So I just returned from the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts where I attended James Kunstler’s lecture about paranoia of our crashing economy and the general disregard. It lasted a little longer than I thought it would. They had a wine and cheese pairing before the lecture which was damn good, even though I didnt pair the cheese with anything but a cracker because you wont catch me paying $6.50 for a 1/2 filled 6oz. dixie cup of chardonnay! And for the record, the apple brie was especially delicious. We happened to run into a couple Auburn peeps during the meet and greet, and Travis even surprisingly showed up. So after perusing thru the galleries we mosey’d into the lecture hall.
[2 hours later]… The lecture wasn’t bad. A little here and there, and probably too exaggerate to really allow reality to sink in to the minds of the commonpeople… especially here in the slow South. He really embraced ideologies of the pre-industrial age a little too much. But when you sifted through all the jargon about reverting back to revolutionary barbarism of fighting for individual property and homeschooling simply because the age of consumerism is dead, you can actually begin to see truth to his point. His talk was about how the complex system of economy, our natural resources, and our increasing dependence on depleting oil reserves would sooner than later bring about a cruel reality of lifestyle changes (a sort of 2 hour epilogue of his book, the long emergency). He was a futurist that looked to the past to support his argument along with a little data also. Nothing too profound, but spoke about it in a pseudo-enlightening way.
His rhetoric was a little demeaning and reprehensible of American culture (which also didnt go over so well with the lifestyle of the south– which, by the way, he voiced sort of evidence/stereotype-based generalizations about — to which i found Pretty damn funny, but too guilty to laugh). He even managed to dog on people who wore their hats to the side, accusing them that they need to care about self image and somehow managed to tie that into being ignorant. You can begin to see how some of his superficial personal judgements probably hurt his case, so all that also probably desensitized some people to the message he was trying to send.
Overall, I thought it was good but not incredibly inspiring. It was almost like leaving a sci-fi movie like the day after tomorrow where the apocolyspe is near. Kinda like you feel that all of what we live among will eventually and quickly turn into a flaming sack of spiraling shit and then self implode… you actually begin to believe it all and then the movie is over… then, you walk outside to a beautiful evening where the stars are shining on starbucks and a walmart so lovingly… its a sick irony.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” -Marcus Aurelius
