Talkin Bout My Generation

I've been mulling over this whole state of affairs for a while. Not in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown sense of the world as I have in the past. But in the how the heck am I going to get a job!? ("call the recruiters" Yes Dad, thank you.), where am I going to live? What will my life be like post-graduation????

It used to be that you'd get an internship, if you did a good job and they liked you, they'd hire you when you graduate. You'd advance, save up for a down payment on a house, get a nicer car, etc., But now no one is in a position to hire, irregardless of how much they like you and we are stalled in terms of advancing up the prosperity ladder at a steady clip.

While this makes me rather upset, I'm more upset about all of the squandered potential that is occurring. I was at a birthday party for a fellow planner last week and another planner friend was talking about how he was applying for a job at Chase. The bank.

In the meantime, time continues on and we all get a little older and have to make our own concessions.

To cite one of my all-time favorite poems, the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

I am ever-curious about the lifestyle habits of my peers and what does it say about our values?

As Scott Doyon noted in his post, "Settle Down Now, Is Community the New Frontier for Generation X?" March 4, 2011 "the youngest members [of Generation X] are now turning 30"

http://placeshakers.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/settle-down-now-is-community-the-new-frontier-for-generation-x/

Ten years ago, "settling down" would mean getting married, having kids, and often moving out to the burbs where the schools are "better." But recent studies have shown that people are getting married later than (some of) their parents. And the more education you pursue the longer it takes you to walk down the aisle. Not that they make the actual aisle longer, statistically those who pursue advanced degrees tend to marry later than their peers. Add that to the fact that having kids is an expensive undertaking and frankly rather "conventional" and an act that can be put off without too much repercussions in this age of fertility drugs, surrogates, and adoption.

But in non familial ways I have batting around the concept of Doyon calls, "the desire to sidestep authority in pursuit of a more appealing alternate system of their own creation. . . our instinct still tell us to sidestep power, to make things work on our own terms instead, . . ."

Doyon goes off on a different path of thought than the one that I am thinking. I am considering the potential for collectively pooling our resources, living with less, freecycling, and admitting our dependence on one another.

The last part of the above quote ends in "and nowhere is this [sidestepping the current system] more evident than in the rise of localism"

I'd talked earlier about the rise in "collaborative consumption" on my post "Sharing is Caring" on February 22nd, 2011. But I've been thinking about how would it work to live in a post-millennial commune, if you will. There is a ton of cheap real estate in underserved areas, such as Oakland, California, Detroit, or Hartford, Connecticut. How awesome would it be to hang out with my friends from planning school and form a loosely bound consulting agency while striving to fix the world's problems?

This would work, if it were say, 1970, and we weren't bound by our student loans (thanks inflation!) Ruth Reichel is one of my favorite authors/memoirists. And in her first memoir, Tender at the Bone she recounted her life in late 1960s/early 1970s Berkeley, CA where she lived in a huge house with a bunch of people in her early adulthood. It'd also be nice to be guaranteed a little private/personal time from my housemates so that if one wanted to bring a beau over, have family spend the night, just have a little peace and quiet one could get it and also give to others.

It's a lovely dream, but I'm not entirely sure that it can take root in reality.

As I try to make sense of an ever-changing world I leave you with a link to the recording of King George VI's , which was featured in the Oscar-winning (!) the King's Speech. Even though the quality is a little scratchy, the message still has the power to reverberate in the soul. Especially when you know the context in which this man spoke out against the darkness that threatened to engulf his nation (ie Hitler's march across Europe)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAhFW_auT20

All We Are Saying Is Give Detroit a Chance

First, let me start out by apologizing to anyone who is immediately incensed by the word "porn."

This posting is not about, the, uh, "traditional"-? use of the word porn. At least not in the Judge Potter "I-know-it-when-I-see-it" Stewart sense of the word. (fun fact: Judge Stewart was quoted in the 1964 case of Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 commenting on the Louis Malle film, the Lovers) Thanks Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Second of all, while I'm not outraged, I'm certainly fatigued by less-than-creative bloggers, journalists, and anyone with access to a keyboard and a reliable Internet connection, to use the word porn in conjunction with another noun, such as food or real estate to generate shock or at least attention to what they're saying. What they really mean are glossy, superficial images, which yes, are meant to generate a reaction, though not necessarily erotic. Examples-

source: http://ayeshahaq.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/choc_cake2.gif

source: http://www.archithings.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/The-Finest-Finishes-Penthouse-Apartment-7.jpg

OK, now that that is out of the way- on to the point of this posting. As always, Planetizen surprises and delights me with a plethora of topics. The latest is "ruin porn." We all know that Detroit's in trouble. While it may be a phoenix, it has yet to rise from its own ashes.

People are befuddled as to what to do, but one of the most popular, and frankly, well-received, ideas is the you-can't-ignore-what's-in-front-of-you tactic, ie graphic images of the fall that has become Detroit.

http://www.tnr.com/article/metro-policy/81954/Detroit-economic-disaster-porn

And while I am against the exploitation of anything (except the cuteness of cupcakes. Seriously, if you Google Image "cupcake" you may in fact die from the cuteness!) I doubt that the people of Detroit want to be treated as the Little Nell of the North, the charity case that we should all pity. Yes, they are in dire straits, some without the economic means to improve their station, others enjoy the Mrs. Havisham air while keenly aware that things are not as they could be. But this doesn't mean that they need our pity. They need our assistance, be it financial, be it through prayers, be it through actual manual labor if you have the time and resources.

Noreen Malone says, "Pictures are naturally more memorable than a well written, evenhanded magazine storyabout the scope and tragedy of Detroit’s economic woes could ever be. But that’s precisely the problem. These indelible pictures present an un-nuanced and static vision of Detroit. They might serve to “raise awareness” of the Rust Belt’s blight, but raising awareness is only useful if it provokes a next step, a move toward trying to fix a problem. By presenting Detroit, and other hurting cities like it, as places beyond repair, they in fact quash any such instinct. Looked at as a piece of art, they're arresting, compelling, haunting ... but not galvanizing. Our brains mentally file these scenes next to Pompeii rather than a thriving metropolis like Chicago, say, or even Columbus." -the Case Against Economic Disaster Porn by Noreen Malone, http://www.tnr.com/article/metro-policy/81954/Detroit-economic-disaster-porn

I agree with Ms. Malone that we already have the awareness, we need action. But to cull a line from an old church camp song "it only takes a spark to get a fire going" and we are an ever-increasingly visual culture (case in point- this blog. You're reading my words on a computer screen, not on the pages of a book). And people associate objects within imagery with specific events- the oil slicked pelican of this past summer's Gulf oil spill, the firemen standing on the rubble of Ground Zero, the soldiers erecting the flag at Iwo Jima. The more people that are made aware, they more potential to gain collective action we will receive.

It's a cheap trick, but we are galvanized to action seeing defenseless little otters covered in oil, abused puppies and kitties, or starving children with ribs poking through as they sit in the dirt in developing countries.

Ms. Malone makes an interesting point that so many of the pictures of Detroit are devoid of people.

"The human brain responds very differently to a picture of a person in ruin than to a building in ruin—you'd never see a magazine represent famine in Africa with a picture of arid soil. Without people in them, these pictures don’t demand as much of the viewer, exacting from her engagement only on a purely aesthetic level. You can revel in the sublimity of destruction, of abandonment, of the march of change—all without uncomfortably connecting them with their human consequences." -the Case Against Economic Disaster Porn

However, it could be asked, if you were in that situation, would you really want to be the poster child of Detroit? Especially if you are a fully-grown adult? Even with your consent, it would be embarrassing and frankly more than a little degrading to have the documentarian turn the camera on you and say, "And here we come to Frank. Frank has lived in Detroit for his entire life. Frank's father worked the line building gleaming Chevys and Fords. But now Frank sits on this abandoned porch and dreams of the past." "Here is Marie. Marie remembers the X House when it was the pride of the neighborhood. "They used to decorate it for all of the holidays, she recalls wistfully. "Now the lights have gone out." Maybe forever? intones the narrator That sounds equally exploitive.

But maybe one solution could be that it takes people, who would appear to be far-removed from such a situation, to spur us to do something?

So help me, I love Jackass, especially Johnny Knoxville. No matter how stupid you may think you are for doing X, there are people out there who are happy to show that they are light years ahead of you in terms of bad decisions. Or maybe they're just overgrown kids with underdeveloped rationalizing areas in their cerebral cortexes. But my heartfelt and sincere thanks to Johnny Knoxville for lending his celebrity, no matter how dubious in nature it is, to a worthy cause.

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-23-going-beyond-ruin-porn-in-detroit

I'd also like to direct your attentions to one of my all-time favorite magazines, Juxtapoz, who asked some of their favorite artists (6 of 'em) to work in Detroit in conjunction with Powerhouse Productions for Juxtapoz's 15th Anniversary Benefit and Auction Project. If the name Juxtapoz rings a bell, I did a posting on JR, an amazing artist, who was featured in their publication.

For more info please check out their links-

http://origin.juxtapoz.com/Features/featuremitch-and-gina-of-powerhouse-productions-and-the-story-behind-juxtapoz-in-detroit

http://origin.juxtapoz.com/Current/the-detroit-photos-of-yves-marchand-and-romain-meffre

Detroit, I know that you have yet to regain your former splendor. But we have not forgotten about you. Motor City keep on truckin. Through awareness and ultimately action, we will help you rise again.