I did not mean to offend. Sorry.
Yes it is. It would be pretty hard for the majority of the population of the US to get into wilderness in a couple of hours. Here in Panama the majority of the population could do so.
And you were right to be worried, because it makes you a hypocrite.
And that includes the trip to the airport from downtown.
Given that the whole point of the OP had to do with how ugly we have made the world, and that health concerns were a side issue at best, I am very interested to hear just how this is so. Or are you one of those fanatical Capitalists that is angry because you think that I just threw a rock at your sacred cow?
Well, I presume TNG is arguing that smoking also makes the world an uglier place. (Me, I don’t mind so much as long as they don’t do it in the non-smoking areas, and dispose of their butts properly.)
Well, I could agree with that but would also argue that it sort of helps to prove my point. Setting to one side, for a moment, the current weakness of character that is making it difficult for me to overcome this addiction, it would seem that if I were to explore the genesis of this terrible habit that I now struggle with, that a good portion of it could be said to originate with the crass marketing that I am complaining about.
For the record, you would have to look pretty damn hard to find a more considerate and “low impact” smoker than me.
Yes, we can do better. But setting up the interior of a 7-11 as representative of the environment we’ve created makes about as much sense as selecting a tar pit as representative of the natural world. Yes, it exists. Yes, it could be nicer. But I don’t think the whole human environment is only as nice as its crassest elements. That way lies despair (as I think you’ve discovered).
If you’d like to start changing things, try this: find a place to buy your tasty tobacco products that you don’t find to be an aesthetic assault. Buy your tobacco – and anything else you can – at that place. Reward their efforts to make human constructions and social interaction points beautiful, rather than base or utilitarian. Always make aesthetic qualities a major decision factor in buying anything.
Part of the reason so many places look so ugly and tacky is that people respond to ugliness and tackiness.
Of course, that all presumes that that there are human constructions you don’t find noxious. If it’s the humanity at work in the environment that bothers you, I recommend some kind of spiritual withdrawal from the world, or at least a move to rural Montana.
And to the other extreme, I like wandering down the Strip in Vegas, even downtown Vegas. Now there is base, tacky, and distasteful distilled to it’s purest form. And I like it. I’d love to hang out in downtown Tokyo for a while.
I also like getting away from it all, heading out to where there are no people, not even camp sites. Just nature.
It is damn handy to be able to head down to the convienience store and get a gallon of milk without having to get up a 4 every morning and milk the cows. To be able to grab a loaf of tasteless white bread and a can of Spam because it costs about 15 minutes of wages vs having to mill the grain into flour and still have to bake the stuff after that…if you even have some whole grain handy to mill. Spam has assholes in it? Ain’t killed me yet.
And I know you are talking about the blatant “Shout in your face” advertising and tacky consumerism. It comes from having 1000 products shoved into a 1000 sq ft store, products have to scream to be noticed. You could have a quaint produce stand, a little dairy stand, a candy shoppe, and each would advertise itself. Cram them all together, for “convienience”, and it’s gonna get ugly as everybody tries to get their product noticed.
This is what I was thinking about saying (but not as well constructed).
Vote with your dollar. If you don’t want 7-11’s around, don’t patronize them. And yes, I know, the obvious reply is “But my dollar doesn’t mean that much!”. I’m not going to spout the “Every dollar counts” thing.
All I’m saying is, if you don’t like it, do something to try to change it.
Susan
Just a word of honest advice to one of my favorite posters: if you don’t mean to offend, you should probably avoid phrases like, “go fuck yourselves!”
Colibri: Got a cite for the claim that most Americans can’t easily get to a wilderness area by car?
As a last aside, whenever I hear someone complaining about hot dogs being made from lips and assholes, I think back to when I was in elementary school, and how my history teachers always lauded the native Americans for using every piece of an animal. What did the plains Indians do with all their buffalo lips and assholes, I wonder?
Nice. 
Progress, after all, is a comfortable disease.
Side issue??? Your rant about the unhealthiness of food products was your first example, and your largest paragraph. You devoted more energy to your description of the food products than any other issue you presented.
Besides which, even if it were a “side issue”, how does that absolve you of being hypocritical. One can be hypocritical with any issue, “side” or no.
Nothing like a nice baseless ad-hominem attack to obfuscate the issue, eh? :rolleyes:
“Ladies and gentlemen, my opponent is clearly a Nazi-sympathizing puppy-kicker!”
Not exactly, although that’s a good point too. I just found it a tad hypocritical that someone who’s railing against the unhealthy ingredients in “meat products” is buying tobacco, one of the unhealthiest products there is.
The OP can always head down New Orleans way and see a city after nature gets done redecorating it.
On a more serious note, if you wanted to see a true miracle of nature in a 7-11, why didn’t you look at the other people there?
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not defending capitalism. I’m saying that if you look around and see a world that is vile, boorish and crass, you’ve brought the ugliness with you. Is there some ugliness there? Sure. But, you seem incapable of seeing any other aspects.
Point taken.
I lived in London years ago.
Note that I said, “Even the advertising is less intrusive, less hard sell.” I stand by that claim: British adverts are in general wittier, less abrasive and in general less butt-ugly than US billboard advertising.
“Ah, MfM, but that’s your opinion”.
Yes.[sup]1[/sup] Oh, and while Britain has commercial TV stations, it also has the BBC, though I understand that it’s in play at the moment.
Oddly, the British advertising lobby advertised in the tube: if you didn’t like some of the ads, you were suppose to give them a call.
Radical thought: Yes, some cities are uglier than others, both within and between countries. If any poster wants to equate 7-11 with Paris, London, Prague, or (heck) San Francisco well I suppose that’s their perogative.
Oh, and what Kimstu said.
[sup]1[/sup]For example, I seem to recall that some Londoners who didn’t like that Underground bra ads too much.
And what I’m saying is that if you see one location that is uglier, crasser and uberboorish, relative to another location… perhaps you merely have your eyes open.
That said, methinks Londoners litter less than New Yorkers, who litter less than Parisians.
I wasn’t clear above. The footnote was suppose to give a contrary POV, so that the reader wouldn’t think that I’m claiming that Europe is better in all ways.
I said nothing of the kind, so why exactly should I need a cite? But in any case, wilderness areas, at least by my definition, don’t have roads. :wally