Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

I watched Batman Begins again this weekend and one part stood out where Liam Nelson mentioned how Gotham's rise to prominence eventually lead to its own decadence.  Seeing the financial troubles of Wallstreet, one can only wonder what parallels between Batman Begins and the current situation on Wallstreet exist.

But I think that this notion of decadence is what is wrong with America and other first world nations.  Part of it was exposed in the late 90's with the dot com explosions and the massive expansion of numerous people's wealth.  But maybe one can argue that from 80's, the development of the whole drugs-sex-rock-n-roll culture that was glorified by MTV as well as the rise of television, cable TV and movies started this trickle of people worshiping TV images of hedonistic lifestyles rather than social progress.

From the 80's onward, the art of the US predominantly had become ultra-commercialized, completely corporate driven rather than evolving from the soul.  You can't even call what resulted from the 80's and onward as art because of this.  Perhaps the only art truly reflected from the 80's until now are historical images of the continual slide of America's decadence.

Why is it that people watch reality TV and allow aging prima donnas to stick around? Why do we fancy lifestyles that most of us cannot hold?  Why not live our own lifestyles and find meaning within that rather than cater our lives towards a meaningless rat race?

I believe that what needs to occur in America is a massive purging.  I have my own ideas of how to do this, but essentially, we need to remove the infestation of ultra-consumerism from dictating our lives.  Perhaps, most of the ultra-consumerism ideals are mostly on the coastal or big city regions.  But that's where we need to work the hardest in creating new idealisms for the country.