(Untitled)

[wellgull]

So, I just got back from taking Dad & Deborah (his new wife) to the airport so they could go to LA for today and tomorrow. (This meant getting up and moving to the car at 4AM, then waking at the airport around 5 to drive home -- in the dark, when I haven't driven in months... well, I'm posting, so I must've been fine, right?) Anyway, it's 6:30

Comments

[bigscary]

This isn't unique to US culture. The crazy-obsessiveness about it is, though. Same impulse as OMG VIDEOGAMES, OMG MTV GENERATION, and once, long ago, OMG NOVELS.

[maymaym]

Work is an inevitable point of presence in everyone's life, in every society, in every historical era

[jlc]

Then the price of war skyrocketed, and all of a sudden the world had to, like, be all diplomatic and stuff.
Tell that to every person who died in armed conflict since 1945. Just because we haven't nuked again doesn't mean we've all of a sudden given up war.

[maymaym]

I'm not saying we've given up war. I'm saying we haven't, and that we're idiots for not doing so. Only now the price for our idiocy is a lot higher than it was. Maybe not for the people who died, but certainly for the human race as a species.

[wellgull]

"Point of presence" -- sure, but I think that it's become a national obsession. It surely was the overwhelming concern of both of my parents when I was growing up, and remained so until both of them were brutally targeted for social ridicule and professional sabotage at work (and they've since had to make separate peaces with the working world).

I would say that the national obsession with working hard, to the detriment of family and social relations, is at the root of a lot of American social problems. Partly this is guided by greed on the part of employers, and partly by some kind of internal / internalized drive in the population, but too much asked for too little given is simply a way of life...

mostly related

[cbreakr]

Drug use has always been a part of culture, and "getting high" on whatever was available has been going on for much longer than the current US social scheme has been in place. It's not a new and unique form of escapism, just one that gets a lot more attention these days. We're not "self-medicating" with drug use, it's just an aspect of a normal society which has gone out of control as a result of larger cultural problems. The same could be said about our obsessions with sports and celebrity.

The War On Drugs has changed the perspective on these substances by pushing a very puritanical view on the whole thing (the same could be said of the way we deal with sex here in the US). The result is that we see substance use as inherently a problem - with the exception of alcohol, of course, because that never does any harm and caffeine, because how could we live without it - independently of whether it is a problem

Re: mostly related

[wellgull]

Well, I agree that the article was pretty stupid --

but thank you for pointing out a blind spot (in both my reaction and in our culture more generally) which is not acknowledging the possibility of responsible substance use as distinct from abuse. That kind of all-or-nothing attitude is really dangerous to society, in my view. Not to sound melodramatic or anything.

But I agree also that the social problem is worth solving on its own -- it may, along with other factors, lead to a drug problem, but that's not the primary concern, by any means...

[brontoz0rus]

kids will ingest basically anything if we hide all the tree bark and funny weeds from them. when adults use drugs to cope with life, then it becomes an issue... americans are notoriously bad at coping. it might have something to do with us deciding that emotions are signs of weakness, and work a sign of strength. who knows?

[wellgull]

it might have something to do with us deciding that emotions are signs of weakness, and work a sign of strength.

Perhaps. I definitely think we have a pathological obsession with hard work in this country -- especially when you consider how many of us are doing things that ultimately just never really needed to be done...