A World Made by Hand
Having recently finished reading The Harrows of Spring, the fourth and final novel of Jim Kunstler’s World Made By Hand series, I couldn’t help but compare and contrast his dystopian post economic collapse America versus our current warped egocentric pre-economic collapse America. His world made by hand is forced upon Americans who have survived some sort of conflict resulting in the destruction of Washington D.C. and Los Angeles by nuclear blasts.
The Federal government has ceased to exist. The nation has splintered and varied factions are vying for power in autonomous regions of the country, but the small community of Union Grove, New York has been left to fend for itself. The four novels detail the trials and tribulations of average Americans in a small rural town after the implosion of modernity, as the world is stripped of its technological oil based comforts, devastated by terrorism, racked by epidemics, and having endured the ravages of economic collapse.
The world made by hand I observed in Wildwood, NJ was as far from Kunstler’s world made by hand as humanly possible. Rather than using their hands to produce, create, fix, hunt, plant, or fish, their hands are busy tapping on their iGadgets – tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming, texting, taking selfies, and videoing their experiences rather than experiencing them. The people ambling on the Wildwood boardwalk and shuffling across the land are addicted to these technological chains enslaving themselves in triviality, irrelevance, and egotism. The gadgets are attached to the hands of millennials and middle-aged alike.
They were gazing at their gadgets as they rode bikes, jogged, or gorged their pieholes with fried Oreos and funnel cake. Rather than relaxing and enjoying watching the tranquil sunrise over the Atlantic ocean as seagulls darted about over the deserted beach, the majority have their heads buried in their smartphones retweeting the latest Kanye and Kim scandal. No one reads a book on the beach anymore, as they are consumed by the trivial culture available on their iGadgets. Rather than experience the beauty of a fireworks display, they must record it and send it to all their friends to prove they are having fun. The American public has an almost unlimited craving for diversions. Reality and the truth are drowned in an ocean of irrelevance.
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