Culture shock

It must be hard for those raised outside of North America to see through the veil of cultural difference, and understand he state of our fair continent.
In fact, I find it hard.
It just seems that we've so badly lost sight of what's important.
We live in a consumer driven society; without constant product turn over, industry shuts down. This means that our products MUST be disposed of after a short period of time, room MUST be made in the marketplace for new products. Therefore, what incentive is there for making a quality product. It's a recipe for bankrupcy.
Our entire lives are consumed with creating poor quality products, making a wage, and buying said poor quality products.
We are more and more being culturally conditioned through the media towards low self-esteem, and greater depths (or should I say shallows) of blind, rabid consumerism. Tying our self worth to what car we drive, what neighborhood we live in, how new our appliances are, and how our bodies stack up against the stars'.
Our fixation on shallow exterior things is mirrored by our fascination with hollywood's stars- we know them only as two dimensional images, spouting lines on a screen, but we adore them regardless.
One is more likely to read tabloid gossip about who Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise is dating (Angelina Jolie, and Katie Holmes, respectively...this gossip is everywhere, even I know it off-hand.)than the important news stories from off continent, or even outside of America. For an even more telling example, one must look only as far as Paris Hilton. Here is an empty-headed bimbo, who has lived a life of luxury, and comfort, who gains stardom simply because her face shows up on tv. Even the fickle and shallow world of fame has no exclusivity anymore, one needn't even have basic talent to enter it, simply show up on tv and voila, you're a star.
While we're on the supject of stars with no talent, lets have a look at the music scene. We live in a time of computers and synthesizers, and software that can make anyone sound good, that is a fact; but the way that producers have exploited this computer gear, in order that they might cheapen their own profession I might add, is appalling. Using synthesizers to make good singers sound even better than in past generations, unavoidable, but using them to launch multi-platinum careers of no talent bimbo's, criminal. (I'm looking at you Ashlee...)
All of this can be justified I'm sure simply by stating, as I did at the beginning of this article, that we are living in a society reliant on quantity, not quality, and that these new developments are simply that culture being taken to it's logical conclusion. And I suppose that is true, this IS a caricature of our past culture.
It's no wonder North America suffers from poor self-esteem, our women suffer through crippling depression on account of their physical selves, and a rediculous standard set up by the media (a standard which surpasses even the models posing for it, thanks to lighting tricks, and even computer editing) we work ourselves into heart attacks trying to provide the newest cars, homes and electronics, all of which will break down and need to be replaced in a matter of years.
The growth of intellectual relativism has even crushed our sense of togetherness and worth- nothing is permanent here.
We often wonder, what will the Archaeologistsof the far future think of us when they find out civilization?
I counter that there will be nothing for them to find. How long do you suppose our dvd's, wood frame houses, and tickle-me-elmo's will last under the weight and stress of time? And as for our great skyscrapers, we ourselves will take care of those, one must only look to Las Vegas to see the active destruction of our own steel and concrete monuments to satisfy the tides of change, and the whims of our new-born relative society.
Nothing physical is permanant, but failing that, we lack even stability, even the illusion of permanance. We look towards Europe, and see the great monuments of ages past; the great stone block pyramids of Egypt, the awe inspiring Colusseum of Ancient Rome, even the gothic spires of France's great Cathedrals.
Not permanent, but stable.
Many thousands of years of history were reconded with that stone, and we treasure them still. I suppose that had those great monuments been built in North America, we'd have torn the great Colusseum down every thirty years, and built an even larger Superdome, or Astrodome. We lose our Tangeable link to our past, and therefore we have none. We live a life of immediacy, a life in the present, all the while seeking for something to fill the void left by history and culture.
For that is what humanity seeks, permanence, a link to our past; and we try to find it- through heraldry, and exploring the highlights of our ancient roots. All because we were born and raised, in a culture that offered us nothing.
A family home, a place where generation after generation have a tangeable link, and yes, it's not the building that forces that link, it's the people and the memories, but humans think in a linear manner, we require a tangeable place that recalls those memories, a place that offers the illusion of permanence, and allows us to know truly who we are.
Permanence, stability, and purpose are what we all crave, and the tangeable reprisentations of those things; quality, craftsmanship, durability, are what we have abandoned piece-meal in our society, with tragic results. We have created a lost civilization; each person lost with-in themselves, and lost within the whole, and all this so we can replace our "out-dated" PS1, with a PS2, or our "out-dated" PS2 with a PSP......