Screeds
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
America’s Fastest Growing Indoor Sport
July 13, 2003
No, it isn’t sex. At least, not at your Curmudgeon’s abode.
With an afternoon to kill, a modest surplus of valuta, and an elbow screaming for surcease from any further yard work, today your Curmudgeon betook himself of the delights of Long Island’s largest and most popular shrine to consumption: the Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City, Nassau County.
Once upon a time, Roosevelt Field was an airport, from which Charles Lindbergh departed on his famous solo transatlantic flight in 1927. Today, it’s an upscale shopping mall, one of the nicest in the United States.
Your Curmudgeon didn’t go to Roosevelt Field because he needed anything. What a tawdry, pedestrian reason for the excursion that would have been! Nor did he go to return a prior purchase, nor to meet anyone, nor to fulfill any obligation, nor under pressure from others of any relation or description. He went because, when he’s in the right mood, he enjoys shopping.
Scream in outrage if you must. Some men do enjoy some kinds of shopping. Not all of us hang out in bars or hardware stores.
Like certain other activities—no, not that one; really, do you ever think about anything else?—shopping is most entertaining when it’s unnecessary. Budget-busting prices, a crowded store, surly sales help, or an excessively long line at a checkout can be met with a shrug and a smile. The point is recreation, not acquisition, so the thousand and one natural shocks that acquisitive shopping is heir to can be avoided without penalty. The recreational shopper is free to do as he likes.
And there is so very much to like!
The mall was busy but not overcrowded. The stores were neither jammed nor manic. Everywhere your Curmudgeon and his lady love went, there were smiling faces, cheerful, compelling music, pleasant aromas, colorful displays, and heaps of attractive merchandise arrayed in seductive fashion.
Not a lot of money was spent. Not a lot of purchases were made. That wasn’t really the point. Your Curmudgeon was out to take the pulse of Long Island and bask in its vitality. There are few better places to do that than a busy, trendy shopping mall.
The shoppers were the most memorable part. Cheerful, energetic people of all sizes, shapes, colors and genders could be observed doing what Americans seem to enjoy most: spending their hard-earned money. Quite a lot of them were attractive young women dressed in the current form-fitting, midriff-baring fashion—and don’t hold your breath waiting for a condemnation. Your Curmudgeon takes delight in that sort of thing and sees no harm in it.
The only sullen faces on display were in the ads at places like The Limited and NY & Co. For some reason, the fashion industry thinks that look of bored indifference is sophisticated and attractive. They’ll learn better.
The stores were next. The displays, in stores such as The Sharper Image, Bath & Body Works, White Barn Candle Co., Swiarovski Crystal, Danier Leather, Wild Pair Shoes and Nordstrom’s, were too magnetic to be caught in a web of words. They combined riotous color and wonderful aromas with intriguing forms and a host of minor inducements to sample and buy. Merchants now appreciate that shopping is a form of entertainment. Yes, it’s entertainment with a commercial point, but to the discretionary shopper, whatever amount he spends during his travels is essentially paid for the entertainment he derived from them. It’s not begrudged.
Doesn’t sound too Curmudgeonly, does it? Apologies for violating your preconceptions. Even Curmudgeons can cut loose, now and then. It’s easier with attractive, vivacious, much-beloved female company.
This is capitalism at the sharp end. These are the fruits from capitalism’s cornucopia, the honey from its earthen jar, the payoff for our forty hours of drudgery each week, the fun part of being a worker bee in these United States of America.
How on Earth could anyone fail to enjoy this? How could anyone disdain to wallow in it?
Americans will produce ten trillion dollars worth of goods and services this year, and still more next year. We do this to survive, true, but we also do it because it’s fun. Both at the producing and the consuming end, almost all of us get our money’s worth and more.
We’re not just the world’s champions at kicking ass and taking names. Nor would we be much good at that, except for this.
In his 1961 book On Thermonuclear War, master strategic planner Herman Kahn notes that what America’s enemies have always feared most is our extraordinary productivity. They appreciated, perhaps better than we did, how that translated into military strength. Perhaps they had some sense for how we loved it, too; one can’t be sure.
We do love it, and with good reason.
Eighteenth century social philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt posited that every man is born with an innate need to inquire and create. He opined that, even were we free of survival pressures, we would still work; that work is as natural to the human species as rest or play. He had the right of it. Consider how rapidly the total retiree, divorced from all productive enterprise, usually withers and dies.
Humans are producers. With our surplus, we are consumers, and joyous ones. Along with the production of children to rear to their own strength, it’s the fulfillment of our life cycle.
Your Curmudgeon has never understood the condemnation of consumerism, of the joys of acquisition and consumption and harmless enjoyment of what one has earned. After a day at the Roosevelt Field Mall, delighting in the goods and the merchants and the faces of eager consumers, he understands it still less.
Ayn Rand has noted that nature grants no one the title of consumer qua consumer. One must produce as well, in equal or greater measure to one’s consumption. Very well; let it be so. But to take an honest pleasure in the emptying of the storehouse one has so laboriously filled is no betrayal of natural law, nor of the work ethic, nor of anything else. It’s a perfect refutation of the killjoys of the Left, who condemn American “selfishness” and “materialism.” Not that we ever owed them an answer in the first place.
| <<- In Search Of An Allegiance | Indulgences ->> |
