“But this was panic on stilts and steroids. This was a prison riot. The noise from that isolated chamber down below few more insistent. A metal cup raked across the bars. Guards! And somewhere farther up, unseen clammy hands were industriously attaching a nylon strap and winch around the upper portion of Chad’s chest and ratcheting it tight”
Becoming Thus a Major Part of Mass Society
“Nowhere is the temptation toward exoticism more evident—or more lucrative—than in the burgeoning ‘alternative medicine’ industry . . . ‘alternative’ medicine is big money . . . The concept of alternative medicine is essentially a byproduct of the critique of mass society”
Nation of Rebels, p. 278
To Music We Can’t Hear
“Sunbeams streamed through the slats of the well-adjusted blinds, spotlighting tiny motes wrapping up a hard day of dancing”
You Can’t Escape the Disease When You Are the Carrier
“Because so much traveling is a quest for authenticity through difference, it quickly becomes yet another locus for competitive consumption . . . When it comes to exotic travel, hell is other Westerners . . . This competition for tourist spots—call it ‘competitive displacement’—has exactly the same structure as hip consumerism. This time, though, the prestigious property being sought is not the cool, but the exotic . . . As more visitors pile into the area, it becomes more ‘touristy,’ less exotic, which ruins it for the people who got there first . . . Thanks to their unceasing efforts at scouring the earth in search of ever more exotic locales, countercultural rebels have functioned for decades as the ‘shock troops’ of mass tourism”
Nation of Rebels, pp. 270-271
Which Why There is So Much Fake Authenticity
“As an injunction to be true to oneself, to place the cultivation of the self at the forefront of all concerns, authenticity has become the overriding moral imperative of modern life” ().
Nation of Rebels, p. 270
A Mistake That Has Been Made More Than Once
“Chad had been all aura then—charisma, smiles, and eyes that penetrated what you thought at first was your soul, but then just turned out to be your clothes”
Weird White Guy Behavior
“From Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha to Carlos Castenada’s The Teachings of Don Juan, the countercultural rebels desperately longed for a way to opt out of Western civilization . . . The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the I Ching became the twin bibles of the emerging movement. The result was an enormous projection of countercultural longing and fantasy onto the non-Western world.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 255
A Good Thing, Right?
“Since 1970, the average number of items for sale in North American supermarkets has increased from 8,000 to 30,000.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 245
The Chicken as Portrayed in Soviet High Heroic Art
“The new product [free-range chicken] quickly caught on. The name evokes images of the open prairie, with chickens roaming about on the horizon, the wind ruffling their feathers. It is an image that could make sense only to someone who has never actually seen or touched a live chicken . . . . The idea of ‘free range’ is simply a projection of our own desires onto our food. No matter what we do, chickens will never be the rugged individualists that we would like them to be.”
Nation of Rebels, pp. 234-235
No, No, It’s Actually Consumerism . . .
“The most plausible explanation for the fact that everyone’s eating Yukon Gold potatoes is that they are really good potatoes and people like them. If the overall result is homogeneity, how can we complain? After all, in order to avoid this outcome, someone would have to get stuck eating potatoes that they don’t like.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 232