Sad, I guess. I'm ambivalent towards the demise of malls. As an economic indicator, we'll be seeing Many, MANY more of these malls dying, very, very soon. I'm sad for the loss of jobs for the lower and middle class employees in the dead mall's surrounding areas that cripple their earning power and dead-shell remnants that blight their immediate environment. I'm sad for the waste of good resources that could have been useful somewhere else. I'm sorry for the sense of failure that hangs over a community when a local mall dies, a feeling of We didn't do enough or We should have shopped harder, or some other ridiculous notion felt by communities when their Center of Materialism fails.
What I don't feel bad about, what I won't miss, is the inevitable end of this Consume At Any Cost mentality that is eating away at our society like some runaway cancer. I won't miss this nationwide obsession for MORE (whatever MORE is) to the detriment of one's own immediate and long term financial security. I welcome an end to the fatal fallacy that buying more shit will plug the enormous, growing hole in one's heart caused by the baseline fallacy of materialism replacing love. I welcome an end to the smug, corporate arrogance of "If you build it; they will come," no matter how mediocre the concept, no matter how shoddy the construction, no matter how hollow the value.
The death of this smirking, greedy, orientation is actually the most welcome aspect of this, our increasingly dire nationwide situation. The money people, the corporatists, the planning and zoning committees, everyone involved from conceptualization to implementation, will now have to Think Harder about every project they undertake, rather than figuratively throwing shit against a wall to see what sticks. The eternal optimist in me hopes that malls of the future will be more Mixed Use, incorporating the needs of the community more directly into each project (Example: On site libraries and government/public facilities, housing within or nearby, integrated transportation hubs). Maybe some real thought will be put into each project, designing for the needs of the community 50 to 100 years into the future. Maybe some inroads can be made into countering this corrosive Bigger, Faster, Better, More! collective brainwash that chokes our common sense like some rampaging Anaconda snuffing the desire to "save," only allowing the concepts of "want," and "new" to survive.
As the situation is still not critical, a collective adjustment won't happen soon. But I feel that, despite the happy talkers on CNBC, the bottom is not in sight, and quite possibly, that we are on the far, outer ring, and the real downward spiral has not even begun. The future is unseen, more than a tad terrifying, but hopeful, nonetheless, as humanity has the capacity for optimistic, innovative reactions for even the worst of circumstances. That is my hope, as we enter this Zone of Unknown that is our upcoming Future..
Posts
1 hour ago
