Most men may not
complain when young women these days wear their pants lower than where their
mother's pockets used to be, but it can be somewhat nauseating to see older
females trying to keep up with their daughter and even granddaughter's peer
group. It reminds one of the sixties, when in order to be cool, boys had
to wear Levi's brand jeans, even though JC Penny sold a perfectly functional
pair for half the price.
A Bob Dylan song back then touched on this "Mr. Jones" mentality
of modern society. And, what with large gas-guzzling SUV's being
purchased by American middle-class "McMansion" families in the midst
of Middle East wars, oil shortages, and looming planetary disaster, certainly
nothing much has changed.
Liberal authors tend to blame corporate branding, but such a "keeping-up-with-the-Joneses"
reality has existed since ancient Babylon, and traces back into the mists
of prehistoric time. Tribal cultures on a global basis display
culturally dictated rings, beads, feathers, and other ornaments, paint faces
and bodies in peer-pressure-prescribed ways, and mimic each other in dress,
speech, and custom.
Ancient warriors often trimmed beards and hair in certain prescribed fashion
and displayed specific tattoos and other body markings. Cultures
throughout history display their own unique concepts of beauty, manliness, and femininity,
often directly contradicting what other cultures dictate. Heterosexual
men in many societies have worn clothing that even the most overt homosexual
male wouldn't wear in our own.
Today, tattoos and body piercings are all the modern rage and women
deliberately reveal bra straps they worked diligently to keep hidden not long
ago. And, we are inundated with harmful food and "must have"
gizmos and gadgets that no one in their right mind would consider purchasing
for logical survival or any other purpose.
Are designs carved on ancient pottery and inlaid jewels on swords functionally
necessary at all? And was expensive architecture, art, and sculpture,
purchased by kings and popes in the midst of massive poverty and famine during
the Middle Ages, any less moral than modern Wall Street paper-shufflers earning
10,000 and more times as much as those who pick their fruit, cook their food,
cut their lawns, and pick up their garbage?
Does a wise society reward athletes with enormous sums to play games in the
midst of rising poverty, homelessness, and human suffering? Do wise
people stand in long lines to see the latest film or to meet celebrities who
really haven't accomplished much of anything at all? How many Americans
blindly believe we represent the greatest society in history, without even
bothering to actually study much of human civilization, if any?
Culturally induced conformity might appear harmless, but it extends into
endorsing the amassing of private wealth and consequent enslavement of the
masses, supporting wars in a guise of false 'patriotism', and endorsing racism
and classicism in order to "belong".
Is it true that "all we like sheep have gone astray"? You
decide.
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