The defining characteristic of the American mind is the insanely high tolerance for hypocrisy that our culture breeds into us since birth. The suburbs are a physical manifestation of the walls we build within ourselves to keep ourselves from going insane from holding too many contradictory beliefs at the same time.
A fascinating and excellent read. Something that lingered in my mind as I read this was the history of cities and the role of true rural communities. Didn't the industrial revolution promote the expansion of cities (partly) as a way to exploit the worker? The negative impacts of cities (particularly on the psyche) and the industrial revolution is an important research topic to me so I would be interested in understanding what potential psychological value the suburbs (and rural communities) hold. Obviously a major sacrifice made is a diverse community, but I would argue that living in a city doesn't necessarily mean you participate in a more diverse community than if you lived in a suburb. It all depends on the area and the participant themselves. Part of the appeal of suburbs was/is that "there's more room to breathe/it's a better place to raise children/sense of refuge away from work" etc. which of course all contributes to division and many things mentioned in your essay, but two things can be true. I suppose it all goes back to our desire to escape from exploitation and gain independence which is impossible regardless where you turn. There is always a sacrifice, and there is always government/a company to take your life from you wherever you are. Even if I go "off the grid" I lose community (a cult does not count of course) and Google Earth will still find me. I suppose I am rambling, and I suppose I should just be asking "What do I want my prison to look like?"
i think thats a good point. i think the bigger issue rather than city vs suburb is the constant and forced change. there's really good analyses of how capitalism always finds places where the rate of capital return is highest (see: The New Urban Frontier by Neil Smith, for example), so throwing people into cities when the populace is more rural, then throwing people into the suburbs once the cities become less profitable and also breeding grounds for communism. you're right there's nothing inherently better about cities than rural areas (though I'd argue there's bigger benefits to humanity in cities than suburbs), but it's more about the constant flow of people based on the needs of capital vs the needs of people
I can't stop thinking about the "What do I want my prison to look like?" question - feels like this is what our age of apocalypse is constantly harkening back to!
Really fascinating read (especially about the history of suburbs which I didn’t know about before) and a lot I agree with here.
However I have to push back on a few things:
- women were not oppressed and forced to be in the home for millennia. Before the Industrial Age, women and men both worked from home and for the home. Women’s work was typically work that could be done while looking after small children (eg textiles).
The industrial era moved work out of the home to environments that were often dangerous and entirely unsuited to having small children with you. Thus I guess giving birth to the housewife. Your history of the suburbs I guess would naturally follow on from here.
- the second issue I push back on is the demonisation of the housewife and trad wife more generally. Women who choose to stay home and look after their children aren’t brainwashed or oppressed, they are responding to the biological realities of motherhood and the needs of small children to be with their parents in the early years. I actually think the demonisation of women who want to stay home with their children feeds into a capitalist structure that wants to to send mothers back to work as soon as possible and outsource the care of our children to strangers. For myself personally (and a lot of my friends), going back to work after a few months was not something I wanted to do but something I had to do for financial reasons. We all felt like we were forced to go back sooner than we were ready, and we are lucky to live in Australia where the government pays us to stay home with our babies for 6 months.
What is highly problematic about JD Vance’s policy isn’t that he wants to pay women to stay home but that he is taking money away from single mothers to pay married ones, when single mothers are the ones needing the most support.
i think it’s interesting how these trad wife bonuses essentially admit there is an economic component that comes from the domestic labor of a stay at home parent. but it ends up being a gross perversion of wages for housework.
The defining characteristic of the American mind is the insanely high tolerance for hypocrisy that our culture breeds into us since birth. The suburbs are a physical manifestation of the walls we build within ourselves to keep ourselves from going insane from holding too many contradictory beliefs at the same time.
A fascinating and excellent read. Something that lingered in my mind as I read this was the history of cities and the role of true rural communities. Didn't the industrial revolution promote the expansion of cities (partly) as a way to exploit the worker? The negative impacts of cities (particularly on the psyche) and the industrial revolution is an important research topic to me so I would be interested in understanding what potential psychological value the suburbs (and rural communities) hold. Obviously a major sacrifice made is a diverse community, but I would argue that living in a city doesn't necessarily mean you participate in a more diverse community than if you lived in a suburb. It all depends on the area and the participant themselves. Part of the appeal of suburbs was/is that "there's more room to breathe/it's a better place to raise children/sense of refuge away from work" etc. which of course all contributes to division and many things mentioned in your essay, but two things can be true. I suppose it all goes back to our desire to escape from exploitation and gain independence which is impossible regardless where you turn. There is always a sacrifice, and there is always government/a company to take your life from you wherever you are. Even if I go "off the grid" I lose community (a cult does not count of course) and Google Earth will still find me. I suppose I am rambling, and I suppose I should just be asking "What do I want my prison to look like?"
i think thats a good point. i think the bigger issue rather than city vs suburb is the constant and forced change. there's really good analyses of how capitalism always finds places where the rate of capital return is highest (see: The New Urban Frontier by Neil Smith, for example), so throwing people into cities when the populace is more rural, then throwing people into the suburbs once the cities become less profitable and also breeding grounds for communism. you're right there's nothing inherently better about cities than rural areas (though I'd argue there's bigger benefits to humanity in cities than suburbs), but it's more about the constant flow of people based on the needs of capital vs the needs of people
I can't stop thinking about the "What do I want my prison to look like?" question - feels like this is what our age of apocalypse is constantly harkening back to!
Really fascinating read (especially about the history of suburbs which I didn’t know about before) and a lot I agree with here.
However I have to push back on a few things:
- women were not oppressed and forced to be in the home for millennia. Before the Industrial Age, women and men both worked from home and for the home. Women’s work was typically work that could be done while looking after small children (eg textiles).
The industrial era moved work out of the home to environments that were often dangerous and entirely unsuited to having small children with you. Thus I guess giving birth to the housewife. Your history of the suburbs I guess would naturally follow on from here.
- the second issue I push back on is the demonisation of the housewife and trad wife more generally. Women who choose to stay home and look after their children aren’t brainwashed or oppressed, they are responding to the biological realities of motherhood and the needs of small children to be with their parents in the early years. I actually think the demonisation of women who want to stay home with their children feeds into a capitalist structure that wants to to send mothers back to work as soon as possible and outsource the care of our children to strangers. For myself personally (and a lot of my friends), going back to work after a few months was not something I wanted to do but something I had to do for financial reasons. We all felt like we were forced to go back sooner than we were ready, and we are lucky to live in Australia where the government pays us to stay home with our babies for 6 months.
What is highly problematic about JD Vance’s policy isn’t that he wants to pay women to stay home but that he is taking money away from single mothers to pay married ones, when single mothers are the ones needing the most support.
i think it’s interesting how these trad wife bonuses essentially admit there is an economic component that comes from the domestic labor of a stay at home parent. but it ends up being a gross perversion of wages for housework.