Best. Book. Ever.

Ok, so maybe it was not THE best book ever. But it was certainly a damn good book and anyone who's in the know will know why I chose the title of the post to be what it is. The book, BTW, is called Planet Simpson, by Chris Turner, a fellow Gen-Xer whom I will describe as a fellow pretentious philosopher. Yes, the book is that good.

So let's get down to business and blog away. I mentioned that my peer was a Gen-Xer because that's the post today. This book (which I think is about our generation primarily and the Simpsons secondarily) speaks a lot about what it means to be Generation X. It sort of brought together a lot of ideas that I've been having about what it means to live in the time we live in and who we are. Who I am, given that I live in this time.

One thing that really spoke to me was our extreme individualism (see 1776 for my previous ranting on the subject). We think we are all so cool and new and not owing anything to wherever it is that we are descended from, as Chris says so adeptly in his book "[there is] an implicit argument that not only do we as citizens owe nothing to the institutions that gave us our comfortable and prosperous lives, but that we as individuals owe no debt to the people that gave us life." Yet Chris himself gives the perfect example of this in his book. He tells a story about a concert that he went to when he was reintroduced to rock'n'roll. It was dead to him, it had all been done before, and then, this concert came along and restored his faith in that particular institution. The part that really got to me though, was that the song the person happened to be singing (which was the person's own epiphany about creating something new when it's all been done before) was that the main lyrics were basically saying thanks for nothing. Chris, do you even realise the irony?

Chris gives many other examples of this extreme individualism in his book. The symptoms of this are people who don't give a shit for anything or anyone else because they are too busy caring about themselves. Are we really becoming that much of a self-centered society? The "I" began its existence in 1776 but we have reached the pinnacle where the only thing that exists is the I. Forget "I wandered lonely as a cloud." Who the fuck cares about the cloud? I'm lonely and the world owes it to me that I not be lonely.

We often forget that we were never promised a rose garden and that it was only the pursuit of happiness that was proposed. We may as well be chasing clouds for all the good it has done. So how does my generation deal with all of this? We watch The Simpsons and laugh our asses off. Why is it so funny? Because it shows us our folly right in our faces. It shows us the way the world is, and not the way the world should be. If only it could show us how to reconcile the two, it could win the Nobel prize.

Recommended Reading: Planet Simpson by Chris Turner
Recommended Viewing: For something else that strikes you right in the face, no-holds-barred, try watching Dead Like Me. It also proves that I am not the only freak out there obsessed with death.

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