Our Own Worst Faux?

Has America become a nation of the fake? Are we our own worst faux?

    When did it all start? Somewhere, back in history, being 'real' lost its cache and all things fake began to replace reality.

   Did it start with Gutenberg? Before him, all things were hand written. Or perhaps, Jacquard, prior to his invention, all things were handmade. Maybe it was Gregor Mendel, his knowledge removed nature from natural selection. But even these plateaus were places inhabited by humans with a sense of authenticity.

    Artists have long portayed the unreal, the surreal and the impossible, but they did so as much to illustrate just how real our world is as to provide escape from it. A just where did the notion that fake, faux, imitation, false, and phony was not only acceptable, but preferable?

   One word - bakelite. It was the first 'plastic' and the stuff that the first assembly line used to produce telephones used to make the ear and mouthpieces. That's when humans, especially those in the 'Modern World' got accustomed to holding, touching, carressing, juggling, needing and depending on something not real at all. That was when our plastic world began.

   From there, the next great leap into the faux was nylon. Then rayon and then all hell broke loose. Teflon, silicone, plexiglass and all things instant, machine made, petro this and genetically engineered that.

    In just my lifetime, the 'wood' on the sides of automobiles isn't, the rubber that meets the road isn't, the decorative chrome trim isn't.

   Women's anatomies have become suspect. Full lips may simply be full of silicone, not to mention tits. Hair and moles can disappear and makeup can be permanent. You can't even be sure of the real color of someone's eyes anymore. That slim and svelte woman may simply have an insurance that covers any number of surgical procedures not available to her overweight companion. Even the term 'plastic surgery' belies our fixation on the fake. And men are almost as guilty of these deceptions.

   Look around you right now. Look carefully. I'll bet that you cannot see real thing. Not a single item in your field of view is completely natural. That's what I'm talking about. It's so commonplace, this relationship we have with fakery, imitaion and deception.

   Therein is the root of many of our current socio/politico problems. We've become so removed from the concept of genuine, that we don't even ask the question - 'IS IT REAL'? And THAT is the first question that should be asked about anything today.

    Take politicians. Is there a more conspicuously artificial human construct? Why are we inclined to believe anything that issues from their mouthes. Would we take what a soda pop machine said in its computer generated robo-voice as Gospel? How is a politician, or a preacher for that matter, any better?

   It is our reliance on things fake and phony that has lulled us into accepting ALL things fake and phony. Global warming, comprehensive immigration reform, competitive labor force, progressive taxation, limited warfare, moral relativism, intelligent design, political will, bipartisan cooperation, universal participation, national reform and the very idea of an honest lawyer are all concepts which cannot and do not exist in reality. Much like antimatter in Altoona or the square root of a neagative number, they all look good on paper but they don't really exist in YOUR world.

   All of this dependency on things not real used to be something of a novelty. It has become one of the biggest potential problems we face today.

   For instance, whereas all things real, either grow or just exist, fake stuff has to be 'produced'. And for some strange reason, fake stuff now costs much more to produce than real things. When did that happen? About the time your Mother brought home those first TV dinners. Since the mid fifties, we have been spending exponentially more every year in terms of energy, labor, time, and expense to make fake crap. If you could just be satisfied with some nice throw rugs and few large decorative rugs over a floor of colored and polished concrete, the world would be a much better place? 'WHAT'? You say. Sure, concrete is close to being natural, very cheap, easy to work with, lasts forever AND holds heat and cold better than the floors you have now. Wall to wall carpeting uses huge amounts of the same stuff you depend on to drive to work - oil - to produce. It is the bane of municipal landfills because it NEVER biodgrades and takes up too much space. Your house would cost less to build, less to heat and cool, less to maintain and last longer. But you've become accustomed to the fake stuff. See?

    And speaking of houses. THIS is where I wanted to get to when I started writing this piece in the first place. The coming housing crash. There WILL be one, make no mistake, and it will be devastating, perhaps catastrophic. The 'crisis/bubble' isn't so much about lending practices or economic policy as it is about people who became lulled into a sense of the unreal. They got used to the fake and false around them. It was not realistic of them to think that they could afford a mansion on a clerk's salary. But they bought into it and now the piper will be paid. It could alter the very demographic profile of this nation. All of the areas which will be hardest hit just happen to be the 'blue states'. Those people will be forced to move into the 'red states' and might even actually have to rub elbows with real Americans. R.E.A.L. Americans.

Let's hope some of that 'real' rubs off.

Comments

[Simple Country Physicist]

What is real? Bakelite is made of matter just like people are.

[Steel]

Well, yeah, but you're kinda microtabulizing my macrotubical depictational representusional concept, ain't ya?

Leave it to a physicist to not see the molecules for the quarks.

[OINK]

Gore-Tex, synthetic tennis shoes & tents. A few REAL advances over the 'real' thing -- which was heavy and soggy.

[Steel]

Gore-Tenn, synthetic wooden humanoid. Full of hot air about hot air.

[Jim Mcfalls]

Phoinixes fake boobies in the drawing did get my attention.

[Jim Mcfalls]

The first shotgun I ever shot as a kid was my grandfathers 12 guage with a bakolite stock functional and beautiful and I suspect cost more than wood at the time. However, I have a great house but look around me at all the half million dollar houses and some that cost three and five million and wonder how any one could afford them?

[Jim Mcfalls]

When I was in high school a friends dad bought and old Iorn phone that weighed three lbs. to keep his sister from staying on the phone too long. She was persistent but sometimes plastic is good.

[Phoenix]

Piffle.

You have two different themes going here and never the twain shall meet. Progress produces things that make our lives easier, more efficient and infinitely more pleasurable. For instance - the computers we're all using to read and write on this blog. I'm putting plastic railings on my porch because the wood railings rot and need painting. Life is good.

What you claim as fake is not the products. They are what they are. A big 'so what' for all that.

None of the material items you mention have a thing to do with the vagaries of human nature. It is the way of man to be just what he is, and while he may accomodate progress, he is still the same human unit capable of altruism to deception writ large as he was 3,000 years ago.

[Mouse]

Enriched white bread was the first of the fake foods! Everyones getting the vitamins and minerals, but their pancreas' no longer work.

The townhouse that I sold, not quite a year ago in So Cal, is back on the market according to my former neighbor. The couple that purchased it are splitting up. My guess is they were having financial problems. I'm here to say that I could not afford it now, even if hubby were still alive. Do I feel guilty about selling it to them? Naw!

I stumbled upon the works of Julian Beever a while ago. If I were to come across his stuff while walking down a sidewalk I would think that I would have to walk around. At first because I'd think it was real, and then because I'd think it was pretty neat!

[Phoenix]

What a funny thread. :)

Everyone has a slightly different take on what you wrote. Is what you wrote fake?

[Steel]

No.

Quite real.

I do not equate 'progress' with new, improved or changed.

It has to BE real.

There's no reason to have a new car model every year, and had we focused on making really good cars that last, a long time ago and then turned our attention to selling cars to the rest of the world, there would be no Toyota today.

Moving into a new home does not need to mean a new house, a bigger house or a more more expensive house. It SHOULD mean a better house.

I have appreciation for progress AND real things.

Stone, iron, cotton, wool, wood, glass etc.

I loathe plastic things, methods and people.

The above essay was an attempt to show how we have become too accustomed to thinking that things plastic are an improvement over things real.

In some cases that's so. In most - no.

In the case that I chose to use as my primary example and the reason I wrote the thing - housing - this 'bubble' was created by false desires and misplaced goals which have been instilled in us by TV and the other media.

It is fake.

And if we weren't so terribly used to fake shit in our faces 24/7, more people would have recognized that it WAS fakery.

Now, I didn't mention progress.

I chose what I wished to discuss.

The History and Impact of the Concept of 'Faux' on American Social, Political and Economic Structures.

That's my topic and I'm stickin' to it.

[Jim Mcfalls]

Is Steel your real name?

[Steel]

Yeah, it is. I asked my father WTF he was thinkin' when he chose that name, back when I was a teenager.

He said he'd leave the answer in his will.

But over the years, we didn't get along so good and he cut me out of his will - had declared me 'to be considered as previously deceased for purposes of this will', and I didn't find out.

I asked my mother, but she could only say, 'I think he liked the sound of it'.

My theory is that he found out that Stalin translates to 'steel' and since I was born when Stalin was at the height of his power, I figure my old man heard that translation when he was drunk and thought, 'Wow, cool name' and since I was the first born and basically an experimental child, I got named Steel.

The next kid was a junior.

The next - my mother insisted on using a 'softer' name to balance out me - his name is Clay.

Didn't work.

[Jim Mcfalls]

I like the sound of it also; Be thankfull he didn't like the sound of Bakelite...