So today, my karma righted itself so swiftly that I hydroplaned into a phone pole and dented the front right panel of my perfect, beautiful new car. First: both myself and the rest of my car are fine: it runs great and the tires are sturdy (my passenger seat is still a bit discolored because the coffee and tea I was transporting spilled all over anywhere and despite the Oxyclean treatments it's still kinda stained).
I think the thing I found most disturbing about the experience was my thought process while my car decided to not turn when the wheel did. Not: "Oh my god I'm gonna die!" or even "AAAAAAAHHHH!"
It was "FUCK MY LIFE MY CAR IS GONNA GET FUCKED UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" After I righted the car and got into the school parking lot, and I checked the damage and saw that the light was ok and there was only superficial stuff amiss, I still wanted to lay on the floor and burst into tears, not because I had a really close scare, but because my pristine, lovely new car was scarred.
Now, it's not like I'm the only person who would be upset about something messing up their new car. But it really fucking irks me that I'm still so bent out of shape about it (yeah, I made a terrible pun: deal with it)! Why can't I just be happy that the damage wasn't worse, or that I didn't hit a pedestrian? I'll admit, mostly I was stressed out that my father was going to go apeshit when he found out. Thankfully, no one has told him about it yet because he's leaving for vacation tomorrow, and only a fool would spoil Vacation Bob's good mood. But when he gets back and goes to clean the cars as per his weekend ritual, he's going to freak out.
But it's more than just my father's obsession with car appearances, I feel like it's a societal standard to go nuts if something happens to one of our gadgets. Yeah, an ipod or a Blackberry or a laptop are expensive pieces of equipment, and it sucks major if they start to dysfunction. But.... it's just a thing! Will it shorten my life because my phone is on the fritz? Does the giant scratch on the back of the ipod make it any less effective? NO! Why does it bother us so much? Is it that we're all obsessed with perfection? It can't be that, because if this happened to me in my old car, I wouldn't have given a shit because it was old and beat up to begin with. This preoccupation with "newness" translates across all sorts of barriers. Take for instance our apathy and general neglect of the elderly in this country, and our obsession with babies and young children. When old people die in a fire, we think "oh, that's a shame, but they lived a full life and were probably going to kick it soon anyway." When babies die in a fire, the media goes into a frenzy and there are candlelit vigils and memorial services. Really, both instances are tragic and unfair, but we care far less about the old folks than we do about the babies.
What is it about "newness" that drives our society so crazy? Have we all become so capitalist-minded that we can't be reasonable about the quality of our private possessions? Because I'd like to continue believing that Marx and Engles were wrong about human history being completely driven by economic motivations. If all we care about is getting the most bang for our buck, do we really have time left over to appreciate the fact that 95% of everything surrounding us is a luxury? I don't think so. The carpet under our feet, the stylish roofing tiles over our heads, the hamburgers on our plates, the cell phones in our pockets - none of them are necessary to sustain human life. Do they make societal living easier? They sure as shit do. But we put entirely too much emphasis on these things, and there really is no turning back from indoor toilets and the internet and text messaging.
I guess what I'm saying is: Madonna was right: we are living in a material world. And we're all material boys and girls, even though it pains me philosophically to admit it. I wish there was a way to set myself outside of the cycle, but unless I want to become a nomadic hunter gatherer in a nature preserve somewhere, I don't really have a choice.
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