When Henry David Thoreau went to live on Walden Pond he famously wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (158). When Thoreau wrote this passage in the 1860s he was arguing that he didn’t want to become a zombie, just going through life doing what is expected and following what society was telling him to do. Thoreau decided instead to leave the city and move out into the middle of nowhere in order to pay attention to his everyday life for about two years.
Thoreau’s principle in the quote is an ever true lesson for the citizens of the United States today. We are taught from a young age to want the “McMansion” with the “McPool” in the “McBackyard” and the two “McMercedes-Benzes” in the driveway for our future suburban nuclear “McFamily.” We are taught to act like we are the one percent even though we are not. This lifestyle of living outside of our means
is destroying the American society by cannibalizing time, not allowing one to enjoy life, and pushing a “more is always better attitude.” This life is a problem because the average American has become a mindless zombie simply going through life but not actually living.
Photo by Author.
The picture “Concrete Jungle” shows how working over lunch is destroying time. The park looks like something out of a sci-fi movie once humans are gone. The lack of humans is further exaggerated through the overall dark tone making the park seem eerily empty and makes it feel like something bad happened there. The fact that the picture was taken from under an overpass looking onto an open empty field gives an uncomfortably feel by drawing a stark separation from the park and the buildings in the background which are assumed to be full of people. This grand openness is especially used to show an empty park during the mid-day break instead of being filled with people enjoying their lunch time. The image shows the culture of missed opportunities created by overworking, and the emptiness of life when people are overworking just so they can afford to follow.
When I spent the better part of an afternoon walking around in downtown Louisville and surrounding neighborhoods nearly everyone was murdering their time and throwing away the little bit of free time during they day they could enjoy. For instance, I arrived at Riverfront Park during the second half of the average lunch time (11:00 am-1:00 pm). The sky was bright and blue without a cloud in sight; the day was warm but comfortable. The park, however, was calm and nearly barren of other people. The park was still in the same way a graveyard is quiet any day other than Halloween. The park was empty in the same way a medieval village was empty after The Black Death. The plague of overwork created this graveyard at a time when the park could be teeming with people. This graveyard is similar to a one where a family member is buried and then never visited. This analogy is perfect because it shows how the murdering of time by workers downtown is very similar to a disease that disease in the medieval times decimated most of Europe and how after their time is murdered they do nothing to attempt and visit the little time they have left.
Just outside the park the employees downtown were addicted to making money and working like a junkie seeking a high. The people were in bustling office buildings working through their lunches instead of enjoying the natural resource available to them. Once I began to venture into downtown, the few people not in their office buildings were mostly running to their destination, like there was a fire behind them, and using their cellphone which might as well have been surgically implanted onto their hand or onto the side of their head since there was no possible way of removing it from them. These people ranged from those people in suits and ties getting into their Mercedes-Benzes to those people who were in obvious blue collar uniforms waiting at the bus stop. Every one of them was afflicted with the “Crackberry” addiction. This addiction was forcing them to work even outside of their office instead of enjoying the little downtime they had each day. The differences in backgrounds shows the importance of how anyone can be afflicted by overworking in order to present the facade of affluence. This addiction leads to work eating away at time and limiting life’s experiences.
All of these people downtown show troubling signs of overworking to death and being eaten alive by their debt. While studying Japanese, I picked up the word Karōshi, which means to literally overwork until you die. The majority of the downtown workforce was overworking just to pay their bills. The
mean annual wage in the United states during 2014 was a little over $47,000 which is slightly less than the list price of a straight-from-the-factory new Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan (Bureau of Labor Statistics) (Mercedes-Benz USA). This expensive car is unaffordable for a majority of Americans, yet the average American is told that they can afford it. Average American children are also told that they can afford to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to go to college, even though there is a tiny chance that they will be able to afford to pay it back. The cycle of debt is completely unsustainable, and eventually the bubble will burst. This debt does nothing but hurt those people who take it out. It digs them deeper and deeper into debt, and they are forced into a cycle of giving up more and more of their time until they die.
Photo by Author.
In the image “Flag, Industry, and Construction,” the object placement shows how movement to the American suburbs started the mindlessly murdering of time and started the attitude of more is always better. The interstate highway system, which is being reconstructed in the photo, was supposed to help speed up everyone’s life. All it really did was increase the commute time as people moved farther from work. This creation then led to the flight of middle class from the affordable housing near the inner city to the more expensive suburbs. Then, as evident by the projects in the background of the photo, the area was then razed, and a metaphorical prison was created to keep those people of lower economic classes stuck. The high concentration of churches in the middle ground and background also are symbolic of how instead of actually helping those people who are disenfranchised, they are preyed upon by people who don’t understand the problems. The societal divide was then further increased as the middleclass folks willing fought their way into the suburbs just to be able to emulate the rich. This divide then led to the spitting contest of who looked more successful even if it meant you had no time left to enjoy what you had.
Wanting the largest house in the neighborhood is an epidemic of masochism. The desire for the seven- bedroom house with ten bathrooms has become pervasive in society. This desire leads to people not only working longer hours so that they can actually afford the house, but they also have to work more just to take care of the house. In 1950, the average American home was just 983 square feet (Adler). In contrast, the average home size in 2013 was 2,598 square feet (Census Bureau). A 2,598 square foot house takes many more resources to maintain than a 983 square foot house, especially when the family in the larger house is smaller. The unused space is proverbially shooting yourself in the foot. This “McMansion” mindset results in mountains of wasted time just taking care of a low-quality status symbol. Time is wasted, so that neighbors intimidate each other, and everyone seems more successful. Society expects everyone strive for material success by amassing more and bigger “stuff” than your neighbor until we have become like a zombie striving for flesh.
Photo by Author.
The image “Flowers,” shows how the drive for success in American society is overly simplified and perverse in destroying the American way of life. When the photographer took the image he wanted the viewers to focus on the flowers in the foreground of the image and used the lens to blur out the rest of the image. This blur and focus is very metaphorical of how everyone strives for material success but they ignore success in other areas of their life including emotional success and happiness. They have become zombies wanting to appear successful and blindly do anything to achieve this illusion. Americans will also focus on one detail, like who has the largest “McMansion” in the neighborhood, but they won’t pay attention to other factors involved, like how that person and their spouse each work 60 hours a week. Instead of actually living their own life, this desire for more and more is creating a mass of mindless zombies who are only there to one-up the people who are around them.
The perverse American culture can be undermined through living tiny. While it would be perfect for everyone to live like Asians, Europeans, and New Yorkers by using public transit, this mode of transportation is depressingly unattainable right now in America; however, living in a tiny house is attainable. A tiny house, is a home which fulfills one’s needs but lacks the superfluous space of most dwellings. For example, most tiny houses are no larger than 100 to 300 square feet and are hand built on utility trailers for one person, a young couple, or family. These houses have also been built out of shipping containers or more traditional techniques. A tiny house is unique, and really determined by the individual and what they want or need, but the biggest point of a tiny house is to have what you need live deliberately. Everything in tiny house must serve some purpose, so mindless status symbols and miscellaneous “stuff” has no place. Once built, they are also unobtrusive and require minimal maintenance, which allows more time to enjoy life. This deliberate living will prevent zombiism since you have to be conscious of your surroundings. You will have time for the rest of your life to happen instead of cannibalizing it away for status.
In an ideal world we would all live in cities near our places of employment and use mass transit or walk to our destinations, but, until this dream becomes a viable reality our best bet is on living tiny and ensuring we live within our means. In the meantime, this unattainable drive for material success is destroying American by cannibalizing time and “making a more is always better” attitude acceptable. So shouldn’t we all listen to Thoreau’s lesson and pay attention to our lives, or are we just going to continue to be zombies?
Works Cited
Adler, Margot. “Behind the Ever-Expanding Dream House.” NPR.org 4 July, 2006. Web. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525283 6 Oct, 2015
Mercedes-Benz USA. “E-Class Sedan.” MBUSA.com 2015.
Web. http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/class/class-E/bodystyle-SDN(http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/class/class-E/bodystyle-SDN) 6 October 2015.
Lee, Merlin. “Concrete Jungle.” 2015. JPEG file.
—. “Flag, Industry, and Construction.” 2015. JPEG file.
—. “Flowers.” 2015. JPEG file.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Public Domain: N.P., 1862. iBooks file.
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. “May 2014 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates United States.” Bls.gov 25 Mar, 2015. Web. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm(http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm) 6 Oct, 2015
United States Census Bureau. “Median and Average Square Feet of Floor Area in New Single-Family Houses Completed by Location.” Census.gov, N.P. PDF file. https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/medavgsqft.pdf(https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/medavgsqft.pdf) 6 Oct, 2015