Are Americans lonely? / All quiet in the Western coast

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. Jack Kerouac

Are Americans lonely?

Americans must be rather lonely people. How could they be otherwise? Look how they spend their time alone in metal boxes, they even eat, drink, shave and put make-up in those boxes. It must make them very lonely unless they are antisocial hermits. Corporations have taken advantage of the lonely, hermit-prone character of Americans: in offices, the inhabitants of moving metal boxes are put in cubicles of about the same size as the metal boxes. Anyone, who commutes by foot, by bicycle, or even by train, suffers dearly in a cubicle. Thus, the office use of cubicles can only have been invented in USA and then exported to unsuspected countries. Free souls cannot be confined to cubicles, for even convicts have more living space!

All quiet in the Western coast

SF is a quiet place. Not many people are walking the streets at any time. Even the Chinatown was next to empty at 8pm on Friday evening. Where have all the people gone? Are all of them really hiding in their gated communities perched on the mountain sides scared as hell? Why do not they party, why do not they come out, embrace the night, get dazed and forget their 401(k) plans for a single hour. NYC is livelier than SF. In NYC one can feel the rhythm and pulse of the city, here one needs a stethoscope and I do not have one.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs January to February 2006".