Pity or Pretty?

Home re-makes, cookery shows, wine sampling, ecology fetishism; every little bit of our lives are supposed to have the exact right texture, colour, size, and be perfectly matched. Which brings me back to the old short-cut philosophy once again. Ambition, definitely does not match practise in our everyday lives. in fact, that almost never happens at all! I was wondering why - since we are all intelligent and hypothetically evolutionarily elaborate slabs of meat and neurons - we humans seem to be so incapable of pursuing our individual goals.

Take magazine and evening paper billboards for example. We just love to despise those poor people, who, by chance or deliberance, ventured into some trap of immorality and decay. Their "apalling, shocking, atrocious" acts of self-indulgence and random outbursts of misery streaks make us nauseated. But, for what is it really that we are blaming them? I mean, when brutally put in the spotlight with a bag of money, cocaine, fame and endless casual sex, who wouldn't be tempted to test the triggers of those traps, atleast for a while?

When looking back at all the major events of history, good or bad, it is striking to see how many of those that were foreseen. Not by conducting a lot of research, but by using simple common-sense. The same common-sense that for fifty years ago told us that, eventually, we would run out of oil and the climate might be fucked, also tells us that people need bad things. So, even though governments and lobbyists try to define these human traits as symptoms of a bad society, perhaps we should simply accept them as parts of our nature, thenceforth being able to add them to our efforts to understand the world and where we are headed.

I do not know if we do all our stupid things to test the limits, try new things, provoke nuissance, get attention, or just avoid self-combusting out of sheer boredom. Because, honestly, the chores and habits of daily life are seldom that exhilarating. I suspect that we are asking the wrong questions. Perhaps it is the goals of our ambition that are discrepant from our true natural urges. We may promise ourselves to work out more, eat more fruit, smoke less, blah blah blah every New Year, when in fact, we could feel better if we only took the time and freedom to act out our inner selves. Then, maybe there will not even be that many extreme Britney cases. Personally, I am fairly crappy when it comes to structure, planning ahead, big-great-correct-desicions-in-life, grown-up stuff. But I really have quite mixed feelings before the whole situation, when it comes to change. My whole existence tells me to leave some things as they are.

So, why do we bother with complaining and criticising our celebrity scapegoats? Because it serves the purpose of opening up shortcuts. We just love to whine and harass to make us seem like we are initiated and caring. The glorious, white-boy-culture authenticity issue has had two effects: the demand for transparency and the interest in the lives of others (especially celebrities) is growing, as does the distaste for the paparazzi, investigatory style of journalism.  Thereby, in a pitiful paradox, the genre of gossip journalism correlates with the growth of the concern for respect and transparency. All because of the very convenient shortcut to both info-tainment and association it provides. I reckon it is time to stop inflating the issue of morality to such grotesque proportions and start accepting the "darker" realms of ourselves. And I suspect, that change is already taking place. Never before has there been so many subtle layers and possible permutations of lifestyles in a single society. We seem to be broadening our horizon of what mankind is.

PS. I apologise for the quite inappropriate image in the beginning of the blog post. But, since I know you want more, I can tell you there is more where that came from. Click here to get a (fact or fiction?) collection of similar billboards in a tidy little paperback format.