"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
news:1097292536.fTw3BkRJXwTtU0oh+FMEoA@teranews...
|
| If people are acquiring these kinds of homes because that is
| what those people consider "nice things", then who are any of
| us to denigrate that?

We shouldn't. But what if people are told that a huge, poorly designed
house is a "nice thing" by the nice man who wants to sell you one, and we
buy because that's all that's on the market, and we don't want to go to the
hassle of getting what we really want?

There are two kinds of people in the world in this respect: those who go
back to the counter at the fast-food place and demand that they put the
cheese on it like they asked for, and those who rationalize the cook's
mistake and say "I really didn't want the cheese anyway."

If we look around at people in our peer group and see that they all own
McMansions, might we get the impression that that's what we're "supposed" to
have, and that not having it is a form of deprivation?

Yes, anything done for the wrong reasons will fundamentally disappoint. But
our society seems inching ever more toward doing everything for the wrong
reasons. We don't buy exciting furniture because it's "weird" or "won't
stand up to wear." We buy unexciting houses because anything out of a very
narrow range of "normal" will have "poor resale value."

I guess my feeling here is that it seems that "nice things" are being
systematically defined by a culture looking more toward corporate
consumerism than any sort of appreciation of something according to its
merits. So people continue to buy and build McMansions because they're
repeatedly told by subtle and not-so-subtle means that it's a "nice thing",
and they live in them not ever knowing why they're not satisfied with them.

There's a guy who built a house in my parents' town -- an ugly castle,
complete with battlements and pinnacled towers. He obviously paid someone
an awful lot of money to get what he wanted. It's gawdawful, but it's what
he wanted. I wouldn't live in that thing for a million dollars, nor live
where I could see it. But the owner got what he wanted, and so he's happy.
The last thing I want to do is rain all over that guy's parade. We need
more people like him, if only to continue to buck the trend of
corporate-designed pablum.

--Jay