Greek Culture/Supermarket Pastoral

Patton Oswalt takes pride in who he is; he’s separate and unique engulfed inside his own sanctuary of knowledge. Knowledge only those dedicated enough understand. Oswalt’s world, while unique, connects him with an entire subculture of people who communicate with each other sharing information that only they can understand. We refer to these people as geeks and nerds; moreover, the Japanese refer to these people as “otaku”, describing their exclusive, esoteric lifestyles. Oswalt grew up in the 1980’s, the heyday for the nerd culture, dungeons and dragons and The Big Lebowski were supreme among their culture. Unfortunately for Oswalt, as society progresses the nerd world is becoming more open and easy to access. Individuals no longer need to dedicate themselves to a series in order to know and love it, the internet provides us with all the information we could ever need. Oswalt criticizes the world that we have created, a world where any bit of knowledge is accessed in less than a minute. A world like this does not need creativity, for modern artists and authors need only to research and remake past works and sell them to their own fan base. Oswalt not only dislikes the casual destruction of the nerd sanctuary but also critiques society’s laziness and lack of creativity; how can we progress when we create nothing new. Personally, I agree with Oswalt the sheer ease associated with appealing consumers and remaking title upon title signifies quite a slump in society. Furthermore, this has changed the meaning of geek from the reclusive subculture Oswalt knew to the common everyday smart, studying individual.

Continuing with the idea of the life and death of subcultures, Pollan describes the emerging culture of organic food producers and consumers. Together these people have developed a booming industry complete with its on literary language. This ‘Supermarket Pastoral’ allows the farmer to communicate with his consumer. Backstories and historical information now play roles in consumer purchases; believe it or not prices are not the only characters on the packaging. Pollan introduces the idea in order to bring forward the emerging subculture among organic whole foods shoppers. Also, Pollan questions whether or not the booming culture is necessarily good or bad. On one hand this emerging subculture injects new life into our society; however, it also opens the door to the industrialization of the organic market and allows for new lies in the market (with regards to back stories). While Pollan’s essay describes the emerging subculture from a consumer market, it does not interpret where it will go. For a while it may remain a separate unique part of society, but eventually organic foods will enter the mainstream industrial aspect of society and take its place right next to the dying 80’s subculture.