RE: Towards Mediocrity: Do Not Tell Me What "The Average Person" Needs!
So many things I agree with here @denmarkguy
The generalisations to not offend are the most hilarious. And yet people are now trained up to be 'prepared to offend' but in a way making a population that is always on the verge of offense and being little 'word police' is not only scary but it always turns back on them. The 'self righteous' who feel they are on the 'side of the good' eventually fall into a group of offenders. As the old adage says, "Live by the sword die by the sword" so just insert P.C. in there and it's fairly true.
The mass produced blandness of planned obsolescence is so odd it's laughable. And now that we've so much garbage it will be considered the 'everyman's' problem, but not the huge corp that was pumping it out. I'm sure we'll all see the 'solution' in some new tax that would ironically be more expensive than our having had to buy LESS things of GOOD value that we can FIX but such sublte irony is often lost on the masses of today.
I did a project where I lived like it was 1955 for a year and replaced many kitchen things with authentic old pieces from 55 or earlier. I still have those things. I even bought an old 1951 refrigerator that was running in someones basement and it is STILL going strong and since I've had it I've had to replace a brand new one twice!
Our coffee maker is the old perculator I bought at a tag sale for pennies, works wonderful, my blender is also an old 50's one bought off ebay and it purss like a porsche. I have a 'new one' from 'wallyworld' I used in my studio for chopping and shredding paper for art projects it was loud and lasted about a month.
We live in odd times.
We live in very odd times, indeed.
And the whole planned obsolescence thing has so many strange turns and twists I barely can follow anymore, and the throwaway society values has some very interesting ramifications:
Case in point: When you're in the store business here in Washington state, we get all this cheap junk that's now in that impossible-to-get-into plastic clamshell packaging to prevent tampering. A whole new kind of garbage. Lo and behold, the state now also has a specific "litter tax" you must pay if your retail establishment sells products in clamshell packaging, shrink wrap or clear plastic sleeves (like greeting cards). Feels like they are "getting me," both coming and going...
Very interesting experiment you conducted there... I feel how that works, because I used to go visit my elderly auntie who had everything "original" to the house... built in 1939. And that stuff was SOLID and it WORKED!