Cultural Displacement

Here, have some music with this one, my first real go round on the resobloume.

      Cultural Displacement is a phrase that occurred to me today. As I was riding a train home from school after getting blasted by 6 hours of biology, I was listening to a playlist made of The Dubliners, The Pogues, Dropkick Murphy's, Flogging Molly and a good variety of other irish folk and music that stems from it. While I was sitting there listening to it I realized something, I am not fond of general American culture much at all. It's not the first time I realized it, but it's the first time that the gravity of it hit me. I prefer not to be affiliated with the great majority of the massive country I live in. The activities that are generally accepted and encouraged are not things I wish to engage in. The lifestyle that is often espoused is not something I want to aim for; and the scary part is, I'm not the only one.

      Granted, I live in Portland, Oregon and it's a very strange town up here (or down here, depending on where you are and where you came from), but I think it's an excellent example of where American culture may be heading. This is a city made of people who are alienated by much of American pop culture, a city made of people who have no idea what is happening in Hollywood or Celebrity Gossip Land. It's a city made of many people who dislike TV, who would rather read a book than drool on the couch, a city made of people who cringe when you mention a shopping mall or Taco Bell or Wal-Mart or any other form of nationally homogenized anything. So what happens when you don't belong in the country where you live? What do you do when you can't follow the paths that are laid out for you? That's the beauty of culture, it gives a person some guidance, somewhere to begin, a direction in which to start traveling. That problem arises when the only direction it gives you is, "don't go that way." 

      Of course, there are many subcultures to choose from in America, thanks the the myriad freedoms that we enjoy. I could always go be a hippy, or maybe dive headfirst into puck rock and never come out again (I think the commercial in front of that video only adds to the experience, nothing is sacred. Oh, your band sings a song about "junkie consumerism"? Let's slap a commercial on it and get these kids to buy something...). Those options are entirely valid, I can pursue anything I want to in this country, that's why it's great. The problem is that I don't want to alienate 90% of society, I like people, and I like people to not be scared of, repulsed by, or demeaning toward me (most of the time, anyway). The other problem is that I see much of where I culture is headed as dangerous, damaging, and very much impossible to maintain forever. 

      I think Portland is right there with me, in general this city agrees with me wholeheartedly, though there are exceptions to every rule. No what to do when there is no guide to follow? Where to go when the only marked path is a bad one? This is where Portland is, I believe. It is a town of people who aren't entirely convinced of what is good, what is bad, what is best, what is worst, and that's because culture has failed them (and me).  They certainly have one thing right, and that's that they don't devalue people for their differences (unless you happen to prefer other places to Portland, but that's a different matter for a different day). However, there is no unified direction of this city. It has as many different directions as it has individual people. While this is great, it also means there is very little sense of structure, any sense of "us". There is a very strong sense of "me" and "you" but very little sense of "us", and that's because once you've been failed by the majority of people, why listen to anybody else, especially when they look an awful lot like everybody else?

      There is a lot of figuring to do: directions need to be explored, life needs to be experienced, dogmas and accepted truths need to be questioned... I don't have the slightest inkling as to where it will end up, what America will be in 10, 20, 50, 100 years. Will we even be here? Maybe the world really will end in December and it won't even matter (sorry, but I doubt it). What I do know is that there is a shift in consciousness. We as people are different, we are thinking different, we are beginning to see things that need fixing, we aren't accepting the status quo as readily as in the past. Things are changing. I'm excited, I don't have the slightest clue where it's going to end, but I'm excited, I think. All we can do is our best, love others, encourage them to do their best, see what happens, and have a hell of a time while we're doing it. I'm going snowboarding.