking. Too many malls and unsatisfying jobs and divorce and family we can't get along with and dumb shit we have to do to get thru the day. What a gray blur. Things seem more precious kind of when they are under threat from some clear source. What bugs me is the superficial level of all proposed solutions from al the little gurus with no thought to larger pictures. Go into Iraq- get the oil, easy in, easy out.

Get rid of cars and the trucking industry and industrial farms(and the HUGE populations supported by those portions of our economy do what then? and a jar of jam at our "local foods" place is 7 dollars - milk $6 per gallon, no one can afford that. An economy cannot run on guilt and lofty intentions. People shop at Walmart because THAT is what they can afford. Do you reproach miners for shopping at the company store? ack!)

Or - Shut down the creepy insurance companies (have you ever looked at the gigantic buildings full of Dilberts who depend on that to support themselves? what will happen to them? and the rest of "us" when the "insurance bastards" are shut down?)

And Kunstler seems to fantasize about an Amish type lifestyle.How dumb. My husband (not making this up) grew up that way - plowed with horses, butchered own meat, grew own food, chopped wood, repaired/built stuff as needed, canned, sewed and had no indoor toilets until he was 5, house so cold in winter a glass of water on a window sill would freeze solid by morning. (all true)A subsistance existance I radically different to it's very core and would effect behavior, parenting, education, and sex roles and a million other things in ways that NO ONE who lives as we do now would even accomplish. It is NOT diversity friendly, it is a rigid horrifying way to live dictated by physical realities we have abandoned long ago. It's not in us anymore, it takes attitudes and skills that we do not have (and many of our grandparents even did not) anymore.

But we will all go back to that, all the yuppies will tear up the malls and go back to that way of life on their 78x138 foot lots?? Har dee har. Just because some freak here and there does that in a most conspicous manner, there is a ton of stuff about that life that they are not telling you. It's not an option. Or maybe we'll all be in some movie starring Kurt Russell and we'll all be post-apocalyptic bikers clad in leather and metal. It's all such crap I can hardly stand it. I got no answers. But ya know what? The lady around here who is the leader of the Sustainable whatever group and gets all the press about the need for a new lifestyle - well, she is single and lives in a 4 bedroom McMansion and no one has the sack to point that out, they just quote her, go to her house for meetings and elevate her as a local expert. Crap. Total freakin' crap.
Same with all of them - look at me, I'm so cool. Maybe I'm cool enough to even get in the paper for being arrested - ooooh, THAT helps everyone. Thanks dude.

Once in awhile I think Cindy Sheehan might actually NOT annoy the crap out of me, that she might be "real" but I can only stand so much disillusionment, so I don't look so close at her. Hell, I figure if I followed Russ Feingold around for 24 hours I 'd see him do stuff that would make my stomach turn. That he even KNEW that McCain-Feingold would result in the proliferation of shadow groups who can work without accountability to coopt our democracy even more. But I gotta pretend to like SOMEONE....

Actually, I don't have to pretend that so I try to stay quiet now (365 blog posts of "it all sucks" might seem a bit redundant) unless something really seems stupid beyond beleif AND I MUST RANT, which I still far too often (my goal is zero), and I always regret it after I do. Good luck to all you hardier souls.