For a few years now, I've been looking at the campers that whiz by on the highways and set up at the parks, and I came to mention them to my wife. Mention them is all, which is normally my way, but she's a doer, and after several uncomfortable nights in a tent on our trip out west, suddenly the search for a camper became frighteningly real. A pop-up was the intention, because it is cheaper and has a low profile that allows for better mileage and easier handling, but really, I had never REALLY wanted one. Stuff! As my father used to say, "You don't own things, they own you."
True enough. After I was forced to follow my words by looking at several, we came across one that was old but spotless, kept in a garage. At 13 feet unopened, it was too big, but our son said, "get it! If it's in good shape, go for it!" So before I knew it, my stomach churning, we had forked over the cash and stashed the ungainly thing in the back yard. With un-mowed grass already sprouting beneath it, it was decided - why not? - that we would visit Door County, the peninsula of Wisconsin jutting into Lake Michigan that formed Green Bay. It was the only time to go, after all, for we had heard that is it was too crowded to camp before Labor Day. It was famous for great beaches and cherries. We started the drive almost early, with the dog pacing nervously in the back as the trailer bumped and squeak with every crack in the highway. In a few hours we were past Green Bay, the city, and then the waterway that separated Door County from the mainland. We had arrived as Gypsies, our tent-on-wheels behind us, our animal riding with us - just like a million before us that summer alone.
Soon we were engulfed by the Taffy Towns, as I call them, memory going back to the kitsch of tourist spots on the North East coast where salt water taffy seemed to make up the bulk of the diet. There were no Indian chiefs standing there to take a picture with, as there had been in many tourist spots in my youth before such things became politically in-correct, nor any live bears (for the same reason), but everything else was there. Whole towns had the look of a Disneyland replicate village, with quaint shutters and Norwegian designs on guest houses, as well as the McMansion additions from the 80's, whose facade tried to remind tourists of old Newport wealth. A fantasy land, bright and cheery but somewhat depressing, too. Depressing because real authenticity had been thoroughly commercialized. Depressing, too, because so much of the land outside the parks had been turned into Fantasy Vacation Homes, with the same quasi-Scandinavian and New England Coast facades. Where, I had to ask myself, had this design, this template, originated? Not just the fantasy land facades, but the recreation of wealth, of over-building, of excitement over northern land that was never more than forest and, then, pasturage?
I have touched on this before, but here I think I can go deeper, for here we not only have the culturally- structured concept of wealth in recreation, but also of development. This struck me as I read a park sign detailing the history of Peninsula Park, where we had bedded down with our old behemoth pop-up. The first farmer in the area had settled in 1850, and by 1900 the county was already filling to farming capacity, the woods largely fallen to the ax. And so the park was proposed, and then enacted in 1914, give or take a year, to save the last of the land from development that everyone knew would come.
And that, I realized, was the point - everyone knew with certainty that this area, and all of the land of the country, would be developed, as in used, to the maximum extent of the technology and population density patterns of the time. But how did they know?
It might seem a matter of practical observation, but I think it was more than that: it was that the Europeans who came to the New World had a concept of what "settled" meant, and were going to fulfill it. It was, that is, a cultural concept, a structure of mind that would be fulfilled without conscious thought, a future as structured as the buildings and towns of the tourist fantasy lands. It was how they thought, and it would be done - and was.
What, then, of our current structure of mind? It is changing rapidly from the earlier European design, just as Europe's design is changing, to the post-industrial concept. This is transnational, and relies more on the Asiatic structure of absolute utility, formed from its thousands of years of high civilization. In it, Europe and its fellow developed nations are to populate and transform everything that can be populated and transformed. It is a structure, a design, taken up heartily by our trans-national leaders. We can see it in immigration numbers; as the developed West started having less babies, it also started importing more people, and then more, and then a lot more. The Asiatic structure has taken hold of the ruling elite, and so it will be. Door county and every place else in this nation will be packed until it can be packed no more, and then packed some more as changing technology and forms of government allow it. The structure is the tail wagging the dog. Only the parks and a few waste lands will be left.
I don't like it. I am from a different tradition, but many city people and new people from other backgrounds will find it very normal. Some will say the structure is a form of Marxist movement, in that all tribes and nations and ethnicities are being rolled into one, so that all humanity will simply be undifferentiated cogs in the productive, money-making machine. It is then that the true revolution will occur, and is for this reason that the left is all for it. Destroy the old to make the new. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
From my perspective, though, so much of nature will be destroyed in the process that it is not worth the price. And I wonder - Marx, writing from the 1840's, did not have a clue as to environmental concerns, as no one else did at the time. But we do now. My question, and hope, Is that our mental structure is not governed only by commerce and power. Our minds, after all , are natural products. Shouldn't our cultural concept of the future change as we take environmental concerns into account? Not, as now, with little stop-gaps like recycling, but with an all- out rejection of the concept of build and fill to capacity (and then some)?
I have often written here of the future - will it end in a bang or whimper, or will we start something new before the wailing and gnashing of teeth becomes global? This is just another angle, but an important one, for it figures into the immediate environment. Here, the old ways, from the Euro-American model to the tribal, are trying to pull us back from the new, transnational way, but the leaders' mental structures have already changed. But can they change again in time to save what the old ways did not even know they were saving? Will the natural in our mind assert itself before the looming fate of endless cities and central planning becomes the global reality?
As always, I don't know. There is a hint, and a good one, that the new "one world structure" is already changing for the better. But in some emerging economies, this new iteration is still off the radar. It will all come down to timing. FK
True enough. After I was forced to follow my words by looking at several, we came across one that was old but spotless, kept in a garage. At 13 feet unopened, it was too big, but our son said, "get it! If it's in good shape, go for it!" So before I knew it, my stomach churning, we had forked over the cash and stashed the ungainly thing in the back yard. With un-mowed grass already sprouting beneath it, it was decided - why not? - that we would visit Door County, the peninsula of Wisconsin jutting into Lake Michigan that formed Green Bay. It was the only time to go, after all, for we had heard that is it was too crowded to camp before Labor Day. It was famous for great beaches and cherries. We started the drive almost early, with the dog pacing nervously in the back as the trailer bumped and squeak with every crack in the highway. In a few hours we were past Green Bay, the city, and then the waterway that separated Door County from the mainland. We had arrived as Gypsies, our tent-on-wheels behind us, our animal riding with us - just like a million before us that summer alone.
Soon we were engulfed by the Taffy Towns, as I call them, memory going back to the kitsch of tourist spots on the North East coast where salt water taffy seemed to make up the bulk of the diet. There were no Indian chiefs standing there to take a picture with, as there had been in many tourist spots in my youth before such things became politically in-correct, nor any live bears (for the same reason), but everything else was there. Whole towns had the look of a Disneyland replicate village, with quaint shutters and Norwegian designs on guest houses, as well as the McMansion additions from the 80's, whose facade tried to remind tourists of old Newport wealth. A fantasy land, bright and cheery but somewhat depressing, too. Depressing because real authenticity had been thoroughly commercialized. Depressing, too, because so much of the land outside the parks had been turned into Fantasy Vacation Homes, with the same quasi-Scandinavian and New England Coast facades. Where, I had to ask myself, had this design, this template, originated? Not just the fantasy land facades, but the recreation of wealth, of over-building, of excitement over northern land that was never more than forest and, then, pasturage?
I have touched on this before, but here I think I can go deeper, for here we not only have the culturally- structured concept of wealth in recreation, but also of development. This struck me as I read a park sign detailing the history of Peninsula Park, where we had bedded down with our old behemoth pop-up. The first farmer in the area had settled in 1850, and by 1900 the county was already filling to farming capacity, the woods largely fallen to the ax. And so the park was proposed, and then enacted in 1914, give or take a year, to save the last of the land from development that everyone knew would come.
And that, I realized, was the point - everyone knew with certainty that this area, and all of the land of the country, would be developed, as in used, to the maximum extent of the technology and population density patterns of the time. But how did they know?
It might seem a matter of practical observation, but I think it was more than that: it was that the Europeans who came to the New World had a concept of what "settled" meant, and were going to fulfill it. It was, that is, a cultural concept, a structure of mind that would be fulfilled without conscious thought, a future as structured as the buildings and towns of the tourist fantasy lands. It was how they thought, and it would be done - and was.
What, then, of our current structure of mind? It is changing rapidly from the earlier European design, just as Europe's design is changing, to the post-industrial concept. This is transnational, and relies more on the Asiatic structure of absolute utility, formed from its thousands of years of high civilization. In it, Europe and its fellow developed nations are to populate and transform everything that can be populated and transformed. It is a structure, a design, taken up heartily by our trans-national leaders. We can see it in immigration numbers; as the developed West started having less babies, it also started importing more people, and then more, and then a lot more. The Asiatic structure has taken hold of the ruling elite, and so it will be. Door county and every place else in this nation will be packed until it can be packed no more, and then packed some more as changing technology and forms of government allow it. The structure is the tail wagging the dog. Only the parks and a few waste lands will be left.
I don't like it. I am from a different tradition, but many city people and new people from other backgrounds will find it very normal. Some will say the structure is a form of Marxist movement, in that all tribes and nations and ethnicities are being rolled into one, so that all humanity will simply be undifferentiated cogs in the productive, money-making machine. It is then that the true revolution will occur, and is for this reason that the left is all for it. Destroy the old to make the new. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
From my perspective, though, so much of nature will be destroyed in the process that it is not worth the price. And I wonder - Marx, writing from the 1840's, did not have a clue as to environmental concerns, as no one else did at the time. But we do now. My question, and hope, Is that our mental structure is not governed only by commerce and power. Our minds, after all , are natural products. Shouldn't our cultural concept of the future change as we take environmental concerns into account? Not, as now, with little stop-gaps like recycling, but with an all- out rejection of the concept of build and fill to capacity (and then some)?
I have often written here of the future - will it end in a bang or whimper, or will we start something new before the wailing and gnashing of teeth becomes global? This is just another angle, but an important one, for it figures into the immediate environment. Here, the old ways, from the Euro-American model to the tribal, are trying to pull us back from the new, transnational way, but the leaders' mental structures have already changed. But can they change again in time to save what the old ways did not even know they were saving? Will the natural in our mind assert itself before the looming fate of endless cities and central planning becomes the global reality?
As always, I don't know. There is a hint, and a good one, that the new "one world structure" is already changing for the better. But in some emerging economies, this new iteration is still off the radar. It will all come down to timing. FK
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