PUBLIC UPROAR
a journal for eclectic policy

Any comments or questions about the articles in this issue or past issues, feel free to E-mail me at dcr420dcr@hotmail.com. Thank you. - Darin Robbins, sole contributing author

URBAN TRIBALISM AND YOUTH 

One thing that is universal is that youth culture is oriented toward the urban landscape. This occurs in both the city and country, and is not recent in terms of sociological phenomenon. The forms have changed perhaps, but not the sense of what youth represents aligning with what the city has represented. Some of this includes going outside anytime, emancipation in regards to the need to leave, total freedom of speech and print and art within this movement, and the self-determination of travel itself. Individuality is not the only aspect because young people are social animals to varying degrees. Their social nature is more fluid than adult society, and is best described as tribal. Considering the changes in life that occur from age 4 to age 25, the nomadic principle within the tribal model is very fitting. Therefore, an outsider’s view of youth culture as “lawless” with decreasing or increasing degrees of severity is blind to the internal makeshift laws of temporary social bonds. There is the choosing of food, clothes, friends, and other markers of distinction freely, but the use and meaning of these markers are by agreement. There is an unspoken recognition for space to be alone and to experience solitude, while at times having the resource of living in an artificial extended family with voluntary cooperation with any of the group at the moment. Other concrete resources are created with a group value by collecting, recycling, and reusing along with bartering and trading with other kids. The adult world provides the physical matter that is made important by young people as a flexible currency in set-up gatherings and groups that are designed as spaces for the act of being at home in a sense of control. Younger children make their own uses for their own pre-packaged toys, and older kids continue with that sensibility in terms of social bonds. This process currently can be exemplified by the nostalgic and aesthetic appreciation of analog, or pre-digital, technology. There is experimentation and exploration within natural & logical consequences that are specific to the environments and the act of growing. The freedom of the urban landscape is accessible to this because it allows for young people to navigate through the terrain and create new topologies that were not intended by any original plan. They create new maps that are as real as the original terrain, and are the consensual territory for the social reality. Social mores and regulations are also subject to reevaluation within the youth culture itself. The appreciation of the visceral is brought out in the open where there is free coughing, sneezing, farting, and the overall discussion of bodily functions and fluids. Any class structure is a holdover from the society of the parents, so class-inspired etiquette is not created to handle these subjects. Aggression is considered a constant, and so using creative aggression is a craft that is honed in various degrees of success but is never an explicit subject. Lack of connection is the generalized source of this aggression, which makes the formation of tribal alliances and groups a coping mechanism in some instances. The nomadic principle that can be part of youth and urban tribalism is not only about location but also about biological state. Adolescence is the state of flux that is always being reflected in the regrouping procedures within the youth social organization. It must be noted that location and biology are initially beyond the child’s control, and inspires the social reintroduction of control from the first cases of disconnection and alienation. The apparent risks that young people take in these new social attempts at control is an apprenticing to learn the ways of adulthood, but the methods emphasize free-form structures and a sense that there is a gap between them and adult society. At times youth culture feels that it is in a state of siege, and must be flexible in order not to stagnate. This open-ended attitude allows receptivity to new viewpoints, which are assimilated into the youth culture and will be reinvested when they become adults. This, however, also promotes the generation gap and continued dismissal of youth viewpoints in overall society. Therefore, this upholds the feeling of disconnection and the stereotype of “lawlessness”. Just as there is a supposed distinction between civilized society and tribal society, there is the same imagined difference between adult and youth culture. This friction continues feelings of alienation and further compels young people to create their own social bonds and structures. The imperative in youth culture is not only to take over the means of production, in terms of social values, but from there to take over the means of perception within the communal act created by their own hands. The best way to visualize the logic of youth culture is as a marking of territory within a space of freedom, using the ideals of urban living and the tribal dynamic as a starting point. The act of being young is to negotiate through this landscape.

THUS DID SUBURBIA FALL
reverse-engineering for our standard of living

It is important to remember the myth of the 1950s. In that myth, there was the belief in non-stop prosperity coupled with an almost holy respect for the “American Way”, which must be kept vigilantly against the dark forces of the “Communist Menace”. This psychodrama of conformity and positive thinking was played out in the suburbs, which went through a birth and actual growth of amazing proportions in this time. To place this time period in perspective, all eras in American history are mythologized in one way or another. The 1950s are exceptional in this respect because the myth was being formed as the decade was transpiring. The images of American life that was presented to people from popular culture supplied the raw material, and in the case of the movies of the 1950s was a recreation of the American dream that was envisioned by many movie producers when they first immigrated to this country beforehand. However, the specific subculture of suburban life was a very fertile ground for these images to grow. The phenomenon of suburbs and its mode of living had left a tremendous imprint on any cultural act in the later part of the twentieth century. Therefore, it is important to see how suburbs arose and were possible in the first place. The suburbs as a sign of prosperity arose as the nation began to turn to a peacetime economy. This process was subverted by the Cold War, where part of our general industries were devoted to competition with the Soviet Union. This competition at first allowed production levels to stay high, allowing for increased employment for veterans of WWII. The supplements to this were the G. I. Bill and Federal Housing Act, which not only gave college scholarships to former soldiers but housing loans as well. However, especially in regards to the housing loans, officials practiced racist preference. This practice of redlining by housing authorities and banks resulted in only white families having the necessary funds to move out of the city into the new housing developments in outlying areas. The suburbs had the purpose of reducing city noise, traffic congestion, overpopulation, and return residents to the countryside. However, this return was in fact an artificial creation of nature, a trend that was in vogue since at least Paris in the 1800s. In fact, suburbanites were surrounded by the world of consumer products, which emphasized comfort and efficiency. Nature was in reality too wild to live in comfortably, so nature was limited to lawns and occasional parks. The act of social conformity, and the desire to return to normality after the Great Depression and World War II, created an oppressive social atmosphere that hid behind the pleasant veneer of suburban life. The cultural backlash, which followed in the 1960s and 1970s, arose from suburbia and took on the shape of the inner city and those left behind. Those who were unable to move out of the urban decay and were overall disenfranchised were placed back into public focus and discourse. But while the protests of the inner city residents was a protest of the economic haves against the have-nots, those who spoke out from the middle class were the children of the suburban settlers. Their argument was of an emotional and sociological nature. They rebelled against the false plasticity of the suburban household where there was undying trust in national progress and a sense of denial for the sake of fitting in and enjoying their comforts. The desperate need for some sense of improvement makes sense considering the historical position of those who moved to suburbia. However, their attempt to create a hybrid between urban and rural life failed because it was based on a homogenization of the American culture. To create a world of its own that was safe and pleasant, it was believed important to discourage the random factors that were occurring in the overall culture which could have enriched this new mode of living. Instead, the suburban lifestyle actually invaded the city and stimulated small urban neighborhoods to practice their behavior with more limited resources in an act of class emulation. The end result is a covering up of any contemporary critique of the 1950s and the values that decade tried to project into future generations. Besides the growth of suburbs, the end of WWII fostered motorcycle clubs and the Beat generation of artists. One hid in the seclusion of a sterilized paradise, while the others expressed restlessness by wandering the country or creating underground art. Since then, the best way to create a man-made living space has always referred in some way to the suburbs. Commodification is the way of existing in the modern suburbs. The generations of children born and raised in the suburbs are faced with a brightly-lit hopelessness and have an urgent desire to escape to urban chaotic freedom and opportunity. New class elites fortify themselves in more isolated housing developments, forsaking community for status consumption. Our goal should be to look within the city and find how it can be people-friendly, as well as a place of individual freedom and mobility. Our method should be like a biosphere in characteristic and adaptable in common usage. Nature must grow carefully into the man-made, and vice versa in order to encourage “urban villages”. Then we can have a true sense of place where quality of life follows quantity.                     

TENSION BETWEEN VALUE AND DESIRE 

One of the most important public issues is that of the economy. The Industrial Revolution, one of the most significant events in world history, shaped all aspects of civilization in some way but was primarily an economic event. As the economy is public, its main concern is that of all citizens and their ability to live and sustain themselves. Economic relations were originally based on a model of the machine, running according to unspoken laws that were self-regulating. Competition is the incarnation of the economic relation in capitalism, insuring that only the cheapest and highest quality goods would circulate. However, the motive for profit naturally creates accumulation of wealth and the narrowing of competition, and the priority of function in modern capitalism reduced human endeavor to parts in a machine. The factor of capital, as a pure nonstop flowing of data and an always-expanding viral sign-system, also disrupts the internal stability of the capitalist economic model. Communism, as an alternative, reflected the same modern industrial values as capitalism. The commodification effect of late capitalism clearly illustrates the opposition between profit and what is necessary for people within a society to achieve a stable standard of living. In other words profit, as an aim in and of itself, does not deal with the entire supplying of human needs and demands. Citizens express these needs and demands in an economic system best through democratic structures and actions. Capitalism that upholds profit motive and competition rely on the internal logic and operation of the system, regardless that this system is artificial and mechanical in style. Rather, a naturalistic model must be incorporated to broaden the view of supply, demand, and a motive beyond that of monetary profit. The need for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and other basic needs is not only constant within the lifespan of any individual, but it is transcendent of profit and business survival that is within the rules of pure economy. A more responsive economic approach, with the result of long-term and broad-based profit or success, must look to the stability of human survival as a first step of necessity. Commercialism must arise only after the foundation for a universally applied standard of living is established. We not only abandon humanism if this measure is not taken before the growth of commercialism, but we exacerbate the gaps that exist between the haves and have-nots as well as the indiscrepancy that is possible between a nation’s economic health and that of its individual citizens. We must be reminded that not only is “economy” derived from the ancient Greek word for hearth, but that Alexis De Toqueville commented upon the chance of revolution occurring in a country where there is the signs of prosperity rather than complete poverty and collapse. He believed that complete poverty gave the people no hope for a better life, and that they were too concerned with their own physical survival to revolt. If there were signs of wealth, either in improving general conditions or exclusively in some parts of the nation, then one could see the chance for a successful revolution whereby those that were without could be elevated. This emphasis on personal economic autonomy must be an important guideline in any economic policy. It comes as no surprise that an economy of only one type or ideology can not fulfill this guideline because it is beholden to its own logic and sense of priorities. To institute democracy in the workplace is the most direct and non-ideological approach to making an economy more naturalistic in execution. Knowing that democracy is the method by which private citizens are publicly free, it makes sense that one is also economically free, and expresses that freedom by the power of a vote. We are economic beings among other things, and it is imperative that we are able to exercise our right as a citizen in all the features of our life within a nation. The institution of a living wage to replace a minimum wage connects the lowest possible incomes directly to the highest possible incomes in a balance, which allows all to participate in the roles of not only producers but consumers and owners as well. Overall, a naturalistic model treats economic exchange as occurring in a manner like that of an eco-system. It recognizes the consequences of economic growth, whereby businesses are capable of growing beyond national borders and able to be as powerful as some countries. Therefore, it is very practical to understand that with profit growth there is increased social responsibility, and so corporations having internal democratic structures is the logical step to enforcing that responsibility. Since any radical redistribution of wealth would only create new haves and have-nots, empowerment through democratic procedures that are hardwired into our economic agents would not only recognize the very human trait of self-interest but also the need for economic stability and interconnectedness. In this way, our economy in theory would accurately reflect our human nature in fact.