The following excerpted from 8/8/04 A Word A Day, available at "http://wordsmith.org/words/new_york_minute.html"
Once upon a time, a person's name was his complete identification and address. It could comprise his given name, profession, father/mother's name, a personal trait, and even the name of his village. That was because where one lived defined a person as much as anything else. The place of origin often turned into a generic term for some personal characteristic.The English language is replete with such expressions where the name of a place has become associated with a particular quality, such as laconic (using few words) from Laconia in ancient Greece, bohemian (unconventional) from Bohemia in the Czech Republic, and Siamese (connected twin) from Siam, the former name of Thailand. There are many others.
New Yorkers are stereotyped as people always in a hurry and often rude, although there are many polite and generous New Yorkers. The term New York Minute has been facetiously defined as the time between a New York City traffic light turning green and the driver of the car behind you honking his or her horn.
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The book Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt led me to reflect on ways in which environment can shape a person, even an entire culture. In Montana, where the memoir is set, watchfulness, awareness, duty and hard work were essential to survival. When the author's young husband told her "we're not going to make it if you don't do your part," he referred not to the health of their fledgling marriage but to the harsh reality of their naked vulnerability to the elements if they didn't make serious good use of the time remaining before bitter weather hit.
"The Fast Runner," A film I enjoyed twice in the theater, illustrated how and why concepts of morality can be defined by what is helpful or unhelpful to the survival of the group as dictated by a harshly unforgiving environment. In the case of the movie's story line, when someone allowed selfishness to individuate him from the group, he jeopardized the entire clan. Thus it was necessary, vital, and moral in those surroundings to subsume one's individual needs or desires to the good of the group.
Many people in my world are undisciplined and adrift with no clear-cut sense of duty or needful place in society. Maybe this is symptomatic of late-stage societal decay, where we swim complacently to and fro in a sea of privilege and technology, cheap goods from Wal-Mart and a self righteous sense of justification in our freedom to shop until we drop, never pausing to consider that we do so in the sweat and at the expense of the rest of the world.
In my world, culture ignores environment as strip malls, conglomerate chains, and standardization stand in for place. Wherever you go, there you are. One can be at home in a McDonald's in Blythe, Waalwijk, Löddeköpinge, or, believe it or not, Riyadh. Yeah. Riyadh.
I have more to say about this, but no time left in which to say it on a work night.
Place – belonging – land in one's bones vs. mobility
Land = one's bones
All of this has everything to do with mobility.
Today at work a couple of coworkers and I were talking about the relative "goodness" of driving an SUV. One person wanted to know why it's OK to drive a Safari but not an Expedition, when they both burn fossil fuels. Another pointed out the differences in handling and safety features between minivans and SUVs as well as possible recklessness that might stem from the illusion of safety one gets from driving an SUV. I pointed out that in America, you are what you drive, and cars represent ideologies, values, lifestyles based on marketing.
In fact, though, not everyone thinks it's 'bad' to drive an SUV. To automakers' initial surprise and subsequent breathtaking profit margins, a whole lot of people apparently think SUVs are very, very good. In addition, by offering consumer rebates, our president may have made it the politically correct thing to do. Or at least political. At one time, some people deemed it unAmerican (translate: bad) to drive "imported" cars, but the pendulum shifted at some point when, in addition to the spreading understanding that parts may be manufactured globally and foreign "imports" assembled locally, the price of gas went up and the ozone layer began to tear. Today some car buyers may be attracted to the Prius, perhaps because they think it's 'good' to burn less fossil fuel but also largely because Toyota's celebrity marketing campaign has made driving a Prius seem trendy and cool. Bottom line, though, as my first coworker pointed out, is that cars are consumer driven. We consume the resources, the image, the way of life.
But I'm just being avoidant by talking about cars. At some point I want to get around to topics of e/immigration and separation and detachment and rootless-ness.
