of wall decorations in america

deviating from grandma for a moment -- and looking at in incident that ocurred between grandma visits whilst living in madrid in 2000/2001 and the last visit after the half year French excursion... i found myself living in the small capital city of Virginia - Richmond... being my first time in America people i knew were interested to know what i thought of it all........ one observation i didn't mention, perhaps coz it happened later, occurred at a university house party in the Richmond fan area -- a downtown part of Richmond called 'the fan' where things are less rednecky and more cosmopolitan due to the druggie student populace...... while at the party -- i noticed how differently each tenant's room was decorated and it hit me, apart from the greater choices at the supermarket and just the general vibe being that Americans already had so much cable tv and freedoms for decades by that point, probably about 40 or 50 years in front of Australia in many respects........ it hit me, looking at how one girl's room was decorated, painted green with some posters and what not... it hit me in general how radically pro-individualist the Americans were.... i was impressed by it

BUT

it was only a few years later, for example spending just over a year in communist China, very much the opposite to America in terms of personal individuality-expression; the Chinese are perhaps more like ants in terms of their struggle for the collective good but they are not as pro-individual as are the Americans....

as i said, BUT

after spending just over a year in China -- and then spending half a year in NYC - at which time, i know not why i kept a wall decoration marking something about the state of Wisconsin... Wisconsin means and meant nothing to me and i don't know why i kept a wall decoration of Wisconsin at the time (in 2005) but it's curious now as Wisconsin is in the news a lot for union rights.. I digress....

after the return to NYC - some 4 years after the first visit to NYC shortly after the 9/11 attacks when the towers were still smoking....... it occurred to me: so there are a lot of consumer choices and individuality and freedoms, so what? what of it?

does it make the people freer?

you could easily argue that it doesn't..... freedom is a dicey thing..... when you're young, it looks like freedom is the ability to travel, find work anymore, have sex with whoever, get drunk, smoke pot and make money -- this is freedom.........

but responsibility is not often equated with freedom.... if we think of the indentured slaves in china that are not free in terms of poverty and being attached to long and difficult hours of work -- we cannot say they are more ignorant than university educated Americans....... after all - learning to read and write and speak Chinese is a discipline that precious few western university students master --- and all Chinese have this ability and it certainly lends them a great deal of intelligence........ make no mistake about it -- there is tremendous intelligence in china -- if only becoz of the language acquisition of the exquisite chinese language (written) --- people should not think that banging on some bongo drums and spilling beer all over yourself and having a $50,000 car equals freedom.........

one of Eminem's song lyrics is: 'no more games, i'm gonna rip this motherf*ckin' roof off'....

although Eminem was probably lost in his mind when coming with this -- it still serves as a metaphor for the entire collective will of humanity to cause serious damage to the environment via massive consumption of fossil fuels and raw resources to the extreme that they become unsustainable to produce........... a co-worker that loved yelling at me every day neverendingly once told me: 'you're gonna do damage!'.......... this is the truth of china and the rest of the world's great fuel burners: they are gonna do damage

so what difference does it make if you have great choices in america and eat shit food or if u live in china and wear the same uniform as ur co-workers and eat better food than a French gourmand (even if u r poor).......... are u free? free to do what? ur gonna do damage -- ur gonna rip the motherf*ckin' roof off (burn co2 causing climate collapses and flooding, etc, scarred/unsustainable resourse production)