"Compared with the rest of the world, Americans take personal hygiene and general disinfection to another level. From our appreciation of white teeth and the daily shower, to our manicured lawns and store aisles full of bleach products, most of us cherish our unsoiled, unstained existence."
We all think of progress as good, but the days of simple soap and water hygiene significantly reducing mortality are clearly long gone. I experienced lawns so perfect this week, that I thought I could roll them up like carpets and take them home, or sit down and eat from them - there seemed to be no soil or dirt in sight. It looked wonderful. But then...
when we combine that with neatness, we might have an obsessive social mentality. The gardens on the St. Catharines tour coming up this weekend had living rooms - we've taken our cleanliness and neatness outdoors and seem to be eliminating nature and its life forms from the sitting areas. This trend is so very popular.
My driveway and walkways and patios were power-washed yesterday, and look wonderful today. Have I joined the neat brigade on a wave of tidiness that seems to have reached a peak?
Here's an analogy from Sarah Hampson of the Globe and Mail in her article on neatness:
"But it may be that what’s at play in the culture is far more profound. As Grant McCracken sees it, “Contemporary culture used to look a little bit like a French garden. It was all symmetrical and ordered. And now it looks a lot like an English garden with things busting out all over. It’s hard to see the pattern of an English garden, if you can at all,” observes the Canadian-born culture guru, who was founder and director of the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and is now a consultant, author and speaker, affiliated with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard."
No comments:
Post a Comment