In the culture wars, there are many participants who don’t even realize that they are foot soldiers in the battle between modernity and Rousseauian nostalgie de la boue, a.k.a. Noble Savagery.  For the average person, even going to the grocery store is a socio-political statement of sorts.  For many on the left side of the dial, it is an act of rejecting the more distasteful aspects of modern life, those things which offend the eco-sensitivities, which are often correlated with mysterious “allergies” and other problems that are supposedly the result of plastic wrap, artificial coloring, preservatives, MSG, gluten, nuts, dairy, animal products, mercury, and being toted too damn far.

You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it- I’ve even participated to some extent.  I do shop at Whole Foods, after all.  But I began to become squeamish about the whole organic-vegetarian-vegan-natural universe as epitomized by a place like Whole Foods when it went from a funky hippie joint on South Lamar to a corporate flagship where only well-heeled hipsters or people who think way too much about food and their next piercing (and not enough about their student loans) were shopping and trying gamely to work up an appetite for the pasty gray lasagna at the Raw Bar.  It seemed to me that a lot of the people who routinely and ignorantly decry “corporatism” were oblivious to the massively successful corporate enterprise that was charging them $5 for a half-pint of organic strawberries.

So there was a hypocrisy cum misplaced priorities aspect of all of this, coupled with the fact that all of the people at WF look like they could easily be beamed to France and neither they nor the French would notice.  I don’t think we need to explore hygiene stereotypes here- I’m just saying. Continue reading “Keeping It Real in Austin”