America in Decline? - Answers Part V

Declining wages and an addiction to beauty.

It might seem disingenuous to put those two things together, but it isn't. The theory, as the media define it, is that as a culture declines, there is a concurrent rise in fascination and preoccupation with beauty and entertainment - a kind of sap to the ego, if you will.

The media's foremost example of this is actually quite ahistorical, but still widely believed - the Christian explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire. But, we don't even have to get into the theories behind the fall of empires in order to break this argument, because America is NOT currently addicted to beauty.

Do we even need to go beyond beauty contests?

Beauty contests, which only a few decades ago America was inundated with, can't even buy an audience today. The most famous of them all, the Miss America Pageant, is no longer even on network TV, and was only barely saved from oblivion.

But, what about the plastic surgery shows that the media cite so often and with such vigor. I don't know what fascination these shows have with the media, but for people they are actually part of the currently widespread culture of self-improvement. Though cult might be a better word.

Psychological remodeling. Attitude remodeling. House remodeling. Fashion remodeling. Health remodeling. Physical remodeling. Wealth remodeling.

Remodeling. That is the real addiction. Even the shows about models, which you'd think would only be about beauty, are watched by an audience primarily of women, and most of those shows have a hard time surviving without involving a more-than-healthy dose of game-show competition and soap-opera intrigue.

Movies these days have to have character arcs, but, like a lot of terms these days, the term no longer has anything to do with character or arcs, but now means a 'journey of self-improvement.' Some people these days say that written art without a character arc isn't a story at all, but is instead an essay. That is how dominant the culture of self-improvement has become.

It isn't about beauty. It is about being the perfect being, in all aspects. Of course, this is one single idea of what a perfect being is that has been defined by a small subset of the world population, which has certain other connotations to it, but that is another essay.

Many in the media say that the abundant use of sex on television, billboards, magazines, and movies is another aspect of the growing addiction to beauty. But this is a use of sex that is foisted on America by the media. That media culture might one day permeate the culture of the common America, but it has not yet done so. While people are more open to talking about sex than they have been, they are less prone to doing it than they were even a few decades ago, and they are still much less open to talking about it than people are in Europe.

So, as wages (and therefore personal power) falls, America is supposed to become more and more addicted to beauty. It hasn't, so the arguement need go no further. But I will discuss wages anyway.

Wages have gone down. That is an undeniable, recorded fact. The thing is, Alan Greenspan stated that he believed American wages were too high. So too did Reagan and Bush Jr. and Rubin and Clinton (sorta) and Gingrich and Cheney and.... Well, you get the picture.

All of these people in charge of the Treasury and the government, as well as a good chunk of the Senators and Representatives in the House, all believed that American wages were too high, that it was making America uncompetitive, and they stated that they wanted to change that.

And they did.

Which I point out because, if the powers that be systematically reduce the wages of a nation, that is a CHOICE. And the fact that it was a CHOICE, means it has nothing to do with decline.

And so, the whole statement is false from start to finish. Wages aren't lower because of decline, but because of choice. And there is no addiction to beauty caused by the decline in wages and power. There is no addiction to beauty at all. Just an addiction to business and self-improvement.