There are more than you would think, and the only thing we are missing is nostalgia.
These days I have been gathering a different kind of junk to fill my garage. I'm putting together emergency go-bags and survival kits. I spent a couple hours browsing last weekend at the local Fry's and REI to check out the gear. My next major purchase is going to be a good two-way radio. Funny when I think about how I want that vs my desire for an iPad - a thing that gives me no more function than I already have. I go to Consumer Reports and there are no listings for walkie talkies. And that's not odd either. After all, what is CR, but something you spend money on to help you spend money?
It started with me looking for Marineland. It was the world's largest oceanarium (yes there are words for such things) back when it opened.
Coincidently, 'All My Children' goes off the air this year after 41 years. That is a thing I never paid attention to, nor much respected people who did. And yet it was just another frivolity that stands as a kind of ironic testament of the strength of America. America is still a country where people can afford to waste money, and yet with systems in place that are brutally honest. It seems like an irony that you can go to prison for stealing a car worth $500 measly bucks, or do five years in the penitentiary for stealing $100 cash with a $50 gun, and yet we have a Federal government that has spent 20 years worth of everybody's future taxes already and it doesn't get shut down. Last time I checked the debt was something like $36,000 per household. Yet somehow you have to marvel that we had that much to steal, and still we hate theft. We can still get our emotions involved around the principle of very small things. We can care about that $500 car that much. People talk about 'my' soap opera. We are an ownership society.
There's a great documentary by Niall Ferguson about the divergent paths of the New World. The English idea of property and landed gentry vs the Spanish idea of property and the rights of the crown. The English idea of property was inherently more democratic, so more people had the right to make money first through ownership of land. Naturally we should all be quick to point out the difference between more pople having the right and everybody having the right, but more is much better than 'select few'. The point of natural rights is that success is possible *from* everybody but not *by* everybody. The important thing to note here is that that when more people can have and do have, more people can fail and the costs of failure don't decapitate society. It is a fundamental feature of robustness.
As well, one can naturally expect that some of the many who succeed do so in a surfeit of goofy ways. That's the downside of having an ungentrified aristocracy of merit. Lady Gaga, whomever she is, merits the attention of the vapid millions. But how could she outlast any other goofball amusement park? Lion Country Safari seemed like a good idea at the time. People could be amused by feeding sardines to seals, once upon a time. But when times get tough, all that crap fails. Well, most of it. And still people will hold true to the principles, no matter how small the amounts.
So if we have an earthquake in California (ya think?), people who let the water run in the shower for ten minutes just so it can get warm enough while they're running water in the sink to shave their faces, all in order to be presentable for meetings that accomplish one or two things after lunch, will scramble looking for a clean, clear pint to drink. Water is still water.
Land is still land and groceries are still groceries. Houses made of bricks will always be better than houses made of straw or sticks. Amusements will be abandoned, staples will not.
These days I'm thinking about the value of things I know and the absolute value of things I have.
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