Newspaper Article

Home Is in the Hills, Not the Mall

By Bill McKibben. Bill McKibben is author of "The Age of Missing Information." He lies in the Adirondacks. This article is in the summer issue of Hungry Mind Review

1993

Overview

These two ideas about the world have practical implications, of course. With attachment comes care, slowness, ecological concern, a cyclical sense of time - all the graces of the small farmer, fixed fast in the writings of Wendell Berry, though such concern does not demand a rural setting. You can see it, too, in the corners of cities that remain neighborhoods, that have yet to be Benettonized and Gapped. By contrast, the semidetachment of suburbia, with its lethally limited chances for natural or human contact, breeds an unchallengeable me-firstism, a search for stimulus, newness, possession: the culture of the mall. It makes no sense to pretend that the joys of the mall and the cul-de-sac are imaginary. They are as real as the sugar in a Coke, and as utterly predictable - that is their attraction, or was for me. The set of endlessly repeatable gestures of a consumer society (eating in restaurants, driving in cars, buying in stores) involves no psychic risk, for their freight of emotion and mood can be inventoried in advance - watching Letterman or Koppel each night yields the same EKG of mild, stale interest or pleasure. Engagement is not demanded - is not possible.

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