Thankfully, the irony of hosting an academic-style panel discussion about punk rock was not lost on the directors of Open Space. Before the speakers took their seats, four bottles of Fiji water stood in formation on top of the conference table, bam-bam-bam-bam, and the amps played the kind of elegant classical music usually airing at fundraising events and dads' company parties – tongues were subtly, but intentionally, in cheeks.
It's important to note this, because before the event there had been a lot of pooh-poohing and stance-taking surrounding to the whole idea. Before the discussion began, there were a lot of (lighthearted) jokes being made about pouring the Fiji water onto the amps and throwing beer cans at the speakers in order to save punk from the stranglehold of academic discourse. Many in the audience were wary, and I have to admit that I myself had calculated about a 50-50 chance of the whole thing being really annoying, so to see that the hosts were acknowledging this by making fun of themselves (just a little bit) was an immediate good sign.
The three speakers were Alec MacKaye, influential force in the '80s D.C. hardcore scene and member of Untouchables and The Faith; Matt Papich, founder of Wildfire Wildfire and member of Ecstatic Sunshine and also, I am now convinced, some kind of guru; and Peter Quinn, founding member of Creative Capitalism and respected supporter of the Baltimore arts community.
Both the moderator, Amy Peterson, and Peter prefaced their introductions to themselves by saying that they didn’t feel qualified to really be speaking on punk and that they weren't entirely sure why they'd been asked, which seemed fitting given the usual reluctance to self-identify as punk and then to have to back it up with the laundry-list of bands, dates, and ideological points. It seemed an appropriate opening.
Only three "official" questions got asked before the discussion started to include audience commentary and response-to-response, and as speakers hashed out ideas and molded thoughts a few threads began to emerge. While the actual conversation jumped from topic to topic, often back- or sidetracking, a couple of points kept coming up, and it's these that I want to explore.
The first question, not surprisingly, was "what is punk?" Among other things, punk was described as a reaction to mainstream culture – it arose in direct opposition to, not in spite of, the perceived hollowness and hypocrisy of capitalism. While this could be said of any counter-culture movement (hence "counter"-culture, duh), punk is different because it has a sense of humor and self-mockery built into itself, something that may also help explain its longevity. While it's pretty tempting to deny this description outright by recollecting every self-righteous, liberty-spiked, decidedly not-self-mocking asshole we knew in high school, it does seem easier to imagine a self-deprecating punk than, say, a self-deprecating hippie. This may explain why punk has had so much staying power: instead of being weakened by a new generation's mockery, punk can absorb and celebrate it.
Of course, once anything mocks itself enough you have to start wondering where the essence and substance of it lies; if the whole thing is just a joke, then what's the point at all? Maybe it isn’t that punk can become endlessly self-deprecating, maybe it's that the definition of "punk" is fluid enough that the word can mean whatever is required of it by any given generation. Matt suggested that the word "punk" is useful not in spite of its constantly fluctuating nature, but because of it.
Alec pointed out that punk, from the start, was supposed to devour itself. Destruction seemed built into the movement from its inception, the way that a young rebel will tattoo his knuckles as insurance against a briefcase-and-bowtie adulthood – mature, seasoned punk should be an oxymoron, and intentionally so. Which brings us to a question that was shocking in its absence: is punk dead? Nobody went there during the discussion, but from the general tone and the way things were phrased, the base assumption seemed to be that punk is alive and well, just…different. I dunno. Personally, I decided that punk was dead sometime around 10th grade, but I was only ever in it for the fashion and the cigarettes, anyway. I have no authority here. I guess that calling yourself a Punk today is like calling yourself a Hippie: it does mean something in a contemporary context, it just doesn't mean what it used to, and, at the end of the day, it usually just means that you're an asshole.
But I digress. Adam Lempel asked an interesting question at one point that, regretfully, was never really answered: does punk have to exist in opposition to something? What would happen if a majority of Americans declared themselves punks and started eating each other's leftovers? Does punk define itself by what it's not, or is it something self-sustaining that could exist in any world? Does it defeat itself by winning? Alec suggested at one point that punk has stayed alive for so long because it taps into something elemental and universal, some human undercurrent that exists with or without a system to bash. The jury is still out.
One thing everyone agreed on is that punk allows you to do things that you otherwise couldn't. You don't have to know how to play the bass to play the bass. You don't have to have money to look fly or have a good time. In this way, punk is freeing.
Punk also frees you to have open chunks of time. Suddenly you aren't expected to have a schedule filled with money-making strategies and career-advancement moves. All three panelists relayed memories of, as Alec put it, "standing around somewhere until someone told us not to, then going somewhere else and standing there for a while instead." Matt referred to "wasting time as an ethos." This ability to do nothing creates "open spaces" in your personal space and time, which you can fill in however you want – or not. These open spaces are undervalued in our culture, where ambition and achievement take precedent over pretty much everything else, and an appreciation of downtime is rarely differentiated from straight laziness.
One of the most evocative topics was a mixture of "why doesn't your generation [i.e. my generation] do anything/how is punk different now/what happens next?" Peter broached the subject by asking the audience, which was mostly MICA students, why we never do anything to change the world. Obviously the audience wasn't really having this, and he "clarified" by saying "no, no, I don’t mean you guys, I mean the rest of your generation," which infuriated me so much that I almost cramped my face from eyebrow-cocking. He distinguished the "creative class" in the room from the "rest of Generation Y," as though being a MICA student automatically makes you more socially-aware and proactive. It's the same kind of binary thinking that the two older panelists expressed over and over in their descriptions of punk as an oppositional force. They seemed to view the world as Us vs. Them, Us being the creative artsy-fartsy alterna-crew; Them being the square, Ugg-wearing, TV-brainwashed dumb masses of dumbasses. This kind of mentality seems old-fashioned, and Peter, after giving it more thought, came to the same conclusion himself.
Everyone ended up agreeing that in this day and age, you're allowed to combine any roles and traits that you want. In fact, if you limit yourself to one subculture – if, say, you only listen to hardcore, and only wear hardcore clothes, and only go to hardcore shows, and refuse to participate in any activity that isn't hardcore – you're seen as narrow-minded and immature. This seemed to be the major difference between Gen X and Gen Y conceptions of punk: to the old folks, punk is about being anti; to the kids, punk is just one more element to mix into your philosophical and stylistic repertoire.
Of course, that begs the question of whether you're allowed to be just a little bit punk. Isn’t part of the idea that if you don't go balls-to-the-wall with it, then you're just a poser? And once punk becomes so ill-defined, does the word really connote anything at all?
At the end of the day, I think punk is probably dead. And if it's already dead, then academic discussion isn’t going to make it any deader. That's what I would say to the many people who refused to attend the discussion on principle.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Selling Out Vs. Not.
I just graduated from art college and I find myself torn between what I'm simplistically choosing to view as two discrete lifestyles. These are those.
I've had discussions; I know I'm not alone on this.
I also know that this is an extremely streamlined view of a convoluted and multi-forked post-college flowchart. And really, at this point it's the least of my worries. In practical terms, my choices at this point are the Keep Trying To Get a Job As a Dishwasher Strategy vs. the Drink 40s On The Couch Strategy. But still, there's this leftover 15-year-old shithead smoking old cigarette butts in the back of my brain, and every time I think about trying for a real career with a real salary and responsibilities, she stabs her ember into my gray matter and calls me a sellout cunt.
With that in mind, and largely for my own edification, I'm going to delineate the pros and cons of selling out vs. not.
Life-Living Strategy #1: The Rock and Roll
PROS:
These people tend to be much more fun to be around. People are more accepting, more laid-back, more DOWN. People initially see you as a potential friend, not a potential threat.
You get to be confident in the knowledge that you, too, are DOWN, and no one, no matter what, can take downness away from you.
There's a sense of connection with the underlying drives; people aren’t denying their darker, more Dionysian impulses and trying to front like they're healthy and wholesome (which no one actually is).
You can pretty much do whatever you want, because your job tasks are immediate, not project-based - you can dip out as long as you put in two weeks' notice, and also, whatever form of employment you have – serving, bartending, retail – it's something you can find work in no matter where you go. So you're free. Want to leave? You can leave. Go with God.
The ability to be drunk on the metro at like 2PM and have it be a good joke, not a sign of illness.
Good stories.
This sense of holding up some kind of noble tradition, like you're carrying on some greater work of Ginsberg and Iggy Pop and "all the strange rock-and-rollers." I know this sounds incredibly stupid, but I do think that there's a real sense of community among weird art-faggy musician-type fuck-ups.
Getting to feel like a badass. Isn't that why you got into it in the first place? Yes, it is.
Laughter. There's way more laughter.
FUCK IT.
CONS:
POOR.
This world is also full of insipid asses. And the asses of the alternative world are so, so, so much more fucking irritating than the asses of the mainstream, because they have these added components of self-consciousness and self-righteousness, simultaneously. They want to make a lot of 9/11 jokes because anything anti-America is so goddamn funny. They want to get hammered and embarrass themselves, because they don’t know the difference between a good time and a shitshow. They shave upside-down crosses into their hair. They can't give you an actual considered rationale behind any of these decisions.
Also, you end up dealing with a lot of hypocrites: anarchists who collect food stamps, people who claim to hate the government while receiving government benefits, because for some unspecified reason they don't think that they should have to work. This lifestyle is kind of a dumping-ground for a lot of lazy people who try to hide their laziness behind ill-considered ideology.
Never being taken seriously.
The ever-present possibility of waking up one day and realizing that you're 40 years old and you have no money and no future and no friends, because everyone but you has grown up and abandoned the lifestyle. And all of a sudden you realize that you're a has-been and you can't do anything about it because you missed your window to accumulate marketable skills, and now you're just a old fart, and probably also an alcoholic.
The risk of becoming a drug addict.
Again, POOR.
Life-Living Strategy #2: The Sell-Out
PROS: Dollars dollars dollars! And you can use dollars for WHATEVER YOU WANT. You can travel all over the world. You can pop champagne and look fly all the time. You can give things to your friends and the people you love. You can laugh at people. You can have revenge simply by being successful. "Success," as it's generally understood, is the subtlest and most effective form of revenge.
If you play it right, you can get away with pretty much anything because you look respectable. I loved that part in season one of Mad Men where he's stoned with all the hippies and there are cops outside the apartment, and the hippies tell him "you can't go out there, the hall is full of cops," and he's like "no, YOU can't." Because he's in nice clothes, and he knows how to act, he can just stroll right past the authorities, blazed out of his skull, and they all tip their hats to him. This is a wonderful kind of joke to be able to play.
You have the knowledge that if you suddenly disappeared off the face of the planet, someone other than a personal friend or lover would be affected. You are a necessary component of something. You make a real contribution to the world; you are NEEDED. You are an integral part of something larger than yourself.
The soap never has pubes stuck to it. There is always toilet paper.
CONS:
There are probably just as many assholes in this world as there are in the service industry. However, they're much subtler and more insidious. They call you a dumb cunt with their minds instead of their mouths, so you don’t find out about it until months and months later.
Once you get a taste of money, will you really remain pure in your intentions with it? If you claim that you don’t care about petty status symbols, that you think ostentation is silly, that you only want money so you can travel the world and contribute to causes, will you REALLY hold to that once the envy of others is on your tongue? Can you really hold on to your soul when no one around you sees any value in it, but they DO slather compliments on your new shoes and house? Are you sure you won’t become materialistic and cynical?
Cynicism in general, actually. I'm pretty sure that the white-collar world is rife with soulless, Machiavellian climbers, though I can't say for sure. I make a personal point of not allowing myself to become bitter; if I live in a world with this much strategy, can I really expect myself to retain the belief in goodness and love that I've carefully protected from so much already?
The knowledge that you are a sell-out, and the scorn of those you used to align yourself with.
"Moderation." Having a glass of wine with dinner, but refraining from binges. Never allowing yourself to get out of control. Remaining in full possession of your faculties. Keeping your infatuations in perspective; never allowing yourself to go ga-ga over some boy without knowing with certainty that he's willing to commit to you. ISN'T THAT THE MOST ANNOYING FUCKING THING? I think moderation is just the most annoying fucking thing.
Being surrounded by squares all the time. Boring, boring squares.
I've had discussions; I know I'm not alone on this.
I also know that this is an extremely streamlined view of a convoluted and multi-forked post-college flowchart. And really, at this point it's the least of my worries. In practical terms, my choices at this point are the Keep Trying To Get a Job As a Dishwasher Strategy vs. the Drink 40s On The Couch Strategy. But still, there's this leftover 15-year-old shithead smoking old cigarette butts in the back of my brain, and every time I think about trying for a real career with a real salary and responsibilities, she stabs her ember into my gray matter and calls me a sellout cunt.
With that in mind, and largely for my own edification, I'm going to delineate the pros and cons of selling out vs. not.
Life-Living Strategy #1: The Rock and Roll
PROS:
These people tend to be much more fun to be around. People are more accepting, more laid-back, more DOWN. People initially see you as a potential friend, not a potential threat.
You get to be confident in the knowledge that you, too, are DOWN, and no one, no matter what, can take downness away from you.
There's a sense of connection with the underlying drives; people aren’t denying their darker, more Dionysian impulses and trying to front like they're healthy and wholesome (which no one actually is).
You can pretty much do whatever you want, because your job tasks are immediate, not project-based - you can dip out as long as you put in two weeks' notice, and also, whatever form of employment you have – serving, bartending, retail – it's something you can find work in no matter where you go. So you're free. Want to leave? You can leave. Go with God.
The ability to be drunk on the metro at like 2PM and have it be a good joke, not a sign of illness.
Good stories.
This sense of holding up some kind of noble tradition, like you're carrying on some greater work of Ginsberg and Iggy Pop and "all the strange rock-and-rollers." I know this sounds incredibly stupid, but I do think that there's a real sense of community among weird art-faggy musician-type fuck-ups.
Getting to feel like a badass. Isn't that why you got into it in the first place? Yes, it is.
Laughter. There's way more laughter.
FUCK IT.
CONS:
POOR.
This world is also full of insipid asses. And the asses of the alternative world are so, so, so much more fucking irritating than the asses of the mainstream, because they have these added components of self-consciousness and self-righteousness, simultaneously. They want to make a lot of 9/11 jokes because anything anti-America is so goddamn funny. They want to get hammered and embarrass themselves, because they don’t know the difference between a good time and a shitshow. They shave upside-down crosses into their hair. They can't give you an actual considered rationale behind any of these decisions.
Also, you end up dealing with a lot of hypocrites: anarchists who collect food stamps, people who claim to hate the government while receiving government benefits, because for some unspecified reason they don't think that they should have to work. This lifestyle is kind of a dumping-ground for a lot of lazy people who try to hide their laziness behind ill-considered ideology.
Never being taken seriously.
The ever-present possibility of waking up one day and realizing that you're 40 years old and you have no money and no future and no friends, because everyone but you has grown up and abandoned the lifestyle. And all of a sudden you realize that you're a has-been and you can't do anything about it because you missed your window to accumulate marketable skills, and now you're just a old fart, and probably also an alcoholic.
The risk of becoming a drug addict.
Again, POOR.
Life-Living Strategy #2: The Sell-Out
PROS: Dollars dollars dollars! And you can use dollars for WHATEVER YOU WANT. You can travel all over the world. You can pop champagne and look fly all the time. You can give things to your friends and the people you love. You can laugh at people. You can have revenge simply by being successful. "Success," as it's generally understood, is the subtlest and most effective form of revenge.
If you play it right, you can get away with pretty much anything because you look respectable. I loved that part in season one of Mad Men where he's stoned with all the hippies and there are cops outside the apartment, and the hippies tell him "you can't go out there, the hall is full of cops," and he's like "no, YOU can't." Because he's in nice clothes, and he knows how to act, he can just stroll right past the authorities, blazed out of his skull, and they all tip their hats to him. This is a wonderful kind of joke to be able to play.
You have the knowledge that if you suddenly disappeared off the face of the planet, someone other than a personal friend or lover would be affected. You are a necessary component of something. You make a real contribution to the world; you are NEEDED. You are an integral part of something larger than yourself.
The soap never has pubes stuck to it. There is always toilet paper.
CONS:
There are probably just as many assholes in this world as there are in the service industry. However, they're much subtler and more insidious. They call you a dumb cunt with their minds instead of their mouths, so you don’t find out about it until months and months later.
Once you get a taste of money, will you really remain pure in your intentions with it? If you claim that you don’t care about petty status symbols, that you think ostentation is silly, that you only want money so you can travel the world and contribute to causes, will you REALLY hold to that once the envy of others is on your tongue? Can you really hold on to your soul when no one around you sees any value in it, but they DO slather compliments on your new shoes and house? Are you sure you won’t become materialistic and cynical?
Cynicism in general, actually. I'm pretty sure that the white-collar world is rife with soulless, Machiavellian climbers, though I can't say for sure. I make a personal point of not allowing myself to become bitter; if I live in a world with this much strategy, can I really expect myself to retain the belief in goodness and love that I've carefully protected from so much already?
The knowledge that you are a sell-out, and the scorn of those you used to align yourself with.
"Moderation." Having a glass of wine with dinner, but refraining from binges. Never allowing yourself to get out of control. Remaining in full possession of your faculties. Keeping your infatuations in perspective; never allowing yourself to go ga-ga over some boy without knowing with certainty that he's willing to commit to you. ISN'T THAT THE MOST ANNOYING FUCKING THING? I think moderation is just the most annoying fucking thing.
Being surrounded by squares all the time. Boring, boring squares.
Movstaches
One of my favorites is when institutions replace all the U's in their marble-engraved titles with V's, so it looks like Latin. As in "mvsevm" or "pvblic library."
Also, when old translations from European languages use the plural "moustaches." "His moustaches were full and well-groomed, as was the fashion in his set."
Also, when old translations from European languages use the plural "moustaches." "His moustaches were full and well-groomed, as was the fashion in his set."
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Fetus Dreams?
HOLD THE PHONE. I'm looking at an anti-abortion billboard right now, and it's telling me that babies can dream before they're born. Excuse me? What the fuck could a fetus dream about? Pink and mushy? How would a fetus even be able to tell whether it was dreaming or awake?
I'm not trying to say that the billboard is lying, I’m sure that it's based on evidence that fetus' brainwaves sometimes match the brainwaves of dreaming adults. I'm not saying that fetuses don't dream. I'm just genuinely curious about their dreams.
Can you be said to dream if you're not even aware of existing? Can you dream if you've never had any experiences? Is it possible that fetuses have some kind of deep memory that can emerge in dreams, like a universal-consciousness sense of things experienced by ancestors? I know some people believe that certain memories are embedded in our genes, that we must remember some kind of primitive experience or we wouldn't have any instincts. Are fetuses dreaming about running away from saber-tooth tigers? Do they have emotions in their dreams? Emotions are definitely embedded in the human brain, things like fear and joy and rage are universal and hard-wired, so it isn’t too far-fetched to think that maybe fetuses can experience them. Even if their dreams have no images, can they include feelings? Can a fetus experience fear in a dream, even though it's never been afraid of anything while "awake" (whatever "awake" means in the womb)?
This is blowing my mind.
I'm not trying to say that the billboard is lying, I’m sure that it's based on evidence that fetus' brainwaves sometimes match the brainwaves of dreaming adults. I'm not saying that fetuses don't dream. I'm just genuinely curious about their dreams.
Can you be said to dream if you're not even aware of existing? Can you dream if you've never had any experiences? Is it possible that fetuses have some kind of deep memory that can emerge in dreams, like a universal-consciousness sense of things experienced by ancestors? I know some people believe that certain memories are embedded in our genes, that we must remember some kind of primitive experience or we wouldn't have any instincts. Are fetuses dreaming about running away from saber-tooth tigers? Do they have emotions in their dreams? Emotions are definitely embedded in the human brain, things like fear and joy and rage are universal and hard-wired, so it isn’t too far-fetched to think that maybe fetuses can experience them. Even if their dreams have no images, can they include feelings? Can a fetus experience fear in a dream, even though it's never been afraid of anything while "awake" (whatever "awake" means in the womb)?
This is blowing my mind.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Bainbridge Part I: Power and the Powerful
Every winter, the power goes out at my parents' house for at least three days. Sometimes the failure makes some kind of sense – maybe it's really windy out and a branch falls on a line – but more often it seems to come completely out of nowhere, as though someone threw a bottle and an insult at a substation and it just got sulky. Explanations vary for specific outages, but I did recently discover that there are several factors contributing to the overall jankiness of the system. I write about them not because I consider the inner workings of Puget Sound Energy particularly fascinating, but because the whole story is so ridiculously revealing of what my hometown is all about.
I've been meaning to write about Bainbridge Island – the small town where I spent the formative years of my rather malformed youth – for some time. It's a crazy place, and a discussion of it opens up all variety of worm-cans: class, racism, political correctness, the general idea of the soul of a place and what that concept really means (and doesn't mean). I am not an impartial observer. I hated growing up here in a totally unconsidered, gut-based way, and I still loathe it upon my return every Christmas. For my own edification, I need to figure out why. This essay is the first in what will become a series exploring the culture of Bainbridge Island; I am here introducing you to the town through this story of PSE and the various parties that have been cockblocking it for decades.
The energy company wants to update the system and install new substations to accommodate the growing population. They have been wanting to do this for a long time. However, every time they have a town meeting to discuss their proposed improvements, a small group of people who apparently have nothing better to do (like, say, work really hard) shows up and raises the same three objections. In most places, their objections would be duly noted and then promptly ignored – after all, the half-baked complaints of a small group are less important than the town-wide need for reliable electricity – but somehow on Bainbridge things are different. They are different because people are rich. I don’t know exactly how the politics operate here, but I do know that the ability of this small collective to effectively fight the power company has to do with their money (which equals influence, equals power… I've never had enough of any of these to know how the equation operates, but the math seems to work whether I understand it or not). These people show up and they raise the following objections:
1. Power lines and substations are ugly. This is the same reason that the island has such crappy cell coverage: no one wants to have to look at a cell tower. No one wants to have to look at a bunch of wires. They want power, they want reception, but the sacrifice of an unobstructed trees-and-water view is too great. People move here from the city because it's so pretty, so naturey, so untainted (to the eye, in any event). If we wanted to look at metal shit and not trees, we would have just stayed in the city, right?
2. We wouldn’t have to build all these ugly substations if everyone would just conserve. Bainbridge is the most self-consciously "green" (jesus god I hate that adjective) place I have ever seen. Green-itude will become an essay in itself later, but I do want to point out here the basic hypocrisy of this argument. The people saying these things by in large live in huge houses with big, beautiful, uninsulated picture windows, and green, sprawling, water-intensive lawns, yet they're urging everyone to conscientiously conserve their electricity so that we don’t have to spoil the view – and, of course, because conserving is just the right thing to do. This fashionable environmentalism is one of the things that bothers me most about this town.
3. The electromagnetic radiation given off by power lines and substations is harmful. The problem with this argument is that it isn’t true. Scientists have been investigating the issue for decades, and no persuasive evidence has been found to support the claim that this type of electromagnetic radiation is bad for you. As far as I can tell, people believe this falsehood because "electromagnetic radiation" contains the word "radiation," which is a really scary word, because we all know about Chernobyl, right? What no one seems to bother learning is that the electromagnetic radiation given off by power lines is not harmful, because its frequency is too low to ionize atoms. Non-ionizing radiation is safe because the ionization of your body's atoms is what causes the damage. This is not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of scientific ignorance.
Ignorance is one thing, but once you combine it with money and power you start entering dangerous territory. These are the three reasons that emergency shelters have to be set up in local churches every winter to warm those who can't afford to install generators (and those who can afford them do): power lines are ugly, sustainability sounds good, and I think that radiation is probably icky. The egos involved here are mind-boggling – thinking that you're more qualified to speak on the power system than the damn power company is? And having enough influence to make your ignorant voice not only heard, but obeyed? Who are these people, and why don’t they have anything else to worry about?
I've been meaning to write about Bainbridge Island – the small town where I spent the formative years of my rather malformed youth – for some time. It's a crazy place, and a discussion of it opens up all variety of worm-cans: class, racism, political correctness, the general idea of the soul of a place and what that concept really means (and doesn't mean). I am not an impartial observer. I hated growing up here in a totally unconsidered, gut-based way, and I still loathe it upon my return every Christmas. For my own edification, I need to figure out why. This essay is the first in what will become a series exploring the culture of Bainbridge Island; I am here introducing you to the town through this story of PSE and the various parties that have been cockblocking it for decades.
The energy company wants to update the system and install new substations to accommodate the growing population. They have been wanting to do this for a long time. However, every time they have a town meeting to discuss their proposed improvements, a small group of people who apparently have nothing better to do (like, say, work really hard) shows up and raises the same three objections. In most places, their objections would be duly noted and then promptly ignored – after all, the half-baked complaints of a small group are less important than the town-wide need for reliable electricity – but somehow on Bainbridge things are different. They are different because people are rich. I don’t know exactly how the politics operate here, but I do know that the ability of this small collective to effectively fight the power company has to do with their money (which equals influence, equals power… I've never had enough of any of these to know how the equation operates, but the math seems to work whether I understand it or not). These people show up and they raise the following objections:
1. Power lines and substations are ugly. This is the same reason that the island has such crappy cell coverage: no one wants to have to look at a cell tower. No one wants to have to look at a bunch of wires. They want power, they want reception, but the sacrifice of an unobstructed trees-and-water view is too great. People move here from the city because it's so pretty, so naturey, so untainted (to the eye, in any event). If we wanted to look at metal shit and not trees, we would have just stayed in the city, right?
2. We wouldn’t have to build all these ugly substations if everyone would just conserve. Bainbridge is the most self-consciously "green" (jesus god I hate that adjective) place I have ever seen. Green-itude will become an essay in itself later, but I do want to point out here the basic hypocrisy of this argument. The people saying these things by in large live in huge houses with big, beautiful, uninsulated picture windows, and green, sprawling, water-intensive lawns, yet they're urging everyone to conscientiously conserve their electricity so that we don’t have to spoil the view – and, of course, because conserving is just the right thing to do. This fashionable environmentalism is one of the things that bothers me most about this town.
3. The electromagnetic radiation given off by power lines and substations is harmful. The problem with this argument is that it isn’t true. Scientists have been investigating the issue for decades, and no persuasive evidence has been found to support the claim that this type of electromagnetic radiation is bad for you. As far as I can tell, people believe this falsehood because "electromagnetic radiation" contains the word "radiation," which is a really scary word, because we all know about Chernobyl, right? What no one seems to bother learning is that the electromagnetic radiation given off by power lines is not harmful, because its frequency is too low to ionize atoms. Non-ionizing radiation is safe because the ionization of your body's atoms is what causes the damage. This is not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of scientific ignorance.
Ignorance is one thing, but once you combine it with money and power you start entering dangerous territory. These are the three reasons that emergency shelters have to be set up in local churches every winter to warm those who can't afford to install generators (and those who can afford them do): power lines are ugly, sustainability sounds good, and I think that radiation is probably icky. The egos involved here are mind-boggling – thinking that you're more qualified to speak on the power system than the damn power company is? And having enough influence to make your ignorant voice not only heard, but obeyed? Who are these people, and why don’t they have anything else to worry about?
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