america

there is a strange tension in america today.  on the one hand, america is on a winning streak, as evidenced by record-breaking apple share prices and the fascination that we north americans feel watching a superstar like charlie sheen let it all hang out the way he has.  he is living the american dream - banging seven gram rocks and porn stars and generally carrying on the way that we imagine that we all might if all moral and ethical constraints were removed. similarly, buying into the apple lifestyle has made me incredibly oblivious to technology innovation in general because i know - not believe, but know - that whatever modern lifestyle challenge i might have (be it consuming mass media or social networks, watching tv or movies, listening to music or podcasts, or even going for a 10k run), apple has already figured it out and there will be a product announcement in the next few weeks that will have me salivating over the next device they release that will solve that challenge.

but on the other hand, i've been rereading plato's republic, in which the challenge goes out to socrates - why should we be righteous when there seems to be so much reward in being unjust?  charlie sheen seems to epitomize the counter-argument to living a righteous life with his flagrant sinning and carrying on, and his stock has never been higher.  buying the latest apple gadget promises to solve all of the most altruistic of my needs - facetimeing my baby's first steps or video-chatting with a loved one wirelessly from across the globe.  why should i care if a city of chinese workers slaves over this production line with tragic suicide rates and concurrently threatens to absorb through this toil all of the globe's monetary wealth?  it's just a product that i can get at the cool apple store. right?  so why live a righteous life when all the consumeristic messages tell me otherwise?

the countervailing argument comes from a documentary that i watched the other evening called "waiting for 'superman'" that deals with the challenges in the american education system where tenured teachers are not held accountable for their performance and children are pushed through a broken education system thinking that they are all charlie sheens and lindsay lohans and generally are owed a rock-star existence that they have not earned.  the vast majority of young americans are unprepared for the reality of an adult life in a global economy where basic skills like math and language and imagination are pre-requisites, but they feel, more than any other nation on the planet, that that is their birthright.  

we all live on borrowed time.  we all live in some kind of society and owe an obligation to its success and health.  a society of charlie sheens and lindsay lohans will last for approximately 48 hours and then collapse into a black hole of irrelevance.  that's because that kind of selfishness is meaningless to everyone except the main participant.  we like charlie because his dad was awesome, and for about 30 seconds, we might like to have his life.  but in the end, his sybaritic life is vacant and lacking value and his actions embarrass a real human's sense of self and dignity.

wow - that was an incredibly preachy post.  i'm pretty sure that the next one that will deal with my feelings about the unbelievable tragedies that are slamming the country of japan will be less difficult (i.e. more fun) to read.

- g