Amy Stewart Is Bored
(and it's our fault)
Amy Stewart is bored of people talking about eating local. She said so on NPR. She is tired of the tedium of discussing where we got this vegetable or that one. Worse than that, she thinks that we're all getting too precious and full of ourselves for making this insignificant contribution to global change. She thinks we are all (all of us who are excited about eating locally) ridiculously pleased with ourselves and self righteous and that this obsessing over food and where it came from is really annoying her.This is a person who has been at least a little bit involved in spreading the locavore message in the past. At some point in time Amy thought eating local was interesting and important enough to talk about where our food is coming from. But now that it's become popular she's over it, like one of those people who can't bear to like anything once it becomes popular no matter how much it previously pleased her.
People who only think it's cool to like something when no one else does? I think it's very tedious. It makes me question their authenticity as a person. How can you love something and then not love it anymore just because other people began to share your appreciation? If you're whole enjoyment of something depends on it's place on the cultural popularity chart, then what you really care about is being perceived as different, as being ahead of the herd, and it doesn't really matter what you like or don't like, what really matters to you is to be separate. But why? If you're truly unique, if you are truly an individual who is separate from the herd, everyone will know it regardless of whether or not you like Britney Spears or are still wearing pale lipstick.
What's really sick about getting bored of talking about important issues is that it implies that these issues are just fads and that the people who have brought these issues to our attention were only bringing them up to stir things up for a while. What would you think of Al Gore if he announced "I'm bored of Global Warming. Can we stop talking about it at the dinner table? Now that everyone is talking about it it's become tedious. Shut up and take the trash out already!" If he suddenly got bored of such an important issue just because the media is FINALLY putting it on the daily radar, wouldn't you want to take back that Nobel Peace prize he was awarded for his environmental work?
Amy Stewart is a first class ass.
I am participating in an eat local challenge for a whole lot of reasons and none of them are so that I can congratulate myself on being better than anyone else. Making world change isn't some self important fad that you can either participate in or not. It isn't an elitist club, either, that only the cool people can join. Everyone is going to have to change their lives sooner or later and the sooner we all do it the easier the future will be for us.
For real change to happen, eating local, transportation issues, recycling, and all the other aspects of our lives that need examining will have to go hugely mainstream. So if you are only participating in change to be ahead of everyone, to be able to say "I've been there, done that", if global issues going mainstream means you're going to be bored of them once everyone else is finally interested? Then you are as big an ass as Amy Stewart is.
Incidentally, she brings up the question of how eating and buying local will affect all the indigenous people we're currently supporting through fair trade in places like Kenya. What will happen to them? So now we're supposed to feel guilty for supporting our own local indigenous people? It's almost as though people just want to make this as hard as they can for us. Americans should start being responsible for their own dirt, their own people, their own crashing economy, their own dangerous fundamentalists, and if we are ever going to undo the world wide damage we've done then we will have to return to the place where our problems began: right here in our own back yard.
I am not concerned about supporting poor farmers in Kenya. I'm concerned about supporting poor farmers in the United States. I am not concerned about holding other countries up out of the mud because mine is in the excruciatingly slow process of imploding on itself. So if anyone can argue that the United States is responsible for other countries state of welfare, then it can be equally argued that unless we turn ourselves inward and improve our own welfare, then we will be in no condition to help anyone else.
Perhaps my viewpoint isn't fair. I don't experience boredom with good ideas, with good food, good people, or at all. I've loved David Bowie since I was thirteen years old and I still love him even though millions of other people also love him. It pleases me that so many people can see that Bowie is such an amazing musician. I love food and it's one of my favorite topics, as well as gardening, politics, religion, parenting, and art. Boredom is for teens. Boredom is to impress others with your cool ennui.
My interest in life is such that I don't understand boredom and the strength of my interests does not rely on those interests being off the mainstream radar. The more people who get interested in the things I'm interested in, the more people I can enjoy talking to about those same things.
I checked out Amy Stewart's blog called "Garden Rant" a year ago and at first I was really excited to find a place where the main topic was gardening. I stopped reading fairly quickly because Amy Stewart seemed pretty arrogant to me at the time and trying to take part in discussions there felt like trying to gain admittance to an elite club of gardeners. Nothing can make a person feel smaller faster than not belonging with the elite. I have been happy not reading that blog since then.
I hope Michael Pollan never gets bored. I hope he keeps bringing to his writing the geeky excitement of a kid doing garden and food experiments who may explode his parents stove at any moment. His writing is engaging because he himself is so engaged in the things he's exploring and I love that. He brings humor to serious subjects and can write a twelve page piece about growing poppies that makes you wonder how an hour just pissed by in a flash. I hope that Pollan isn't arrogant in person. I hope he isn't an ass, because he's one of my favorite writers of all time. I hope he isn't getting bored of food and global issues.
For real change to happen, eating local, transportation issues, recycling, and all the other aspects of our lives that need examining will have to go hugely mainstream. So if you are only participating in change to be ahead of everyone, to be able to say "I've been there, done that", if global issues going mainstream means you're going to be bored of them once everyone else is finally interested? Then you are as big an ass as Amy Stewart is.
Incidentally, she brings up the question of how eating and buying local will affect all the indigenous people we're currently supporting through fair trade in places like Kenya. What will happen to them? So now we're supposed to feel guilty for supporting our own local indigenous people? It's almost as though people just want to make this as hard as they can for us. Americans should start being responsible for their own dirt, their own people, their own crashing economy, their own dangerous fundamentalists, and if we are ever going to undo the world wide damage we've done then we will have to return to the place where our problems began: right here in our own back yard.
I am not concerned about supporting poor farmers in Kenya. I'm concerned about supporting poor farmers in the United States. I am not concerned about holding other countries up out of the mud because mine is in the excruciatingly slow process of imploding on itself. So if anyone can argue that the United States is responsible for other countries state of welfare, then it can be equally argued that unless we turn ourselves inward and improve our own welfare, then we will be in no condition to help anyone else.
Perhaps my viewpoint isn't fair. I don't experience boredom with good ideas, with good food, good people, or at all. I've loved David Bowie since I was thirteen years old and I still love him even though millions of other people also love him. It pleases me that so many people can see that Bowie is such an amazing musician. I love food and it's one of my favorite topics, as well as gardening, politics, religion, parenting, and art. Boredom is for teens. Boredom is to impress others with your cool ennui.
My interest in life is such that I don't understand boredom and the strength of my interests does not rely on those interests being off the mainstream radar. The more people who get interested in the things I'm interested in, the more people I can enjoy talking to about those same things.
I checked out Amy Stewart's blog called "Garden Rant" a year ago and at first I was really excited to find a place where the main topic was gardening. I stopped reading fairly quickly because Amy Stewart seemed pretty arrogant to me at the time and trying to take part in discussions there felt like trying to gain admittance to an elite club of gardeners. Nothing can make a person feel smaller faster than not belonging with the elite. I have been happy not reading that blog since then.
I hope Michael Pollan never gets bored. I hope he keeps bringing to his writing the geeky excitement of a kid doing garden and food experiments who may explode his parents stove at any moment. His writing is engaging because he himself is so engaged in the things he's exploring and I love that. He brings humor to serious subjects and can write a twelve page piece about growing poppies that makes you wonder how an hour just pissed by in a flash. I hope that Pollan isn't arrogant in person. I hope he isn't an ass, because he's one of my favorite writers of all time. I hope he isn't getting bored of food and global issues.
