Item: recent study predicts world population will reach 9,000,000,000 in the near future. Nine billion people. Two billion more people than we already have crowded into world communities.
Item: Recent article by a New York Post on-line fashion critic decrying the way people dress nowadays.
These seemingly disparate subjects correlate.
As criticisms go, this fashion critique was fairly mild. Its readers’ comments were far less so.
The nerve of this woman! – they lambasted this critic – to suggest that people shouldn’t feel good about dressing down! She is, to their way of thinking, an elitist. A throw-back. Why, this is the modern world, they reminded her; and slobs can dress any way we like.
But if I can avoid a fool who looks, speaks and acts like a slob, I consider I have avoided the human equivalent of an auto wreck. Painful experience has taught me a slob will not enrich, elevate or ennoble anyone’s life here on this Earth. Which is why I essentially agree with the Post writer.
Oh, I know the old axiom; you can’t judge a book by its cover. Sometimes it’s true. Mostly it’s not.
“Casual Friday,” having broken down the traditional barriers to casual attire in non-casual situations, our “modern” culture is doing its victory laps in flip-flops. Hell, Post article commenters suggest, if they want to attend a Broadway show, or a concert or the opera or maybe even their Aunt Bessie’s funeral in baggy shorts, smudgy cotton tees and clackety flip-flops, well that’s their Constitutional right. One commenter went so far as to say how dare this critic try to drag us back into the 1950s, when people actually had dress codes and etiquette.
Before gold lamé capes and blubber began appearing in his concerts, Elvis wore a sport coat, white shirt and tie. The Beatles came to America wearing black suits, white shirts and ties. Okay, the pants were pegged. Then the mid-to-late ‘60s Woodstock generation came upon us like a tsunami of BO and DNA. John Lennon put on a pair of creepy Strangelove sunglasses, sought out the Maharishi to help him meditate on yellow submarines, bored the shit out of real Beatles fans by his and George’s infernal sitar buzzing, hung out with a skinny Marxist chick from another dimension, posed and gave interviews nude in bed, beat down the Beatles, and that was that. In the end, Ringo turns out to be the shining Starr.
Today, we are told comfort trumps etiquette. Another group of commenters, completely missing the critic’s point, asserted; we are paying the symphonic performers to perform, not to judge our attire. This, they announced, is the “modern world.” And that’s where these two items – over-population and etiquette – intersect.
The modern world? News flash: people in the 15th Century thought they lived in the modern world. DaVinci and Machiavelli didn’t wear flip-flops. Folks in the Victorian Era thought they were living in the modern world. Ever see pics of Florence Nightingale’s “casual” attire? In the 1920s and 30s your great grandmother thought she lived in the modern world. The only thing that flipped and flopped in her day was the stock market. If you are so dull-witted as to think the “modern world” is a fixed time and place... that the masses won’t be wearing, using and eating something even more disturbingly “modern” as soon as some lisping genius designs it... it’s no wonder you are okay with flip-flops being your go-to foot attire for every occasion. It’s not about comfort, it’s about courtesy and respect. If the orchestra is donned in tuxedo and gown, the least you can do is show up in a respectable shirt!
They tell us it’s all about comfort.
Comfort!? For some of you this is an excuse to side-step the reality that you are too damned fat! That’s right. Not pleasantly plump, chubby or zoftig.... fatty!
Comfort? A way of avoiding the probability that your mirror and scale are not lying. That you are ill mannered, devoid of class and clue. Schlumps.
Comfort? Today’s rationalization for laziness.
And, perhaps worst of all, comfort, along with biblical-length beards, poor communication skills and leeching on employed society to avoid having to work are your pathetic attempts at social defiance.
The Post writer went on to say she was able to find proper, good-looking attire fitting special occasions at discount stores, so, expense is hardly a viable excuse for tacky toggery.
The more humans crowd into cities and large towns, the lower falls our cultural common denominator. Not just for dress, but for everything. Poorly educated, lazy people gravitate to the lowest form of anything. Crafty fashion designers and retailers see what’s on the mean streets, create new lines of sartorial shame; and dumb, lazy losers make them richer on somebody else’s dime.
Defiance!? How else is it possible to explain why fools wear baseball caps the way they do? Visor on side. Visor in back. Goofy size visors. Goofy shaped visors. Visors up. Visors down. In defiance of tradition (not to mention common sense... like, um, keeping the sun out of your eyes?) Defiance has long been celebrated by the pop fashion industry through provocative ads, billboards and tv spots aimed at priming youth’s basic instincts. It works every time.
Beanie defiance. It wasn’t invented in your “modern world” either. The first time I can recall seeing a billed cap worn other than normally was back in the 1950’s when the Amos ‘N Andy tv show character Lightnin’ (Nick Odemus) – playing a poor, step-n-fetch-it, lovable homey, wore his hat that way in every episode. Lightnin’ was no defiant character. But it wasn’t long before wearing cap visors to the side or to the back became a symbol of black defiance. If you wear the visor to keep the sun out of your eyes, you are obviously a honky throw-back living in the ‘50s.
Tattoos and body piercing.
It’s not exactly the same reason lazy people can’t spell, can’t write an intelligent sentence, gobble slop with gigantic drinks, and love cheesy reality shows and flip-flops. But these reasons are all part of the intersection of over-population and etiquette.
So let’s analyze. What would you estimate the percentage of stupid, lazy people is in “the modern world?” 10%? 20%? 30%!? Okay, let’s compromise. Say 20%. How about people who are off-the-beam – you know – along the lines of today’s entertainers and politicians? Another 10%. How about liars, cheaters, weirdos, culprits, wrongdoers, malefactors, offenders, villains, lawbreakers, evildoers, delinquents, hoodlums, pervs, dopers, reprobates and flat-out criminals of one kind or another? Maybe 15% more? How about non-educable? 10%?
So roughly 55% of the world’s population is either stupid, lazy, crazy, liar, cheater, weirdo, culprit, wrongdoer, malefactor, offender, villain, lawbreaker, evildoer, delinquents, hoodlum, perv, reprobate and flat-out criminal of one kind or another. Let’s say 50% because some dopes fit in more than one category.
There are about 7,000,000,000 people in this world today. Ergo, 3,500,000,000 of them are either stupid, lazy, crazy, liar, cheater, weirdo, non-educable, culprit, wrongdoer, malefactor, offender, villain, lawbreaker, evildoer, delinquent, hoodlum, perv, reprobate and/or flat-out criminal of one kind or another.
Three billion, five-hundred million miscreants!
And you expect things to get better?
Look around you for God’s sake! Tatts. Piercing. Hair in all colors of the rainbow. Flip-flops, bejeweled as they may be. Horrible noise they try to pass off as “music.” Zombies in thrall to their hand-held devices. Many who hate their own country. They are your neighbors, members of your family, your friends, your elected officials, your bosses, your co-workers; they are everywhere. There is at least a 50% chance one of them is you. Now are you going to tell me the world will be any better with the additional two billion people they tell us we are soon to add?
It’s cut and dried. There are too many people on this planet. We have reached critical mass. It doesn’t work anymore. It’s becoming increasingly a ubiquitous grey Third World, spotted with a couple of trillionaires who got wealthy serving up the next garish fad for the defiant dead.
